Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1997 (EMG) (4 / 5) By the mid 1980s, plays about AIDS began to surface and continued to emerge thereafter, but with only a few musicals among them. Nevertheless, this one would likely stand out in a large field. At the request of his partner, librettist Jim Brochu, composer-lyricist Steve Schalchlin wrote 10 songs about his (Schalchin’s) experiences battling the plague. Brochu slotted them into a script about Gideon, a dying rock musician who intends to commit suicide after recording a final album. Not surprisingly, the recording session — for which three other singers and an engineer are present — and its aftermath do not go entirely as planned. This storyline is rife with potential pitfalls, but Schalchlin avoids them all with his unflinching lyrics; examples are “Somebody’s Friend” (about cure rumors) and “The Group” (about support circles). The melodies are unflaggingly propulsive. Since AIDS is not in the news as much today as it was during its urgent-headline days, the musical is now something of a period piece, but there’s nothing dated about the performances heard on this recording. Bob Stillman has all of the passion needed for Gideon. The others, singing at the top of their lungs about their feelings, are Stephen Bienskie, Dean Bradshaw, Amy Coleman, and Grace Garland. Schalchlin did the arrangements, which were enhanced by Stillman, an expert pianist. — David Finkle

Original London Cast, 2012  (JAY) (4 / 5) When The Last Session premiered Off-Broadway, medicine was only just beginning to successfully cope with AIDS, removing its label as a death sentence and placing it more firmly in the chronic-illness category. This raises thoughts about how any present-day production of the show is perceived. For those encountering it for the first time, it might be viewed as a dark historical document; but for those who experienced it back in 1997, any new staging or recording is a stark reminder of what was once everyday reality. Those auditors may feel as if they’re reliving a too-painful past, and may well feel renewed fury mounting and tears welling up. Memories of friends and loved ones lost are not  the sole reason for the fury and the tears; much of the credit for effect goes to Steve Schalchlin for the power and grace of his songs. Schalchlin writes brilliantly about Gideon and boyfriend Jack, Gideon’s parents, his AIDS support group. There’s not a song here — all of them written in a rock or folk-rock mode — that doesn’t break the heart. Perhaps the most crushing of all is “Somebody’s Friend,” which poignantly recounts the rumors of miracle cures that constantly circulated. The first-rate singers on this cast recording of a 2012 London production, directed by Guy Retallack and conducted by Tom Turner, are Darren Day as Gideon and Simone Craddock, with AJ Dean, Ron Emslie and Lucy Vandi as the others engaged in Gideon’s melancholy farewell recording. Call it strong medicine. — D.F.

Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2002 (Ghostlight) (5 / 5) Although The Last 5 Years received mixed to negative reviews and closed quickly Off-Broadway in 2002, it has received many subsequent productions — in part because this is a two-character musical that requires minimal sets and costumes, but also because it has an excellent score by Jason Robert Brown, and it tells a compelling story with vivid characters. Somewhat autobiographical, the piece charts the five-year relationship between a writer (Jamie) and an actress (Cathy). It’s really more of a song cycle than a traditional musical, which certainly doesn’t mean that that it lacks emotion or theatricality. The highly creative and intriguing concept here is that, through Jamie’s songs, we see the couple’s relationship moving from beginning to end, while Cathy’s songs progressively take the story backward in time from the couple’s breakup to the first flush of romance. Both characters are fully rounded human beings with their own virtues and flaws: Jamie is smart, witty, and a real charmer, but also rather full of himself, while Cathy is warm, loving, and funny but tends to see herself as a victim. The forward/reverse concept adds immeasurably to the emotional content of the score: The exact moment when the couple’s stories overlap chronologically, in the scene of their engagement in a boat on a lake in Central Park, is breathtaking, and the final sequence is deeply moving. There’s also plenty of comic relief at hand: Cathy’s “A Summer in Ohio” is a hilarious vision of summer-stock hell, while “Shiksa Goddess” is Jamie’s very funny spiel about his mother’s anticipated reaction to his dating a non-Jew. Another highlight is “The Schmuel Song,” in which Jamie tells Cathy a sweetly humorous story that makes a point about their relationship. On this first recording of the score, Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie René Scott bring Jamie and Cathy to life in all their joy and pain, and the chamber-size orchestra — basically a string quartet, plus Brown as pianist-conductor — sounds beautiful. The Last 5 Years is a modern masterpiece of the American musical theater, and one or another recording of it is essential to the collection of anyone who loves the art form. — Michael Portantiere

