484 stories from Masterworks Broadway
Forty-seven years ago this week, Cabaret opened in Boston, where the show would have its sole pre-Broadway tryout. Although Tony-winner Lotte Lenya and Tony-nominee Jack Gilford were "only" …
We don't usually get terribly sentimental about theaters, but in this case we must make an exception.
On September 29, the Shubert Theatre on West 44th Street celebrated its hundredth anniv…
While any year would be a good one to give Ann-Margret a lifetime achievement award, 2013 is particularly apt.
It is, after all, the fiftieth anniversary of her breakthrough role as Kim McA…
Bless John Simpkins for giving Sweet Smell of Success another chance.
The gifted director, who also teaches at NYU, staged a revival of the 2002 musical on campus two years ago. On Sept. 12…
The original cast album of Cowardy Custard is a must for the very young and the very old.
The two-disc set of the 1972 London revue features selections and snippets from more than five doze…
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that "There are no second acts in American lives." For many of us, there are no second acts when we listen to original cast albums.
We get up in the mornin…
As of June 25, 2013, the world was divided into two parts.
One part consisted of people who couldn't wait to read Shirley Jones: A Memoir. They wanted to know everything the actress was wil…
Some of you may have noticed that I did a column on August's minor holidays the first and second weeks of the month " but haven't done one since.
Why?
I took a holiday.
But here we are wi…
Was Jerry Herman subtly trying to tell us something in La Cage aux Folles?
Note that he saved "The Best of Times (Is Now)" as his eleven o'clock number. No one knew it at the time, but it w…
Do you know the term "pentimento"? Many of us didn't until we read Lillian Hellman's first memoir, in which she used the word as her title.
"Pentimento," she taught us, was the result of a…
Last week I pointed out that August doesn't have any major holidays, but it does have some minor ones. Here's hoping that my reminding you of Sisters' Day -- the first Sunday of the month " …
We're about to begin the one month of the year that doesn't have a big holiday.
But at least August contains days that have been chosen as commemoratives. One such is Sisters' Day, which mi…
Last week, when I wrote about the cast album of Seven Come Eleven, I stressed its topicality. The 1961 nightclub revue mentioned The Peppermint Lounge, the Peace Corps, Mayor Wagner, civil r…
Decades ago, I vowed to obtain each and every original cast album. That meant searching second-hand dives and thrift shops and making many clandestine trips downstairs to dingy basements in …
So on July tenth, we'll celebrate Jerry Herman's eighty-fourth birthday.
And what do we immediately think of when we think of Jerry Herman?
Title songs, of course.
Herman's first four Bro…
We've often heard the expression variously attributed to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Aby Warburg and Gustave Flaubert. But whichever of these men was the first to say it had a point.
"God is …
A couple of weeks ago, I trumpeted the Tony-winning musicals that can be heard thanks to Masterworks Broadway.
And how about Tony-LOSERS in the Best Musicals category?
These have been on m…
"You're the one who chose Alan Alda's entrance music, aren't you?"
So said many people to me after I'd hosted The 69th Annual Theatre World Awards on June 3. Whenever a presenter or awardee…
So the percentage just went from 56.92% to 57.58%.
I'm talking about the number of Tony-winning Best Musicals that can be found on recordings and downloads on Masterworks Broadway.
With Kin…
Well, here's a reissue of a show album that many fanatically dedicated cast album collectors never owned.
ClownAround was originally recorded in 1972 by RCA Victor. But was it ever released…
In October 1983, when Cyndi Lauper's pop career started taking off in earnest, the current Broadway musicals had music by Andrew Lloyd Webber (Cats), Jerry Herman (La Cage aux Folles), Maury…
We're about to mark the 60th anniversary of Rodgers and Hammerstein's most obscure musical.
True, Me and Juliet endured the longest of their three least-successful shows. The musical that o…
"Next week, on the twentieth of May, I proclaim Liza Doolittle Day!"
So sings Eliza Doolittle in her fantasy number "Just You Wait" in My Fair Lady. It's a line that hasn't been lost on many…
You've heard it said about your town or one nearby.
"If you don't like the weather here, wait five minutes, and it'll change."
The same standard can apply to Stanley Silverman's music in …
One of the seminal recordings of the 1960s is now with us again via digital download: the first studio cast album of Lady in the Dark.
Until 1963, musical theater enthusiasts who'd been too…
