977 stories by "Michael Portantiere"
Original Broadway Cast, 1980 (Original Cast Records/no CD) No stars; not recommended. After only 14 performances, Musical Chairs vanished from sight, but the show yielded a cast album. The e…
Original Broadway Cast, 2002 (Sony) In the old days, composers hoped that theatergoers would go out humming what they'd just heard. With shows like Movin' Out, however, the idea is that the …
In theatrical comedy, drama, and even tragedy, an entire play can revolve around or turn upon the smallest of plot points.
Original Broadway Cast, 1956 (Columbia/Sony, 2CDs) When Frank Loesser's adaptation of Sidney Howard's They Knew What They Wanted opened on Broadway, the composer-lyricist quickly corrected t…
Original Broadway Cast, 1956 (Decca/MCA) From the moment the overture fires up, strings sawing away and trumpets blaring, you know that this is a mid-'50s schlock musical comedy. Produced (b…
Original Broadway Cast, 1962 (Columbia/Sony) Irving Berlin's final show should have been a natural. It's a look at a JFK-like First Family, with mild social satire and plenty of flag-waving.…
Original Broadway Cast, 1954 (RCA/Stage Door) Is it a musical, or a straight play with incidental songs? Mrs. Patterson was a hybrid oddity of the 1954-55 Broadway season. Having seen Eartha…
Studio Cast, 2002 (DRG) A planned 2001 production of Jerry Herman's Miss Spectacular in Las Vegas never materialized, but this concept recording is a doozy, featuring the kind of cast that a…
Original London Cast, 1989 (Geffen, 2CDs) No stars; not recommended. As was the case with The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables, its equally cheap predecessors, Miss Saigon was brough…
Original Broadway Cast, 1949 (Columbia/Sony) Irving Berlin's highly anticipated follow-up to Annie Get Your Gun was one of those can't-miss packages that missed. It had thick postwar nostalg…
Original Broadway Cast, 1970 (Project 3) "Good MORN-ing, ladies!!" Shelley Winters' entrance line in this musical biography of the Marx Brothers and their indomitable mother is brayed rather…
Original Broadway Cast, 1961 (RCA) Jerry Herman's first Broadway score is surely one of his best, an atmosphere-soaked tour through contemporary Israel in service of a tired soap opera plot.…
Original Broadway Cast, 1944 (Decca) Cole Porter, Herbert Fields, and Dorothy Fields enjoyed a long run with this silly piece of wartime escapism, but the major force behind the show was pro…
Original Broadway Cast, 1982 (RCA) A big flop in its original Broadway production, this show boasts one of Stephen Sondheim's best scores. George Furth's book, based on a George S. Kaufman-M…
Original Broadway Cast, 1970 (Atlantic/150 Music) Based on Stephen M. Joseph's book of the same title, The Me Nobody Knows is a collection of writings by inner-city students turned into a mu…
Film Soundtrack, 1944 (MGM/Rhino-Turner)Â Based on a series of stories by Sally Benson that originally appeared in The New Yorker, Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis is one of the g…
London Cast, 1985 (EMI) This production took a very charming, very old musical, gussied up the book, the score, and the arrangements, and presented it to the public as a lovely nostalgia fes…
Original Broadway Cast, 1953 (RCA) It's hard to believe, but Rodgers and Hammerstein did have a few flops in addition to their many hits. Me and Juliet was one such failure, and the team's o…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1985 (Harbinger) When Bye Bye Birdie exploded on Broadway in 1960, it was an announcement that a brand-new generation had arrived in just about every department. …
Off-Broadway Cast, 2001 (Original Cast Records) The legendary 1967 out-of-town closing performance of this show is notorious for its title character, played by one Marissa Mell, being shot b…
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…
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 alb…
Original 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 wrong …
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2002 (JAY)Â 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 …
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, loosely…
