Sunday, August 9, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1946 (Capitol/Angel) Careening between musical comedy and musical tragedy, St. Louis Woman is a turn-of-the-century tale with an all-black cast and a score by Harold …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:18AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1961 (Capitol/Angel) Which musical has the best opening and closing numbers for its star? A good bet is Noël Coward’s Sail Away. The show-stopping songs, written e…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:07AMWednesday, August 5, 2015
Los Angeles Cast, 1993 (Varèse Sarabande) Ruthless! is a very campy show, first produced Off-Broadway in 1992 and then in Los Angeles the following year, about a talented little girl named …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:15AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1978 (Columbia/DRG) Elizabeth Swados’s revue about street kids, developed by The Public Theater before opening on Broadway, was considered fresh and edgy when it de…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:07AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1965 (Warner Bros./no CD) One of the oddest musicals ever to hit Broadway, Rugantino first opened in Rome and became an enormous hit. On a visit to Italy, American pr…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:47AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1970 (Columbia/Sony) Composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick were still at the peak of their productivity, following their great success with Fiddler on the …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:28AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1988 (MCA Classics) Romance Romance is intelligent and well crafted, but the score is not one you’ll necessarily be eager to hear more than once. The show consists …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 09:53AMTuesday, August 4, 2015
Original London Cast, 1973 (First Night) The first recording of Richard O’Brien’s kinky cult classic is weak. The cast members include O’Brien himself, Patricia Quinn, Little Nell, Jon…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:24PMStudio Cast, 1944 (Decca) Roberta has one of the best-remembered musical theater scores of the 1930s, and it owes its fame solely to the efforts of Jerome Kern, whose rapturous music managed…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:48PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1976 (Columbia/Original Cast Records) Let’s face it, country music is not where Broadway shines. But this show is a happy exception to the rule. Composer Robert Wal…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:32PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1965 (RCA) Is that a car with a bad muffler, or a lame rhinoceros rousing itself out of the mud? No, it’s Anthony Newley, wallowing in self-pity and vibrato as he b…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:19PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1962 (London/no CD) After a brief instrumental prelude of the title song, the sound of crickets is heard, a soft female voice sings hauntingly in the distance, an…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:09PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 2001 (JAY) Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt first began work on a musical adaptation of Lynn Riggs’ 1930 play Roadside in the mid-1950s but didn’t complete it unt…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:08PMMonday, August 3, 2015
Original London Cast, 1930 (Columbia/Pearl) One of the quintessential musicals of the 1920s, Rio Rita was also a bit of an oddity, poised as it was on the brink between musical comedy and op…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:50PMSunday, August 2, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1984 (Polygram/JAY) For Broadway diva lovers, it’s the Fight of the Century. In this corner: Chita Rivera as Anna, a feisty, middle-aged widow who’s about to walk…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:57PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1976 (RCA) No stars; not recommended. This late-career Richard Rodgers flop, about the marital problems of Henry VIII, revealed the composer to be out of touch with c…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:50PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1996 (Dreamworks, 2CDs) Rent is a heartbreaking work in more than one sense. First, it’s a moving reimagination of La Bohème as a portrait of struggling artists on…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:35PMOriginal Los Angeles Cast, 1999 (Madness Records) Musicals don’t come any sillier than the Kevin Murphy (lyrics-book) and Dan Studney (music-book) adaptation of Reefer Madness. This wacky …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:17PMEthel Merman With Studio Artists, 1936 (Liberty/AEI) {usr=4] Hoping for another Anything Goes, producer Vinton Freedley put Cole Porter and Ethel Merman together again, this time adding Jimm…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:08PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1959 (RCA/Fynsworth Alley) With a book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields, Sidney Sheldon, and David Shaw, music by Albert Hague, and lyrics by Dorothy Fields, Redhead is …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:56AMThursday, July 30, 2015
“Songs from Ragtime,” 1996 (RCA) One of the most precious gems of the American musical theater, Ragtime is replete with beautiful performances on this first recording of the magnificent …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:12AMOriginal Broadway Cast Members, 1986 (Sony) High on the list of flops that deserved better is this four-performance heartbreaker by composer Charles Strouse and lyricist Stephen Schwartz. Th…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:53AMOriginal Cast, 1995 (Varèse Sarabande) In this comedic concept musical by Mike Craver and Mark Hardwick, we’re supposed to be hearing a radio broadcast emanating illegally from the home o…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 10:27AMWednesday, July 29, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1973 (Columbia/Sony) Despite its healthy Broadway run and its Tony Award for Best Musical, Raisin is almost completely forgotten. Fortunately, the Robert Nemiroff-Cha…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:28PMOff-Broadway Cast, 1993 (RCA) There have been tons of Stephen Sondheim revues, but the big attraction of Putting It Together was unique: Julie Andrews singing Sondheim, live, in a tiny theat…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 04:11PMOriginal Broadway Cast, 1970 (Ampex/RCA) With music by Gary Geld and lyrics by Peter Udell, this show is based on the play Purlie Victorious by Ossie Davis, who adapted the musical in collab…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:51PMOriginal Cast, 1982 (Columbia/Sony) An unexpected delight when it opened, this revue of countryish songs doesn’t have much in the way of a story line. The setup of a roadside stop populate…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:38PMMonday, July 20, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 1968 (United Artists/MGM/Kritzerland) Based on the film The Apartment, this show was the only Broadway effort of pop songwriters Burt Bacharach (music) and Hal David …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:11PMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1969 (RCA) ]usr=1] Two prisoners identified as “105” and “106” escape from jail and wander through various settings, including a park, a banquet, and a ba…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:47AMOriginal Broadway Cast, 2001 (Sony) Here is Mel Brooks’ full-blown musical version of his semi-musical 1968 movie about a has-been Broadway producer’s backfired scheme to bilk his show�…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:36AMOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 2002 (JAY) Based on Mark Twain’s novel about a pair of 16th-century London lookalikes who swap identities, this adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper played a…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:25AM 
