Sunday, August 9, 2015
Original Broadway Cast, 2000 (Decca) Whatever was wrong with producers Barry and Fran Weissler's attempts to cobble a musical out of bits and pieces of Dr. Seuss' cherished children's books,…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:35PM[SHARE]Original Broadway Cast, 1973 (Buddah/DRG) "Up, down; up, down" goes a lyric in the title tune, and that's a good barometer for this Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields musical based on the William Gib…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:25PM[SHARE]Off-Broadway Cast, 1999 (RCA) Many composers and lyricists turned out a mixed bag of songs and sketches for Secrets Every Smart Traveler Should Know, an occasionally clever revue. Nearly all…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:16PM[SHARE]Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1964 (Columbia/Sony) Based on a popular short story by James Thurber that had already inspired a film starring Danny Kaye, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty " adapt…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:05PM[SHARE]Original Broadway Cast, 1991 (Columbia) The Lucy Simon-Marsha Norman musicalization of the beloved Frances Hodgson Burnett novel The Secret Garden worked its charm on Broadway for more than …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:40PM[SHARE]Concept Recording, 1991 (Broadway Angel) Here's a "concept album" for a musical that probably wasn't a very good idea to begin with " at least, not as composed by Frank Wildhorn, whose show …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:30PM[SHARE]Original Broadway Cast, 1958 (RCA/DRG) First, novelist Richard Bissell wrote 7½ Cents, which was turned into the hit musical The Pajama Game. Then he wrote a novella about his experiences…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:16PM[SHARE]Film Soundtrack, 1977 (Polydor) Iconic though this movie may be, the blockbuster soundtrack album of Saturday Night Fever is distressingly dated. Even if individual songs are terrific, how m…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:03PM[SHARE]Original London Cast, 1998 (First Night) With music and lyrics by a 24-year-old Stephen Sondheim and a book by Julius J. Epstein, Saturday Night was supposed to be produced on Broadway in th…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:32PM[SHARE]Original Broadway Cast, 1959 (RCA) Edna Ferber's Saratoga Trunk had already been adapted as a hit film, so the stage musical version, developed for Broadway as Saratoga and rumored to be the…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:25PM[SHARE]Original Cast, 1988 (RCA) Conceived and directed by Mbongeni Ngema, Sarafina! is the "little musical that could." Despite considerable financial hardship in moving the show to production, it…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:45AM[SHARE]Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1969 (Capitol/Angel) Unlike some other rock musicals of the period, Salvation had no dance or spectacle elements; the physical production was tacky, and the show …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:38AM[SHARE]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 11:18AM[SHARE]Original 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 11:07AM[SHARE]Wednesday, 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 11:15AM[SHARE]Original 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 debu…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 11:07AM[SHARE]Original 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 10:47AM[SHARE]Original 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 10:28AM[SHARE]Original 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 of…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 09:53AM[SHARE]Tuesday, 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, Jonathan …
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 03:24PM[SHARE]Studio 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 02:48PM[SHARE]Original 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 Waldm…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:32PM[SHARE]Original 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 bel…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 02:19PM[SHARE]Original 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 02:09PM[SHARE]Original 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 until a…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 01:08PM[SHARE]Monday, 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 04:50PM[SHARE]Sunday, 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 out…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:57PM[SHARE]Original 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 12:50PM[SHARE]Original 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 N…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:35PM[SHARE]Original 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 sh…
SOURCE: castalbumreviews.com at 12:17PM[SHARE]Ethel 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 12:08PM[SHARE] 
