973 stories by "Michael Portantiere"
Original Broadway Cast, 2011 (Masterworks Broadway) If you're looking for an under-the-radar guilty pleasure album, you could do worse than Wonderland. It's the silliest and least self-impor…
Original Broadway Cast, 2012 (Masterworks Broadway) In "Just Another Day in Hollywood," the ensemble of Chaplin sings of "Stars on the rise / Stars on the fall / Stars you forget / Stars you…
Original London Cast, 1963 (Decca/Must Close Saturday) There's no question that Half A Sixpence, the musical adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel Kipps, was all about spotlighting Tommy Steel…
Studio Cast, 2021 (Polydor) O stars, not recommended. What's there to write about Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cinderella that hasn't already been written and/or said? Though this "modern twist…
Original Broadway Cast, 2023 (Masterworks Broadway) Not every musical starts its cast album with the pre-show announcement. But, for better and for worse, Shucked is not every musical. The s…
Original London Cast, 2013 (Watertower Music) The first stage iteration of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman's musical adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's novel preserves only one of Leslie B…
Film Soundtrack, 1971 (Geffen) This slim film soundtrack " featuring six full songs by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, plus some reprises and several lovely instrumentals also credited t…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2020 (Ghostlight)Â If this cast album confuses some listeners, that may be because they don't understand the show's central conceit, and can you blame them? It…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2005 (JAY) Based on Sherley Anne Williams' 1986 novel about the intertwined stories and gradual friendship of a Black woman and a white woman in the Antebellum So…
Original Broadway Cast, 2014 (UMe) Rocky finds Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty writing to order. At the center of this adaptation are two songs, from the film on which the musical is based …
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2008 (JAY) Â The commedia dell'arte players who are the characters in Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's musical The Glorious Ones declare in the titular openi…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2022 (Ghostlight) Are you ever too old to fall in love with a fairytale? Or a fairytale prince? This question is the basis for Between the Lines, a musical by Ely…
The little-known or virtually unknown plays that have been expertly revived by the Mint Theater Company throughout its history have fallen into two broad categories: (1) obscure works by obs…
Original Broadway Cast, 2023 (Ghostlight) Based on David Lindsay-Abaire's play of the same title, Kimberly Akimbo tells the story of Kimberly Levaco (Victoria Clark), a girl with a rare dise…
Original Broadway Cast, 2022 (Craft Recordings) The highlight of many a Golden Age musicals is the "11 o'clock number." Mr. Saturday Night, a Golden Age pastiche, has at least four of them "…
Studio Cast, 2007 (JAY) Busker Alley never made it to Broadway, but it sure came close, first with a Tommy Tune-led national tour in 1995 (felled by Tune's broken foot) and then with the Yor…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2022 (Craft Recordings) "A few djembe lessons and like that I am enlightened," sings Walter (David Hyde Pierce), a grumpy economics professor who learns to play p…
Original Broadway Cast, 2022 (Masterworks Broadway) One thing that can be said for Flying Over Sunset is that it's certainly ambitious. Conceived and directed by James Lapine, the musical te…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1961 (Mercury; no CD) With its lithe but insubstantial score, preserved nearly complete on the cast album, All In Love turned Richard Brinsley Sheridan's classic …
Original Broadway Cast, 2022 (Sh-K-Boom) Â A 1993 film comedy in which Robin Williams as divorced dad Daniel cons his way back into his children's lives by disguising himself as a Scottis…
Original Broadway Cast, 2023 (UMe) This recording differs from the cast albums of many other jukebox musicals, including biomusicals such as Jersey Boys and Beautiful, in that the arrangemen…
Original London Cast, 2019 Â & Juliet is, yes, another musical twist on Shakespeare, but one that's worthy of joining the large canon that already includes such shows as Kiss Me, Kate…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2019 (Yellow Sound) How to describe A Strange Loop, the Pulitzer-Prize winning musical that gets its title from both a cognitive science term and a Liz Phair song…
Studio Cast, 2019 (Absolute) Part history lesson, part Coachella, SIX gives cheeky insight into the lives of the six wives of Henry VIII in the form of a concert, with the women performing a…
Almost miraculously, the Mint has given us new-old winners time and again for 30 years now, with only a few re-dos. Its current offering is a revival of a true rarity that the company first …
