Saturday, February 21, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1975 (Arista) Perhaps not fully appreciated during its initial run of only two years in the mid-1970s, the John Kander-Fred Ebb-Bob Fosse musical Chicago is now recog…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:34PMThursday, February 19, 2015
Original London Cast, 1991 (London) Because of its biblical subject matter and the sheer volume of music and lyrics that Stephen Schwartz wrote for the piece, including a large amount of cho…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:01PMStudio Cast, 1984 (RCA, 2CDs) Dramatically incoherent but musically brilliant, Chess concerns the fierce rivalry between an American chess champion (here sung by Murray Head) and his Russian…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:37PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1983 (John Hammond Records/DRG) I find librettist Michael Colby to be extremely talented, with more natural gifts as a lyricist. (His shows are through-sung.) H…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:05PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1969 (Capitol/Angel) The hero and heroine are called Orphan and Angel. The villain is a bloated millionaire named Edgar Allen Rich. The production was designed to res…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:49PMMonday, February 16, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1945 (Decca) This landmark musical is not the most popular of the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon in terms of the number of productions, but it may well be the most bel…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:14PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1961 (MGM/Polydor) Is there an odder Broadway musical than Carnival? Even with an all-American creative team, its sensibility — alternately sentimental, stark, and …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:32PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1943 (Decca) It’s easy to understand why Carmen Jones was such a hit on Broadway in 1943. Not only was it a novelty — an Americanized opera with an all-black cast…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:27AMOriginal Broadway Cast Members, 1980 (Original Cast Records) Picture Mamma Mia! leavened with wit, charm, and soaring melody, and you’ll have some notion of this two-week 1979 flop. Both a…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:35AMOriginal London Cast, 1968 (Decca) No stars; not recommended. After a long period during which London produced few musicals of consequence, things picked up in the ’60s. Some even called i…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:09AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1946 (Decca) The well-produced CD transfer of recordings made by members of the original cast of Call Me Mister, featuring a rediscovered, extended version of compose…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 09:52AMSaturday, February 14, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1956 (Columbia/Sony) This recording starts with the most exciting overture in Broadway history, and just keeps getting better after that. Leonard Bernstein’s gilded…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:06PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1953 (Capitol/Angel) Although Gwen Verdon was catapulted to stardom in this pizzazz-y, Broadway-Gallic concoction, the true star of the show is Cole Porter. The great…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:39AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1960 (Columbia/Sony) Composition, performance, and audio technology all came together to make this a first-rate cast recording. Although Camelot is not as highly rega…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 09:56AMThursday, February 12, 2015
Dinah Shore With Original Broadway Cast, 1950 (RCA/Flare) After the smash-hit Annie Get Your Gun, an Ethel Merman-Irving Berlin rematch was inevitable. In Call Me Madam, once again, a real-l…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:25PMWednesday, February 11, 2015
Film Soundtrack, 1943 (Rhino-Turner) It may not have been Porgy and Bess, but Cabin in the Sky was, in 1940, a new type of all-black Broadway show. Its tale of a heaven-and-hell struggle for…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:38PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1966 (Columbia/Sony) Christopher Isherwood’s play I Am a Camera, set in Berlin during the rise of Hitler, had been a notable stage success, but the property entered…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:55PMFriday, February 6, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1954 (Capitol/DRG) No stars; not recommended. Shirley Booth never had much luck with musicals. Witness this elegant piece of hackwork — which, at eight months, ran …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:11PMOff-Broadway Cast, 1967 (RCA/DRG) While this production did not achieve great success onstage, it did yield a cast album to be reckoned with. Most important, this is the only complete record…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:59PMLondon Cast, 1996 (Polydor) Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Ayckbourn cleverly reworked their 1975 flop ]eeves into this chamber-size musical chronicling the misadventures of the hapless, rich-…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:24PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1960 (Columbia/Sony) Here is pure pleasure. Bye Bye Birdie, with a book by Michael Stewart, managed to satirize the Elvis Presley craze, racial prejudice, the generat…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:49PMStudio Cast, 2002 (Original Cast Records) Five city dwellers share a brownstone but only occasionally interact with one another in this show by Josh Rubins, Andrew Cadiff, and Peter Larson. …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:25PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1996 (RCA) The songs aren’t the main point of this brilliant revue, which uses dance to chart the history of black men in America. The hip, hip-hop survey stretches…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:06PMOriginal London Cast, 2002 (Sony) This is the world’s first pop-rock, English-Hindi-Punjabi stage musical — but it isn’t as exotic as it sounds. Andrew Lloyd Webber produced the show, …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:38PMOriginal Australian Cast, 1998 (EMI) Peter Allen wrote only one musical — the inane Legs Diamond, still prized by connoisseurs of flops — but his life story plays itself out in this glos…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:56PMWednesday, February 4, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1980 (Varèse Sarabande) No stars; not recommended. What were they thinking? Clearly unaware that Elvis had left the building, the creators of Bye Bye Birdie reunited…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 09:08PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1947 (RCA) This is one of the most exciting cast albums of the pre-LP era. It was RCA’s first stab at Broadway, and although the mono sound is antique by today’s …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 07:40PM“World Premiere Cast Recording,” 2000 (Original Cast Records, 2CDs) This is possibly the strangest cast album ever. The show Breakfast at Tiffany’s was a notorious flop of the 1960s, u…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 06:59PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1962 (Columbia/DRG) This is a swell listen with a game cast, a lively Ronny Graham-Milton Schafer score, and the sort of floppola production numbers that are more fun…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 06:50PMStudio Cast, 1953 (Columbia/Sony) Rodgers and Hart’s 1938 adaptation of The Comedy of Errors is one of their most sublime achievements. The score, melodically and harmonically unsurpassed …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:11PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1974 (Records & Publishing/AEI) This show dates from the mid ’70s, but its heart lies more with The Boy Friend than with The Boys in the Band. The creators …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:31PM 