Off-Broadway Cast, 2013 (Ghostlight) (4 / 5) Jason Robert Brown himself directed an excellent 2013 Second Stage Theatre production of The Last 5 Years. With his admirably simple and straightforward staging, he completely solved all of the directorial problems that marred the storytelling of the show in its original Off-Broadway staging.  Although that great virtue of the production obviously can’t be experienced by listening to the cast album, the recording is commendable in its own right for the strong performances of the very well cast Adam Kantor as Jamie and Betsy Wolfe as Cathy. There are some moments where these two seem to be working a little too aggressively to differentiate their interpretations from their predecessors Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott, as in several lines that are spoken or exclaimed rather than sung. Still, overall, Kantor and Wolfe are compelling and highly listenable in these roles. Not surprisingly, Brown does a superb job as musical director, a capacity in which he served for all three presentations of his masterwork that are reviewed here. — M.P.

Film Soundtrack, 2015 (Ghostlight) (5 / 5) There are no significant changes or variations in the musical and textual content of The Last 5 Years among the three recordings of the score. The instrumentation is very similar if not exactly the same, down to the keys in which the songs are performed. And because of the way Jamie and Cathy are written, there isn’t a whole lot of latitude for widely varying interpretations of the roles. So a preference for any of these recordings over the other two — if, indeed, there is a preference — will depend on one’s feelings about the quality and timbre of the voices of the cast members. Jeremy Jordan is arguably the most vocally gifted of the three Jamies, and he acts the songs at least as well as Norbert Leo Butz or Adam Kantor, so some listeners will find his performance to be the most satisfying overall. More very good news: Anna Kendrick is wonderfully real as Cathy throughout the character’s wide emotional and vocal range. Over the years since it was written, The Last 5 Years has dated slightly in some of its specifics; for example, in the song “Shiksa Goddess,” when Jamie imagines all the weird things about a girlfriend that his mother would be willing to forgive as long as she were Jewish, he cites having a tattoo as a major oddity. (Can you imagine?) But the characters and the main concerns of their story are timeless, so new productions and recordings of this beautiful, heartbreaking chamber musical will always be welcome. It’s best to experience the film of The Last 5 Years as a whole in a movie theater or on home video, because Richard LaGravenese did such a fine job of directing the property for the screen, but the soundtrack recording is thoroughly enjoyable as an audio-only entity. — M.P.

Original Cast Recordings, 1941 (Platinum/Wave) (3 / 5) Gertrude Lawrence had a reputation as a poor singer; Kurt Weill was quoted as saying that she had “the greatest range between C and C-sharp.” Perhaps she was inconsistent in live performances, but as heard in her studio recordings of songs from Lady in the Dark, Lawrence is in command and on pitch most of the time. (There are a few questionable notes in “My Ship” and elsewhere.) With music by Well and lyrics by Ira Gershwin, all of the songs in this show, save one, appear in dreams that fashion magazine editor Liza Elliott (Lawrence) recounts to her analyst. Each dream becomes a mini-operetta, but these first recordings from the score feature only its major numbers; the exception is a medley from the “Glamour Dream” that includes “Oh, Fabulous One,” “Huxley,” and “Girl of the Moment.” (It’s fun to hear Lawrence handle the patter of “Huxley” with a vocal quartet culled from the show’s chorus; this gives us some sense of the original production.) The “Glamour Dream” continues with Lawrence blithely swinging through “One Life to Live,” then the “Wedding Dream” presents the star in a romantic ballad, “This Is New,” and a fairy tale, “The Princess of Pure Delight.” Kaye, who played Russell Paxton/The Ringmaster in the show, delivers “It’s Never Too Late to Mendelssohn” and his big showstopper, “Tschaikowsky (and Other Russians),” in which he races through the names of 50 Russian composers in a tongue-twisting tour de force. Lawrence then scores with another showstopper, “The Saga of ]enny. ” (Unfortunately, for this recording, Ira Gershwin had to sanitize some of his ribald lyrics for that song; another disappointment is that the arrangements and orchestrations on all of these recordings are watered-down versions of what composer Weill wrote. ) The show’s final number, “My Ship,” is the only one sung outside of the dream sequences, and it marks the conclusion of Liza’s therapy; she recalls the words to the song from her childhood, and is instantly cured! While these vintage recordings do not really convey the theatricality of Lady in the Dark, they are a valuable record of a show that holds a major place in the development of the modern musical. Note that this compilation has bonus tracks including separate recordings of songs from the score by Danny Kaye, as well as the incomparable Hildegarde singing “The Saga of Jenny.” — Jeffrey Dunn

