Monday, April 15, 2024
Studio Cast, 2020 (JAY Records) Nearly 50 years after the show’s opening and short-lived stint on Broadway in 1976, this long-awaited studio recording captures the highs and lows of Someth…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:32AMOff-Broadway Cast, 2006 (Ghostlight) This recording begins with a thrilling and percussive “Prologue” that lays out the haunting story of Bernarda Alba, the recently-widowed mother of fi…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:16AMThursday, April 11, 2024
Original Broadway Cast, 2014 (Broadway Records) Big Fish arrived on Broadway in 2013 with a score by Andrew Lippa and was imaginatively directed by Susan Stroman, but it did not last more th…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:35AMTuesday, April 9, 2024
Original Cast, 2017 (Masterworks Broadway) The Spongebob Squarepants album — recorded following the Chicago tryout, before most of the cast transferred to Broadway — succeeds largely thr…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:27AMMonday, April 1, 2024
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2024 (Sh-K-Boom) From the shimmery first notes of The Gardens of Anuncia, listeners will get the feeling they’re entering a magical land. What follows is a gem …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:21PMTuesday, January 16, 2024
Original Broadway Cast, 2005 (Ghostlight) No stars; not recommended. Among the most unsatisfying of modern musicals are those poorly done adaptations of classic literature that achieve succe…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:02PMSaturday, December 30, 2023
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1981 (Painted Smiles) This musical about a six-week women’s assertiveness training workshop came across as little more than an audition piece for Barbara Schott…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:41PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1963 (Golden Records/no CD) The puppets of Bil and Cora Baird were all over early television, as well as being featured in the Broadway musical Flahooley and the film…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:30PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1962 (Columbia/no CD) No stars, not recommended. The success of Once Upon a Mattress inspired several other fairy tale musicals, including this one — but the au…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:58AMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 2002 (Original Cast Records) A musical about a math problem? It’s a crazy notion, but composer-lyricist Joshua Rosenblum and librettist-lyricist Joanne Sydney L…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:44AMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1996 (Varèse Sarabande) This cute little show, with music and lyrics by Mary Murfitt and a book by Betsy Howie, had a decent run Off-Broadway in 1996. The song…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:26AMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1960 (20th Century Fox/no CD) No stars, not recommended. Some people have a blind affection for 1950s and ’60s revues, but being blind doesn’t mean that you …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:18AMTuesday, December 26, 2023
Off-Broadway Cast, 1998 (DRG) There are plenty of small delights — simple little things, one might say — to be found in this live recording of the York Theatre Company’s revue, in whic…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:38PMBroadway Cast, 2016 (DMI Soundtracks) Not much seems worth immortalizing when it comes to the Broadway adaptation of Natalie Babbitt’s beloved 1975 children’s novel Tuck Everlasting, in …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:14PMMonday, December 25, 2023
World Premiere Recording, 2012 (Masterworks Broadway) In this stage adaptation of the film of the same title about a boy who really wants a BB gun for Christmas, songwriters Benj Pasek and J…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 09:45AMSaturday, December 16, 2023
Original Broadway Cast, 2023 (Nonesuch) Days of Wine and Roses marks the first musical with a score by composer/lyricist Adam Guettel that has been produced since Guettel’s triumph with Th…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 09:46PMThursday, November 2, 2023
Douglas Sills will always be remembered and beloved by theatre lovers for his bravura performance as the star of the first incarnation of the Frank Wildhorn-Nan Knighton musical The Scarlet …
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 11:03AMSunday, October 29, 2023
Television Cast, 1966 (Kritzerland) Stephen Sondheim provided a brief but compelling score for this TV musical with a teleplay by James Goldman, based on a short story by John Collier. It te…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:12PMFriday, October 27, 2023
Jonathan Tunick receives his Sardi's portrait. Photos by Michael Portantiere.
