Friday, March 27, 2015
BBC Radio Concert Cast, 2003 (Capriccio, 2CDs) Capriccio and the BBC left no manuscript unturned in reconstructing Kurt Weill’s biggest Broadway flop, a 1945 operetta about Benvenuto Celli…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:21AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1959 (Capitol/Angel) In an earlier era of musical theater, it was not uncommon for an overture to start with a sound effect. Here, we have the sound of a fire-engine …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:00AMWednesday, March 25, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1947 (Columbia/Sony) The mélange of singing styles heard on the first recording of Finian’s Rainbow is intriguing, but may strike some listeners as confusing. Ella…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:40PMNew York Concert Cast, 1991 (New World Records) Anything Goes may be rated the most fun Cole Porter score, but consider this 1929 hit, a whoop of joy from the late Jazz Age that makes rel…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:15PMTuesday, March 24, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1964 (RCA) One of the glories of the RCA cast album catalogue, this is a treasured memento of the original production of the Jerry Bock-Sheldon Harnick-Joseph Stein m…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:43AMMonday, March 23, 2015
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1960 (MGM/Decca ) There’s a reason why the original Off-Broadway production of this show ran for more than forty years. The prototype for every little Off Broad…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:11PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1954 (RCA) Based on Marcel Pagnol’s Marseilles trilogy about love and abandonment on the French Riviera, this nearly forgotten show has a beautiful score by Harold …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:41PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1961 (United Artists/DRG) This recording begins with the strains of “Here Comes the Bride,” then the first words we hear are “Will you marry me?” The story go…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:20PMOriginal London Cast, 1995 (Polydor) No stars; not recommended. After achieving great success as a movie and a TV series, Fame landed with a thud when it hit the stage. All about students at…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:57PMOriginal Off-Broadway Casts, 1981/1990 (DRG, 2CDs) Although the second and third installments of William Finn’s “Marvin Trilogy” were originally produced nine years apart (the first…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:33PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1964 (ABC-Paramount/Decca) This musical spoof of Hollywood in the 1930s is best known for its star’s attempts to bail out of it. Betty Comden and Adolph Green tailo…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:13PMSaturday, March 14, 2015
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2001 (RCA) A Class Act represents an important bit of modern musical theater history, and this recording of the Manhattan Theatre Club production is an intrigu…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:30PMThe lusty Lerner and Loewe musical Paint Your Wagon has a wonderful score, but it's not a show you see revived every day, which makes it a perfect choice for the City Center Encores! series.…
SOURCE: BroadwayStars at 12:05PMWednesday, March 11, 2015
Studio Cast, 1976 (MCA, 2CDs) This final collaboration (to date) of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice is also the last really good musical theater piece to come from ALW’s…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:26PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1978 (Warner Bros./no CD) The resurrection of Eubie Blake’s music in the 1970s was a joyous affirmation of the fact that even if genuine talent fades for a while, o…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:31PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1960 (DRG) Following the success of My Fair Lady, it seemed that witty and teddibly literate entertainment was what the theatergoing public craved, so lots of son…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:15PMOriginal London Cast, 1993 (First Night) An alternately heartbreaking, cathartic, and wonderfully humorous program of songs and monologues about AIDS victims and their loved ones, this show …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:13PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 2003 (Fynsworth Alley) In his songs for the theater, William Finn is often pointedly autobiographical; he seems happiest when dissecting his own thoughts with a s…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:56PMOhio Light Opera Cast, 1997 (Newport Classics, 2CDs) Victor Herbert’s 1917 “romantic comic opera” is a beauty, every bar of it suffused with the master’s love of his native Ireland. …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:36PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 2003 (Sh-K-Boom) The stage musical version of Debbie Does Dallas was conceived by Susan L. Schwartz and adapted by Erica Schmidt from the porno flick about a high…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:58AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1969 (Columbia/Sony) Jerry Herman would seem to be the least likely composer to musicalize Jean Giraudoux’s The Madwoman of Chaillot, but he took on the challenge. …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:43AMTuesday, March 10, 2015
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1992 (Bay Cities/Original Cast Records) Paul Bartel wrote the book for this musicalization of his cult-classic film, and he found ideal collaborators in lyricist …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:15PMOriginal Cast Members, 1972 (Kilmarnock/Original Cast) Here’s one of Broadway’s legendary disasters, described by Otis Guernsey, Jr. in the Burns Mantle Yearbook as “an ardent questing…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:55AMWednesday, March 4, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1982 (Geffen/Decca Broadway) What were they thinking? The most exciting Broadway score of the 1980s was carved up to fit on one disc, and thereby was stripped of its …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:26PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1965 (Blue Pearl/no CD) It’s a cliché among cast album collectors to hear a good score of a flop musical and ponder, “Why wasn’t this a hit?” But the recordi…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:33PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1960 (RCA) Right after Gypsy, you’d have expected composer Jule Styne to test his powers in another meaty Broadway project. Instead, he regressed to formula musical…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:15PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1983 (MCA) For the stage musical version of his political-satire comic strip, Garry Trudeau fashioned his own book and lyrics, proving himself to be a surprisingly ad…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:56PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1972 (Polydorl/no CD) Here’s an example of the sort of show that’s much more effective onstage than on record. It was easy to get caught up in a live performance …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:46PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1972 (Stax, 2LPs) This Melvin Van Peebles musical is as different from his earlier Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death as it could be. Though plotless, the earlie…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:27PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1961 (Kapp) This musical based on the movie The Quiet Man was a spirited but unsuccessful show. Donnybrook! did boast an excellent cast that included Susan Johnson, E…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:53AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1982 (Original Cast Records! Bay Cities) A Doll’s Life is about what happened to Henrik Ibsen’s Nora after she slammed the door at the end of A Doll’s House. Be…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:42AM 
