Original Broadway Cast, 1974 (Columbia /Sony) (3 / 5) Designed to do for the 1940s what Grease did for the 1950s, Over Here! is a supremely silly tale of romance and espionage on a cross-country train loaded with volunteers, war workers, and Nazi sympathizers. It was a vehicle for the two surviving Andrews Sisters, Patty and Maxene. The score, by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman, is a pastiche of the period’s hit parade; you’ll hear echoes if not actual excerpts of”Take the ‘A’ Train,” “The Beer Barrel Polka,” and “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” among other songs. It’s all good fun, thanks to the Andrewses, a very strong supporting cast, and electrifying orchestrations by Michael Gibson and Jim Tyler that create an irresistible, big-band frenzy. The opening ballad, “Since You’re Not Around,” strikes the right note of agreeable nostalgia; then April Shawhan and John Driver score with “My Dream for Tomorrow.” The surprisingly tough-minded “Don’t Shoot the Hooey to Me, Louie,” delivered by Samuel E. Wright, touches on the period’s racism. Janie Sell amusingly spoofs Marlene Dietrich in “Wait for Me, Marlena,” and the young John Travolta is smooth as silk in “Dream Drummin’.” The Andrews gals are ebullient in such numbers as “The Big Beat,” “We Got It!” and the title tune. Most of their solos are also effective, but you’ll weep for Patty when she is forced to deliver the sex-hygiene number “The Good-Time Girl,” in which she urges soldiers to avoid “The VD Polka” (“The enemy can sock us / By spreading gonococcus”). Note that the incredible supporting cast of Over Here! included Ann Reinking, Treat Williams, and Marilu Henner, none of whom are heard on this recording in any recognizable way. — David Barbour

Original Broadway Cast, 1950 (Columbia/Sony) (4 / 5) For Out of This World, a modern-day retelling of the Amphitryon legend, Cole Porter produced a gorgeous score. Unfortunately, it was tied to an unwieldy book that worked too hard to substitute dirty jokes for real wit. Despite a lush production, direction by Agnes de Mille, and the Broadway return of the beloved musical comedian Charlotte Greenwood, the show managed only a four-month run. The songs are so great, and the premise so enticing, that there have been a few subsequent attempts to shore up that messy script. Still, the strength of this show lies in its songs. As Juno, Greenwood is wonderful; while the album can’t deliver her high kicks, it does preserve her ringingly funny way with a lyric. William Redfield is competent as Mercury, zipping with ease through the risqué “list” song “They Couldn’t Compare to You,” but the rest of the casting is uneven. George Jongeyans (later Gaynes) is a wobbly Jupiter. Priscilla Gillette’s voice has sufficient firmness for “Use Your Imagination,” but the vocal inadequacies of her vis-a-vis in the show, William Eyrhe, led to the deletion of the score’s best song: “From This Moment On.” In short, this was one unlucky show, but Porter at his near-best is more than ample compensation for the cast album’s disappointments. — Richard Barrios

Encores! Concert Cast, 1995 (DRG) (4 / 5) Out of This World was obvious fodder for a big-league concert performance that could spotlight the songs and stars and elide the worst parts of the script. So it was that the New York City Center Encores! series tackled Cole Porter’s problematic Greco-Roman extravaganza in 1995. The recording that resulted doesn’t always compare favorably with the original Broadway album, but some aspects of it are clearly better and, overall, it’s sheer bliss. Happily, the star at its center is up to her assignment: Andrea Martin is just terrific, especially in her rendition of “I Sleep Easier Now.” For the most part, Ken Page is strong if a dash overbearing as Jupiter; the character should be loud, but there’s always room for shading, isn’t there? In other roles, Marin Mazzie and La Chanze are outstanding, both singing with beauty and spirit. “From This Moment On” is back, and Mazzie and Gregg Edelman do a very good job with it. Peter Scolari is fine as Mercury, Ernie Sabella is a scrappily funny gangster, and Rob Fisher’s Coffee Club Orchestra plays with its customary class. — R.B.

Studio Cast, 1996 (Original Cast Records) (3 / 5) A Richard Rodgers Award-winner and a minor Off-Broadway hit, this chamber musical by Robert Lindsey-Nassif (or Robert Nassif Lindsey, depending on his preference at any given point in his career) was adapted from the diaries of a French orphan who lived in an Oregon lumber camp circa 1904. It’s a grim tale with a shipwreck, a forest fire, a nasty stepmother with a sad secret, a tragic blind girl, and a Bible-spouting old mystic lady, among other bizarre characters. The lyrics seldom rise above the functional, and the appealing melodies are undercut here by an annoying, synth-heavy orchestration. But what makes the score distinctive is its exploration of the macabre, as little Opal puzzles out the mysteries of death in song. Eliza Clark is refreshingly unaffected in the title role, and she has some formidable musical theater talent behind her: Marni Nixon as the mystic, Rachel York as the blind girl, and Emily Skinner in a small part. The composer-lyricist himself does very well as a lovesick lumberjack in the ballad “Sears and Roebuck Wedding Band.” There are a few dreary numbers, especially those in which the Sunday sermonizing gets heavy. Still, this score has personality — and it should be said that the 1990s brought forth few ensemble numbers as spirited and life affirming as “Everybody’s Looking for Love.” — Marc Miller

Studio Cast, 1952 (Columbia/Sony) (3 / 5) One of musical director/conductor Lehman Engel’s sturdier studio-cast efforts, this rendering of the 1936 hit by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart tries harder than most in the series to sound like a cast album of a stage production. The orchestrations hew closely to Hans Spialek’s originals; Engel even throws in a convincing entr’acte, and his conducting brings out all the urban excitement of the “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” ballet. Jack Cassidy’s tenor brings sensuousness to “There’s a Small Hotel” and “It’s Got to Be Love.” Portia Nelson is equally effective with “Glad to Be Unhappy,” and Laurel Shelby, a wonderfully dry musical comedian, chews her consonants stylishly in “The Heart Is Quicker Than the Eye” and “Too Good for the Average Man.” The song order is quite inaccurate, some numbers are assigned to the wrong characters, and the album is capped by one of Engel’s annoying greatest-hits finales. Still, it has plenty of theatrical personality — and, of course, the score is evergreen. — Marc Miller

Broadway Cast, 1954 (Decca/Decca Broadway) (2 / 5) The 1954 Broadway revival of On Your Toes starred premiere danseuse Vera Zorina, who had starred in the 1937 London production and the 1939 movie version. But she’s not heard on the cast album — because her character, Vera Barnova, does no singing. Nor is this recording at all faithful to the tone of the show as originally conceived and written; Don Walker’s arrangements, adept enough in their brassy way, don’t feel right for this comparatively gentle and witty score. Light-on-his-feet leading man Bobby Van is also light of voice, and his love interest, Kay Coulter, is a nonentity even in such can’t-miss material as “There’s a Small Hotel” and “Glad to Be Unhappy.” Joshua Shelley, normally a reliable Broadway pro, is almost unintelligible in “Too Good for the Average Man.” But this recording, long out of print and belatedly reissued on CD (with too much treble in the mix), does have its ace in the hole: Elaine Stritch, serving up an unforgettable performance of “You Took Advantage of Me.” It’s a rare instance of a Rodgers and Hart interpolation actually helping one of their scores. — M.M.

Broadway Cast, 1983 (Polydor/JAY) (4 / 5) Director George Abbott, at age 96, returned to Broadway with this impeccably produced revival and was rewarded with a long run and critical adoration. Hans Spialek, almost as old as Abbott, was on hand to restore his orchestrations; they’re as imaginative and distinctive in 1983 as in 1936, and John Mauceri conducts them like the authority he is. Ballerina Natalia Makarova danced gracefully in this show and also proved herself to be a knockout comedian, but you won’t find her on the cast album because (again) the character she played is not a singing role. However, you will find Christine Andreas as Frankie, offering a definitive “Glad to Be Unhappy.” She overpowers her leading man, Lara Teeter, a brilliant dancer but an uncertain singer. Nor does Dina Merrill, thin of voice and not naturally funny, quite measure up in “The Heart Is Quicker Than the Eye” or “Too Good for the Average Man” — but, luckily for her, she’s wonderfully partnered in “Average Man” by George S. Irving. Overall, this digital stereo recording is a fine preservation of a joyful production. The CD edition includes an extended “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,” the “Princess Zenobia” ballet, and a sensitive “Quiet Night” reprise by Irving. — M.M.

Original Broadway Cast, 1981 (Original Cast Records) (1 / 5) Although the subject was ripe and the characters were fascinating, Onward Victoria was a one-performance disaster that nonetheless yielded a cast album. The story, by librettists-lyricists Charlotte Anker and Irene Rosenberg, centers on the 19th-century feminist Victoria Woodhull and her adventures in New York with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Henry Ward Beecher, and other notables. The show’s stirring themes include religious hypocrisy and women’s rights, but the characters tend to sing about these issues in shallow polemics (“Revolution’s in the air like an impending storm”), and Keith Herrmann’s music, while generally constructed as a traditional musical theater score, is styled mostly as soft rock. Jill Eikenberry is a thin-voiced Victoria, and Michael Zaslow is treble-y as Beecher, but Lenny Wolpe has one good moment in “Unescorted Women.” By the time Victoria is defending the good reverend on the witness stand with the striptease-like “A Valentine for Beecher,” in which she sings about how “well-endowed” he is, credibility and good taste have gone out the window.  — Marc Miller

Original Broadway Cast, 1978 (Columbia/Sony) (4 / 5) Based on the stage farce Twentieth Century, best known as a Hollywood film starring John Barrymore and Carole Lombard, this 1930s spoof might have been written as a pastiche of that era’s musicals. Instead, composer Cy Coleman and librettists-lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green had the inspired idea of treating it as an operetta. That extravagant musical style works brilliantly for this story of dueling egos and theatrical temperaments. John Cullum sings heroically and hilariously as Oscar Jaffee, a bankrupt Broadway producer who is desperate to sign his ex-lover, Hollywood star Lily Garland (née Mildred Plotka), to appear in a bloated stage epic about Mary Magdalene. Almost all of the action takes place during a 16-hour train ride between Chicago and New York. Along for the ride are Kevin Kline, making an uproarious Broadway debut as Hollywood lounge lizard Bruce Granit, and Imogene Coca as the wealthy religious nut Letitia Primose, who offers to finance Oscar’s show with a rubber check. The show is fast, furious, and over the top, its hilarity arising from the tension between Coleman’s rich music and Comden and Green’s skeptical lyrics. Madeline Kahn, who left the show very soon after it opened, thus giving understudy Judy Kaye the break of a lifetime, shines in two riotous numbers: “Veronique” recalls Lily’s stage debut as a virtuous mademoiselle who says no to Bismarck and thereby launches the Franco-Prussian War, while in “Babbette,” Lily alternately imagines herself in the role of the Magdalene and as the star of a play about a Mayfair love triangle. Cullum hams it up gloriously in “I Rise Again” and “The Legacy.” Coca’s big solo, “Repent,” is riotous. Musical comedy is rarely this witty. — David Barbour

Broadway Cast, 2015 (PS Classics) (3 / 5) In many ways, this recording of the Roundabout Theatre Company’s hit revival lays bare the  good-news/bad-news aspects of modern cast albums. Thanks to the expanded capacities of CDs and, especially, streaming services, we get much more of the original properties. Additions here include a longer version of the title song; “Indian Maiden’s Lament,” a Sigmund Romberg/Rudolf Friml spoof that cues Lily’s first entrance; several versions of “I Have Written a Play,” a running gag in which various civilians storm Oscar’s stateroom, announcing their ambitions as dramatists; “Max Jacobs,” which introduces Oscar’s hated professional rival (and former office boy); and the entr’acte and finale ultimo. There’s also much dialogue, delivered with the same screwball spin the cast gave it onstage. Then again, as in virtually all contemporary Broadway revivals, the original orchestrations have been thinned out. There’s nothing essentially wrong about the work of Larry Hochman (with contributions by Bruce Coughlin and James Abbott), but Cy Coleman’s score for On the Twentieth Century employs a sweeping, grand-operetta sound to satirical effect, some of which is inevitably lost here. On the other hand, Kristin Chenoweth as Lily — a role so perfect it could have been written for her — may be said to outdo Madeline Kahn. She sings fabulously, and her version of gin-fueled, Mayfair-set dissipation in “Babette” is a panic. As Oscar, Peter Gallagher avoids Cullum’s John Barrymore imitation (how many in the audience today would get it?), and his vocals aren’t as powerful, but his performance crackles with a wit all its own. Sadly, his 11 o’clock number, “The Legacy,” has a new title (“Because of Her”) and new lyrics by Adolph Green’s daughter, Amanda. The original, a song in which Oscar lists his worldly possessions (“My set of Theodore Dreiser / A portrait of the Kaiser / And a ten-foot stack of unpaid bills”), is pure Comden and Green. The rewrite conscientiously follows the rules of good musical theater craft, making it clear that Oscar needs Lily in order to rekindle his Broadway success; the only problem is, it’s not any fun.  As Oscar’s harried associates, Mark Linn-Baker and Michal McGrath benefit the most from the added dialogue excerpts, preserving whole swaths of their wisecracking performances. Mary Louise Wilson’s Letitia Primrose is as delightfully cracked as Imogene Coca’s, but Andy Karl’s Bruce Granit, a performance that was defined mostly by physical comedy, doesn’t register as strongly.  — D.B.

Original Broadway Cast Members, 1944 (Decca/MCA) (2 / 5) Record companies treated Broadway musicals pretty poorly until the concept of the original cast album became firmly entrenched, so this collection is mainly of interest for its historical value. Rather than issuing an integral recording of the Leonard Bernstein-Betty Comden-Adolph Green musical On the Town, which was certainly a big hit, Decca produced 78rpms of Nancy Walker doing her solo “I Can Cook, Too” and performing the quartet “Ya Got Me” as another solo; Comden and Green in their duet “Carried Away”; the Lyn Murray Chorus in the show’s opening sequence (including “I Feel Like I’m Not Out of Bed Yet” and “New York, New York,” but with no dialogue); and Mary Martin crooning the two ballads that were sung in the show by John Battles as Gabey, “Lucky to Be Me” and “Lonely Town.” All of these recordings, plus an extended version of the opening sequence, are included on the 1991 MCA CD, along with selections from Fancy Free (the Jerome Robbins ballet that inspired On the Town) as performed by the Ballet Theatre Orchestra under the direction of composer Bernstein. — Jeffrey Dunn

Studio Recording With Original Cast Members, 1960 (Columbia/Sony) (5 / 5) In 1960, legendary cast-album producer Goddard Lieberson reassembled most of the original On the Town principals and brought them into a studio to record virtually the entire score with Leonard Bernstein conducting. Nancy Walker, Cris Alexander, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green were all present, and the excellent John Reardon joined them as Gabey. Two songs missing from the first LP release of this album, the female chorus number “Do Do Re Do” and Pitkin’s “I Understand,” sung by George Gaynes, were restored for the Sony CD. The performances are so fresh that the recording sounds as if it were made right after the show opened on Broadway; Bernstein’s conducting is sensational in all of the ballet music and in the wonderful songs, too. Walker and Alexander are perfect in “Come Up to My Place,” as are Comden and Green in “Carried Away,” while Reardon lends his warm, clear baritone to “Lonely Town” and “Lucky to Be Me.” The choral work is fine, and we are even treated to Bernstein himself doing some singing as Rajah Bimmy in “The Real Coney Island” Ballet. An indispensable recording. — J.D.

Original London Cast, 1963 (CBS/Masterworks Broadway) (2 / 5) The first London production of On the Town was based on a critically acclaimed but unsuccessful Off-Broadway production; the principals of that staging were imported for the occasion, but the London edition also failed to become a hit. An LP was released and quickly became a collectors’ item. The three male leads are much better than the rest of the cast: Don McKay is an excellent Gabey, Elliott Gould is a funny, underplayed Chip, and Terry Kiser is quite good as Ozzie. Less successful are Carol Arthur as Hildy and Gillian Lewis as Claire. The album includes the show’s rarely recorded overture, but almost all of the ballet music is abridged. Though the performance is well conducted by Lawrence Leonard, this recording is not a necessity.  — J.D.

London Concert Cast, 1992 (DG) (4 / 5) On the Town in concert, with an all-star cast from the worlds of Broadway and opera plus Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, sounds like a great idea-and, indeed, it was. The orchestra is magnificent and the live-performance energy of the cast is palpable. Tyne Daly is tops as the tough Hildy, especially in “I Can Cook, Too.” As Claire and Chip, Frederica von Stade and Kurt Ollman prove themselves to be opera singers who can successfully “cross over” to Broadway. When respectively paired with them in the comic duets “Carried Away” and “Come Up to My Place,” musical theater veterans David Garrison (who plays Ozzie) and Daly blend with ease; and when these four team up for the rueful “Some Other Time,” any barriers between Broadway and classical music are broken. Thomas Hampson uses his creamy baritone well in Gabey’s songs; Evelyn Lear is very fine as Mme. Dilly; and basso Samuel Ramey’s “I Understand” is impressive. Included are two previously cut songs: “Gabey’s Comin'” (“Pickup Song”) introduces tunes subsequently used as leitmotifs in the score, and its importance as a missing link is explained in the first-rate CD booklet notes written by Ethan Mordden. Cleo Laine sings the second restored song, “Ain’t Got No Tears left,” and Adolph Green makes a cameo appearance as Rajah Bimmy in “The Real Coney Island” ballet. As an appendix, we get yet another cut song, “The Intermission’s Great.” — J.D.

Studio Cast, 1996 (JAY, 2CDs) (3 / 5) This “First Complete Recording” of On the Town boasts a commitment to character truth that deeply engages the listener; the five singing principals are exactly right from a vocal standpoint, and they illuminate the material. As Gabey, Ethan Freeman is vulnerable in “Lonely Town” (the previously unrecorded chorale section of the song after the “Pas de Deux” is haunting), and his “Lucky to Be Me” is exuberant. Gregg Edelman and Kim Criswell deliver the goods in “Come Up to My Place,” and Criswell raises the roof with “I Can Cook, Too,” complete with encore. Tim Flavin and Judy Kaye, in the roles that Betty Comden and Adolph Green wrote for themselves to play in 1944, are solid in “Carried Away.” The two couples raise their voices joyously when cheering up Gabey in “Ya Got Me” and heartbreakingly when they prepare to part in the melancholic “Some Other Time.” The ballet music is complete and excitingly conducted by John Owen Edwards — as are the overture, the entr’acte, the exit music, the amusing nightclub sequence, and even the deleted “Gabey’s Comin’.” — J.D.

Broadway Cast, 2015 (PS Classics, 2CDs) (4 / 5)  Here’s a wonderful cast recording of an excellent, loving revival of On the Town that opened on Broadway in the fall of 2014 to mark the show’s 70th anniversary year. The score is presented note-complete with the peerless original orchestrations and in superb, state-of-the-art digital sound, with James Moore expertly conducting a gratifyingly full orchestra. Clyde Alves, Jay Armstrong Johnson, and Tony Yazbeck exude charm and burst with energy in the roles of Ozzie, Chip, and Gabey respectively; Yazbeck’s performance deserves an extra star for his truly gorgeous singing voice. (Alas, his equally gorgeous dancing in this production could not be preserved on an audio-only recording, nor could that of Megan Fairchild as Ivy Smith.)  Alysha Umphress as Hildy makes a meal of “I Can Cook, Too” and is a hilarious partner for Johnson in “Come Up to My Place.” Aside from some overacting in “Carried Away,” Elizabeth Stanley is a delightful Claire de Loon, and she sings beautifully and movingly in “Some Other Time,” as do the other leads. Michael Rupert is amusing as Pitkin, the “understanding” fellow whom Claire throws over when she meets Ozzie; Jackie Hoffman shows off her well-honed comic chops as Mme. Dilly in “Do Do Re Do”; and Phillip Boykin displays his sonorous bass-baritone as the Workman who opens the show with “I feel like I’m not out of bed yet” and as the Miss Turnstiles announcer, among other roles.    — Michael Portantiere

Original Broadway Cast, 1943 (Decca) (3 / 5) This incomplete recording of composer Kurt Weill’s One Touch of Venus paints a very deceptive picture of the score. While there are 17 songs in the score, only 10 are to be found here, sung by only two members of the original cast: Mary Martin and Kenny Baker. All of Martin’s material is included, but the songs that were sung in the show by Paula Laurence and John Boles are not. (Actually, Baker inherits one of Boles’ numbers, “Westwind.”) Since the show is, for the most part, a low comedy, the fact that seven of the comic songs are missing from the album means that this Venus misses by more than a touch. But Martin is charming, particularly in the score’s two best songs, ”I’m a Stranger Here Myself’ and “That’s Him,” and Baker’s tenor will appeal to many listeners. The show’s lyrics, by the talented light-versifier Ogden Nash, are witty and filled with amusing wordplay, even if not well integrated with the book by Nash and S.J. Perelman. The music for the two Agnes de Mille ballets, “Forty Minutes for Lunch” and the climactic “Venus in Ozone Heights,” is impressive; even edited as they are here, these pieces are quite stunning. Six songs from Martin’s next show, Lute Song, are heard as bonus tracks on Decca’s CD. — David Wolf

Studio Cast, 2014 (JAY) (4 / 5) It took John Yap years to release his complete studio cast recording of One Touch of Venus, but was it ever worth the wait! Lovers of the score will thrill not just to the full song stack, including incidental tunes (this could serve as a reference recording) but also three numbers cut prior to Broadway. Weill’s own orchestrations find their jazzy, snazzy shape thanks to the superb playing of the National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of John Owen Edwards and James Holmes. Maybe not every number is a classic (“Catch Hatch?”), but when you can enjoy Weill’s scintillating dance arrangements of the five ballets, which range in style and content from the comedic to the sensual to the tragic, who cares? Melissa Errico, repeating her 1996 Encores! triumph in the title role, is a major draw; her luscious, shimmering soprano lends an eternal longing and an erotic edge to classic numbers like “I’m a Stranger Here Myself,” “Lonely Heart,” “Speak Low,” and “That’s Him.” But almost everyone here is first-rate, including Brent Barrett as Venus’s milquetoast love interest, Judy Kaye and Lauren Worsham as his constantly sniping would-be in-laws, and Ron Raines as the bitter, art-collecting antagonist, Whitelaw Savory. (Broadway favorite Karen Ziemba even makes a wacky, if extremely brief, spoken cameo appearance.) The only major misstep: Victoria Clark sounds far too prissy, patrician, and out of sorts in the down-and-dirty role of Savory’s wise-cracking sidekick, Molly. But one flawed facet is forgivable, considering that the rest of the recording is a sparkling gem. — Matthew Muray