SOURCE: TalkinBroadway at 11:51AMMonday, October 23, 2023
Original London Cast, 2022 (Masterworks Broadway) No stars; not recommended. These days, when you hear that a beloved movie is getting turned into a musical, it sounds less like an announ…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:02PMSaturday, October 21, 2023
Original Broadway Cast, 2008 (Ghostlight) Musical theater writers from Strouse and Adams to Pasek and Paul have tried to write musicals capturing the spirit of what it means to be a teenager…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 06:23PMSunday, October 8, 2023
Original Broadway Cast, 2023 (Sh-K-Boom) It took Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman’s musical Harmony 26 years to get to Broadway, over four times as long a period as the Comedian Harmonists …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:16PMTuesday, September 26, 2023
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1996 (Original Cast Records) The heyday of the intimate revue may have been decades ago, but some good ones have surfaced more recently. Consider Barry Kleinbort�…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:00PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1976 (Varese Sarabande) A stylized, three-character “silent movie opera” by composer Polly Pen and playwright Lawrence Klavan, Bed & Sofa premiered just o…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:35AMOriginal London Cast, 2000 (Telstar) Those who would type Andrew Lloyd Webber as a purveyor of lightweight poperettas may not know what to make of this tragic love story set against a backgr…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:12AMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1963 (London/no CD) This Off-Broadway oddity probably got produced because of the reputation of its composer, Irving Burgie — also known as Lord Burgess. Having…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:55AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1976 (Amherst) No stars, not recommended. This is arguably the least necessary Broadway album ever. Yes, the show was a hit (766 performances), and it served as the …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:43AMSaturday, September 23, 2023
Original Broadway Cast, 1990 (DRG) This show was a good time, but the cast recording — only 37 minutes in length — is of little help in bringing back the experience for those who saw it,…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:18PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1951 (RCA/Sepia) A spiffy overture, a swell opening chorus (“The Tour Must Go On”), then out comes our heroine with an even better character-establishing number, …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:44AMThursday, September 21, 2023
World Premiere Recording, 1997 (RCA) Avenue X shows how some folks in the racially divided America of the early 1960s tried to achieve peace and harmony through rock and roll. The theme is s…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:20PMOriginal Cast (London and Broadway), 1959 (Angel) Producer Alexander Cohen had the good sense to bring a host of newcomers to Broadway from England, among them Michael Flanders and Donald Sw…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:33PMThursday, September 7, 2023
Studio Recordings by the Original Broadway Cast, 1935 (Smithsonian/no CD) Always welcome on Broadway during the Depression was a star-packed musical revue. At Home Abroad, billed as “A Mus…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:31PMFriday, August 25, 2023
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1964 (Broadway East/AEI) 0 stars, not recommended. One day, sometime in the 1980s, several boxes of the long-out-of-print LP of The Athenian Touch turned up in a …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:48AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1948 (Decca) The Theatre Guild was riding the success of the still-running Oklahoma! when Armina Marshall Langner suggested that The Pursuit of Happiness, a play she …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:07AMThursday, August 24, 2023
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1968 (RCA/no CD) A young black man (Clifton Davis) and a young white woman (Carole Demas), both veterans of the disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention in …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:37PMConcept Album, 1954 (Columbia/Masterworks Broadway) Based on the 1920s newspaper columns of Don Marquis, archy and mehitabel stars a cockroach. Ostensibly, the columns were the work of said …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:53PMSaturday, August 12, 2023
Original Broadway Cast, 2022 (Masterworks Broadway) Meet the semi-jukebox musical: Almost Famous, based on the film about a 1970s rock band and the teen journalist William (Casey Likes) who …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:22PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 2012 (Backlot Music) If you love Lin-Manuel Miranda’s score for In the Heights, you’ll find lots of pleasures in Bring It On. This musical adaptation of a 2000 fi…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:39PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1970 (MIO International/no CD) This version of Colette is a charming play with music. The play itself was written by Elinor Jones, then married to lyricist Tom Jo…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:58PMTuesday, August 8, 2023
Original Broadway Cast, 1965 (United Artists/Kritzerland) What Robert Wright and George Forrest had previously done successfully with Grieg and Borodin, they did with Rachmaninoff in creatin…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:26AM 
