973 stories by "Michael Portantiere"
Original Broadway Cast, 1997 (Varèse Sarabande) Play On! was at least the fourth musical adapted from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night to play, albeit briefly, in New York. This version moved th…
Original Broadway Cast, 1955 (Capitol/DRG) Listening to a second-rank score, a longtime musical theater lover will marvel at how often just-above-par tuners were a dependable source for Hit …
Original Broadway Cast, 1972 (Motown/Decca) Stephen Schwartz wrote the score for this hippy-dippy medieval musical. John Rubinstein starred as the son of Charlemagne, roaming the Holy Roman …
Original Broadway Cast, 1955 (RCA) Rodgers and Hammerstein may not have been the ideal team to put the chippies and layabouts of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row onstage in a musical; it's tanta…
Studio Cast, 1962 (Columbia/Sony) This 1930s topical revue is legendary for its original cast of talented shop workers from the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union. Featuring songs b…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1978 (Original Cast Records/no CD) No stars; not recommended. Time was when you could buy an original cast recording with a reasonable amount of confidence. If a …
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1975 (Gallery/no CD) Composer Harvey Schmidt has consistently written lovely, dramatic, and distinctive music. Philemon is the story of Cockian, a street clow…
Original London Cast, 1986 (Polydor, 2CDs) Andrew Lloyd Webber's score for this virtually through-sung musical based on the famous novel by Gaston Leroux contains many wonderful melodies; un…
Studio Cast, 1993 (RCA) Unfortunately, Maury Yeston (music and lyrics) and Arthur Kopit (book) began work on their own adaptation of the Gaston Leroux potboiler The Phantom of the Opera conc…
Original Broadway Cast, 1954 (RCA) James M. Barrie's ever-young story of the boy who wouldn't grow up has been a favorite in print and on the stage and screen for more than a century. While …
Original Broadway Cast, 1950 (Columbia/Sony) This is a little-known, unusually lackluster score by Leonard Bernstein, not the beloved Peter Pan musical of four years later. Except for studen…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2001 (Fynsworth Alley) James Hindman's goofy, marvelous spoof/homage Pete 'n' Keely stars George Dvorsky and Sally Mayes as Pete Bartel and Keely Stevens, a pair …
Original London Cast, 1998 (JAY) Before their huge success with TV's Friends, David Crane and Marta Kauffman wrote this amusing theater piece in collaboration with lyricist Seth Friedman and…
Original Broadway Cast, 1994 (Angel) One of Stephen Sondheim's most daring achievements, Passion is also one of his most divisive: Some people respond to the work's uncompromising nature, wh…
Studio Cast, 1994 (Elektra-Nonesuch) Pardon My English, the 1933 musical that had the shortest Broadway run of any Gershwin show, makes for a most entertaining recording. The wonderful s…
Original Broadway Cast, 1999 (RCA) Composer-lyricist Jason Robert Brown earned a Tony Award for his work on Parade, his first Broadway score. Although this dark musical about accused murdere…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1960 (Kapp/Decca) This topical revue served as a calling card for a young composer-lyricist named Jerry Herman. It remains a pleasant diversion if you're in the r…
Original Broadway Cast Members, 1940 (Decca) Piggybacked onto the Decca CD issue of the Call Me Madam studio album starring Ethel Merman are four selections from Panama Hattie in their first…
Studio Cast, 1950 (Columbia/Sony) Joey, a small-time entertainer bent on opening his own nightclub, drops his girlfriend, Linda, to bed Vera, a rich dowager who's bonkers for him and who bac…
Original Broadway Cast, 1954 (Columbia/Sony) For a primer on the state of musical comedy in the mid-1950s, look no further than here. The Pajama Game was based on notably "unmusical" source …
Original Broadway Cast, 1951 (RCA) A show with a magnificent score but an inferior book, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's Paint Your Wagon tells of an 1853 California gold rush, the lon…
Original Broadway Cast, 1976 (RCA) Only Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim could find musical possibilities in the opening up of Japan to the West in 1853. Only Sondheim could make such a br…
Original London Cast, 1946 (Decca/Encore Box Office) Noël Coward's overstuffed postwar operetta plunked a visiting diva among some missionaries on the island of Samolo. The show failed to…
Original Off-Broadway Cast Members, 1994 (Varèse Sarabande) "Promising" is the obvious word for Lucky Stiff, the first produced musical by composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens…
Studio Cast, 2000 (DRG) For this musical, which was seen at the Goodspeed Opera House in 1997, librettist Sherman Yellen wrapped a yarn of romance among expat American journalists in 1927 Pa…