Television Production Soundtrack, 1954 (AEI) (1 / 5) Taken directly from the soundtrack of a kinescope of a Max Liebman television production, this Lady in the Dark stars Ann Sothern as Liza. The orchestrations are by Irwin Kostal, and they bear little resemblance to Weill’s originals; the musical style is more 1950s Hollywood than 1940s Broadway. Sothern handles her dialogue well, and has the right glamour and archness for the role. Her “One Life to Live” is jaunty and cool, her “My Ship” is smooth if not overly complex, but her “Saga of Jenny” is incomplete and cleaned up for TV. The recording includes three long, extraneous dances to variations on Weill’s music; they were performed in the 90-minute TV special by Bambi Linn and Rod Alexander. These annoying entries aside, the bonus tracks on this CD make it worth purchasing. Among them are Lawrence’s studio recordings of several songs from the score, plus her live broadcast performances of “Jenny” and “My Ship” with MacDonald Carey of the original Broadway cast. — J.D.

Studio Recording with TV Cast, 1954 (RCA/no CD) (2 / 5) Before Lady in the Dark was performed live on television in 1954, the cast went into a studio and made this album. Irwin Kostal’s orchestrations sound much better here, without all the background noise and hubbub of the AEI release reviewed above. Ann Sothern comes across well, while Carleton Carpenter does a fine job as Beekman in the “Glamour Dream” and does not disappoint with the Ringmaster’s “Tschaikowsky.” Robert Fortier gets to sing a little as Randy Culver, the character’s name having been inexplicably changed from Randy Curtis. — J.D.

Studio Cast, 1963 (Columbia/Sony) (3 / 5) When originally released, this was the fullest recorded representation of the classic Kurt Weill-Ira Gershwin score for Lady in the Dark. While the notes claimed it was “musically intact .. complete with Kurt Weill’s original orchestrations,” there are many internal cuts that were probably made to fit the songs onto a single LP, and some of the orchestrations were fiddled with. Still, the recording gives listeners a sense of how the dream-sequence songs hung together to form mini-operettas — one of the things that made the show such a groundbreaker. The orchestra and chorus are jauntily conducted by Lehman Engel. As Liza, Rise Stevens brings requisite glamour to “One Life to Live,” some beautiful tones to “My Ship,” and does her darnedest to shed her operatic mannerisms in “The Saga of Jenny”(but ends the song with a glorious high note). If she is not fully convincing in the more dramatic moments of dialogue and recitative, this is still a hearty and well-sung performance. Adolph Green works too hard at times, but he’s nevertheless enjoyable and makes the most of “Tschaikowsky.” John Reardon is heard as film star Randy Curtis, the role originated by a barely musical Victor Mature; he sings the big ballad that Mature never sang, “This Is New,” with ringing baritenor tones. The smaller roles are also well handled.  — J.D.

Original London Cast, 1997 (JAY) (4 / 5) All things considered, this is the finest recording of Lady in the Dark. The original Weill orchestrations were used with some augmentation, and there are no cuts in the score. As a result, the recording is nothing less than revelatory. In the pivotal role of Liza Elliot, we have Maria Friedman, a brilliant star of the London musical theater. She is a much stronger singer than Gertrude Lawrence, possessing an exciting belt voice with a soprano extension. Her “One Life to Live” is very belt-y, but that sound of confidence, shaken at the end of the “Glamour Dream,” creates its own mystique. When she offers lighter soprano tones in “My Ship,” Friedman’s Liza sounds as if she is truly rediscovering the words and realizing for the first time what they mean to her. She does an equally great job with “The Saga of Jenny.” Another lovely discovery is that we can finally hear “This Is New” as originally conceived; singing it with Friedman, the American baritenor Steven Edward Moore sounds wonderful. James Dreyfuss won an Olivier Award for his performance as Russell Paxton/The Ringmaster, and he comes across fairly well on the recording, which also boasts excellent choral work. — J.D.

Original Broadway Cast Reconstruction, 1977 (Smithsonian/Hallmark) (5 / 5) Here is one of the great artifacts of the American musical theater — and it’s also a great listen. One of a series of Smithsonian reconstructions released during the 1970s, this album of the 1924 George and Ira Gershwin musical Lady, Be Good! is probably the best of them. After Fred and Adele Astaire finished the show’s Broadway run, they repeated their roles in London, where they recorded six of their songs (and English cast member William Kent recorded one more). George Gershwin himself played piano for four of the sides, and all of them are simply delightful. To be able to hear Fred and his legendary sister perform “Hang On to Me,” “Fascinating Rhythm,” “So Am I,” “Swiss Miss,” ”I’d Rather Charleston” (added for the London run), and “The Half-of-it-Dearie Blues” (in which Fred dances and clowns with Gershwin) is simply remarkable. In addition, original cast member Cliff Edwards, mostly remembered as Jiminy Cricket’s voice in Disney’s Pinocchio, sings a couple of numbers, and the duo-piano team of Phil Ohman and Victor Arden is also heard. A few Gershwin piano solos, drawn from old radio broadcasts and a 1924 piano roll, add more delights. — David Wolf

Studio Cast, 1992 (Roxbury/Elektra-Nonesuch) (3 / 5) This recording, like others of the well-intentioned Gershwin releases from Roxbury, fails to recreate the musical comedy spirit that made Lady, Be Good! a touchstone of the Roaring Twenties. Too often, it feels like an academic exercise, busily reconstituting original orchestrations and performing styles. It may be authentic, but it isn’t very enjoyable. Except for female lead Ann Morrison, most of the cast, especially the male principals, sing everything very squarely and right on the beat. However, John Pizzarelli is charming in emulating the vaudeville looseness of Cliff Edwards from the original cast. And when Jason Alexander arrives near the end of the first act with the title song and some terrible jokes, he offers a welcome burst of energy. As always with this label’s releases, the booklet accompanying the CD is extensive and terrific. — D.W.

Original Broadway Cast, 1983 (RCA) (4 / 5) Harvey Fierstein’s book for this musical closely follows Jean Poiret’s stage farce, the film version of which became a huge hit, about the chaos unleashed when the son of a St. Tropez gay couple, one of whom is a drag nightclub star, becomes engaged to the daughter of a conservative politician. But this La Cage aux Folles is the only version — including the American film remake, The Birdcage — that portrays the two men, Georges and Albin, as deeply in love. Indeed, Jerry Herman’s touching “Song on the Sand” is still one of the few gay love ballads to come out of Broadway. Among the other choice items are Albin’s delightful paean to drag, “A Little More Mascara,” and the title song about the nightclub (“You go alone to have the evening of your life / You meet your mistress and your boyfriend and your wife!”) Additional highlights of the score are “Look Over There,” an angry defense of gay parenting, and “The Best of Times,” with its live-for-today philosophy. The first-act closer, “I Am What I Am,” is in a class by itself, and George Hearn’s savage rendition of it is one of the great Broadway performances of the decade. Gene Barry does sensitive work as Albin’s spouse. JimTyler’s brassy orchestrations add a touch of Jacques Brel to Herman’s melodies. This show sends Sondheim fans into a tizzy for having snatched away the Best Musical Tony Award from Sunday in the Park With George, but in my book, the Tony voters were right. — David Barbour