Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Original London Cast, 1996 (Dreamworks) By the time this latest epic from composer Claude-Michel Schönberg and lyricist Alain Boublil arrived on the scene, the serious pop-opera genre was f…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:43PMTuesday, September 15, 2015
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1981 (RCA) Stephen Sondheim compilation shows have always seemed silly to me. Doesn’t the appeal of his work lie largely in its specificity? The original cast a…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:56AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 2000 (RCA) Michael John LaChiusa turns out songs quickly — so quickly, he boasts, that he can sometimes knock off several in a day. There’s nothing necessarily wr…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:43AMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 2002 (JAY) Roger Rees did first-rate work as Alfie, a Dublin bus driver who revels in amateur theatricals and yearns for a male coworker, but this show was a di…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:29AMSunday, September 13, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1968 (RCA) “‘Tis wonder that enwraps me thus, yet ’tis not madness. What a groovy lady!” And there you have the central joke of this hit Off-Broadway musical,…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:18PMStudio Cast, 1966 (MGM/no CD) Long out of print, this recording was one of the first musical theater “concept albums.” Few people seem to be aware that You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:56PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1976 (ABC/no CD) Just as The Wiz was an all-black version of The Wizard of Oz, this show might be considered an all-black version of Jesus Christ Superstar. That’s …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:44PMPasadena Playhouse Cast, 2001 (Fynsworth Alley/Ghostlight) This 1938 flop is a musical adaptation, with songs by Cole Porter and a book by Rowland Leigh, of Siegfried Geyer’s By Candleligh…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:21PMOriginal Cast, 2002 (PS Classics) Although A Year With Frog and Toad played only a short time on Broadway in 2003, previous runs at the Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis (where the…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:59PMSaturday, September 12, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1978 (Columbia/Masterworks Broadway) Studs Terkel’s Working, the 1972 best-selling volume of interviews with Americans discussing the pros and cons of their occupat…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:08PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1953 (Decca/MCA) Nine years after their breakthrough show, On the Town, composer Leonard Bernstein and lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green were hired on very shor…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:50AMFriday, September 11, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1965 (Columbia) This was an odd little show, billed as “a play with music.” Columbia probably decided to record The Zulu and the Zayda because the songs were writ…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:44PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1968 (Capitol) Are you sitting down? When I saw Zorba in its original Broadway production (not the horrible Anthony Quinn revival; see below), I thought it a better s…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:58AMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1996 (First Night) The talented team of librettist-lyricist John Dempsey and composer Dana P. Rowe mined the familiar terrain of Little Shop/Rocky Horror teen-nos…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:45AMEncores! Concert Cast, 1999 (Decca) You can always tell an overture arranged and orchestrated by Hans Spialek: The brass section announces something important, the woodwinds flutter and swoo…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:31AMOriginal Cast, 1919-20 (Smithsonian/no CD) By the time of its 13th edition, Ziegfeld’s legendary beauty-and-music revue was a Broadway institution. Some historians hold that this 1919 vers…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:19AMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 2003 (PS Classics) Like the show itself, the cast recording of composer-lyricist Tim Acito’s “musical fairy tale” Zanna, Don’t! will probably appeal mainl…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:03AMThursday, September 10, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1981 (Arista/Masterworks Broadway) This is a musicalized update of the famous Hepburn-Tracy movie of the same title, with the plot changed so that it now concerns a t…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:26PMFilm Soundtrack, 1939 (MGM/Rhino-Turner) Is it an overstatement to call MGM’s The Wizard of Oz the world’s most beloved film? Happily, a superb job has been done with the latest edition …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:55PMStudio Recordings, Piano Rolls, Music-Box Discs, 1903-08 (Hungry Tiger Press, 2CDs) Shortly after L. Frank Baum published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a stage musical version became the bigge…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:47PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1975 (Atlantic) L. Frank Baum hit theatrical pay dirt with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Two years after the novel’s publication in 1900, Baum and partners launched a…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:18PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1952 (RCA) Eddie Fisher’s mega-hit recording of the title tune helped turn this Catskills summer romance, based on Arthur Kober’s play Having Wonderful Time, from…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:38PMOriginal Cast Members, 1995 (RCA) Composer Jeffrey Lunden and lyricist-librettist Arthur Perlman deserve credit for tackling such difficult source material: Arthur Kopit’s acclaimed play W…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:30PMOriginal London Cast, 1982 (EMI/Ange1) Much of Tony Macaulay’s music is too pop-rocky for an adaptation of the classic 1920s Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur comedy The Front Page, but Macaulay…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:51AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1991 (Sony) Chameleonic composer Cy Coleman and stalwart Broadway lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green wrote the songs for The Will Rogers Follies, a fanciful musi…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:40AMWednesday, September 9, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1955 (RCA) Cole Porter’s last Broadway show is a charming and sophisticated musical based on the Greta Garbo film Ninotcka. Only Porter could have given that heady …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 07:14PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1997 (Sony) Based on the lives of Daisy and Violet Hilton, twins who were born joined at the hip and who had minor show business careers that exploited their oddity, …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 06:56PMOriginal London/Broadway Cast, 1976 (RCA) When Side by Side by Sondheim opened in London, it was warmly received, as half of Sondheim’s shows had not yet been seen in the West End. In New …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 06:36PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1961 (Roulette/no CD) Carol Channing spent many years between Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Hello, Dolly! touring in a successful nightclub act that was gussied up for…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 06:18PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 2000 (RCA) This was the first of the entries in the 2000 competition between two stage musical adaptations of Joseph Moncure March’s epic poem. Although Andrew …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 05:13PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 2000 (Decca) Composer-lyricist Michael John LaChiusa was not unknown when The Wild Party, his adaptation of Joseph Moncure March’s 1928 poem of the same title, hit …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:57PM 
