All posts by Michael Portantiere

Wish You Were Here

Wish-OBCOriginal Broadway Cast, 1952 (RCA) 3 out of 5 stars (3 / 5) Eddie Fisher’s mega-hit recording of the title tune helped turn this Catskills summer romance, based on Arthur Kober’s play Having Wonderful Time, from an almost certain flop into the biggest success of a slow season. But there’s much more to Harold Rome’s score for his first book show to reach Broadway than that repetitive rumba. The other ballads are uncommonly fine, from the intense “They Won’t Know Me” to the elegant melodic line of “Where Did the Night Go?” All of the above are lucky to be sung by Jack Cassidy; with his thrilling tenor and ardent delivery, he’s the best thing on the album. His leading lady, Patricia Marand, is technically proficient but a little stolid, and soubrette Sheila Bond hits some harsh, nasal notes, but Paul Valentine sings “Summer Afternoon” attractively. As befits a snappy musical of its period, Wish You Were Here has a steady stream of tangy comedy songs and a brassy set of Don Walker orchestrations, nicely matched by some excellent, uncredited vocal arrangements. Larry Blyden, Phyllis Newman, Florence Henderson, and Reid Shelton are in the chorus, though you probably won’t be able to pick out their voices. — Marc Miller

Wish-LondonOriginal London Cast, 1953 (Philips/Sepia) 4 out of 5 stars (4 / 5) London cast recordings of Broadway hits are often inferior to the originals, but this one bests its American cousin on several counts. The technical quality is superb, once you get past an echo-y overture that seems like it was lifted directly from the Broadway album. Cyril Ornadel’s musical direction is livelier than Jay Blackton’s. The musical program is almost the same, although “Goodbye, Love” is replaced by “Nothing Nicer Than People” to make the heroine more sympathetic. It’s fun to note the slight lyrical revisions that were made to suit West End audiences, such as changing “the BMT” to “the workmen’s train.” All of the Brit principals affect New York accents quite nicely, with Christopher Hewett outstanding as the unlikeliest wolf in the history of the Catskills. The rest of the London cast is inversely talented as compared to the New York company: Where Jack Cassidy was the vocal muscle of the original, his London counterpart, Bruce Trent, is uninteresting (and requires a downward modulation in “They Won’t Know Me”); but Shani Wallis is pert and more vocally secure than Sheila Bond as Fay, and Elizabeth Larner’s Teddy has the edge on Patricia Marand’s. They all sound like they’re having a whale of a summer. — M.M.

Wings

WingsOriginal Cast Members, 1995 (RCA) 3 out of 5 stars (3 / 5) Composer Jeffrey Lunden and lyricist-librettist Arthur Perlman deserve credit for tackling such difficult source material: Arthur Kopit’s acclaimed play Wings, about a former aviatrix and stunt pilot who’s recovering from a stroke. Their score for the musical is complex and multi-layered; if it doesn’t quite reach the skies, it doesn’t crash, either. Much of the music is exquisite, but the style of the score is more like a chamber opera. There’s very little in the way of “numbers,” some of the vocal lines are curious, and the lyrics often eschew rhyme. However, there is one song that’s likely to please those looking for an old-fashioned melody: “A Recipe for Cheesecake,” here sung by Russ Thacker, the only performer on the album who wasn’t in the stage production. It’s as close to a “show tune” as Wings gets. The strange noises you’ll hear at several points during the recording are part of a complex melding of sound design (Richard Woodbury) and orchestration (Lunden), designed to simulate the scary world inside the head of the central character, played by Linda Stephens. Recorded several years after Wings premiered at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and then moved to New York’s Public Theater, this one-disc album contains nearly the entire show, dialogue and all. It was superbly produced by Thomas Z. Shepard; listen through headphones for the full effect. — Seth Christenfeld

Windy City

Windy-CityOriginal London Cast, 1982 (EMI/Ange1) 3 out of 5 stars (3 / 5) Much of Tony Macaulay’s music is too pop-rocky for an adaptation of the classic 1920s Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur comedy The Front Page, but Macaulay and the gifted lyricist Dick Vosburgh created many songs for Windy City that are terrific in their own right, so the show scores on this recording in a way that it never did onstage. The story of ace newspaper reporter Hildy Johnson (played by Dennis Waterman) wanting to abandon his boss Walter Burns (played by Anton Rodgers) for marriage and a different career is outfitted by Macaulay and Vosburgh with several intoxicating numbers (“Hey, Hallelujah,” “I Can Just Imagine It,” and the title song), some lovely ballads (“Wait Till I Get You on Your Own,” “Long Night Again Tonight”), and only a couple of clunkers (“Waltz for Mollie,” “Bensinger’s Poem”). When the chorines sing “Saturday,” which does sound like a 1920s tune, it reminds us how out-of-period the other songs are. Still, “Water Under the Bridge” is a terrific 11-o’clock number and would be a great audition song for strong leading men. — Peter Filichia

The Will Rogers Follies

Will-RogersOriginal Broadway Cast, 1991 (Sony) 3 out of 5 stars (3 / 5) Chameleonic composer Cy Coleman and stalwart Broadway lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green wrote the songs for The Will Rogers Follies, a fanciful musical biography of the populist humorist as might have been concocted by Florenz Ziegfeld, in whose revues Rogers made numerous appearances. Coleman combines country twang and Broadway know-how in his music (evocatively orchestrated by Bill Byers), and the Camden-Green lyrics are bright and clever. If the score isn’t of first-tier quality, it’s better than just utilitarian; but it’s hard to tell that from the cast recording, a rather lackluster audio presentation of a show that burst with life under Tommy Tune’s direction. The cast certainly isn’t to blame: Keith Carradine is ingratiating as Rogers, Dee Hoty’s velvet voice brings Will’s wife Berry to warm-hearted life, and future Tony Awards winners Dick Latessa and Cady Huffman find great charm and humor in their supporting roles. But the score, separated from the energy of Tune’s direction/choreography and Peter Stone’s book, is less than wholly effective on its own. The dynamic production numbers “Will-a-Mania” and “Our Favorite Son” suffer the most, but even the major solo turns — Carradine’s “I Never Met a Man I Didn’t Like” and Hoty’s show-stopping “No Man Left for Me” — are somewhat disappointing here. Still, the music’s attractiveness and the performers’ abundant talents save the day, making a weak representation of the show still well worth a listen or three. — Matthew Murray

Silk Stockings

Silk-Stockings-OBCOriginal Broadway Cast, 1955 (RCA) 4 out of 5 stars (4 / 5) Cole Porter’s last Broadway show is a charming and sophisticated musical based on the Greta Garbo film Ninotcka. Only Porter could have given that heady cinematic masterpiece the urbane and romantic musical touch that it deserved. Set against an enticing Parisian background that inspired one of the great composer-lyricist’s most sensual love songs, “All of You,” Silk Stockings has a score that also includes the melodic and witty “Paris Loves Lovers,” the smoldering title song, the comedic “Stereophonic Sound” and “It’s a Chemical Reaction, That’s All,” the swinging “Satin and Silk,” and the jazzy “Red Blues.” A strong cast is headed by Hildegarde Neff as Ninotchka, a dour Russian official visiting Paris, and Don Ameche as a slick American talent agent. Gretchen Wyler is a particular delight in a supporting role, displaying plenty of spunk when belting out hilarious Porter lyrics in “Stereophonic Sound.” (Sample: “If Zanuck’s latest picture were the good, old fashioned kind / There’d be no one in front to look at Marilyn’s behind…”) This recording has lots of sensational lyrics that were considered too risqué for the film version of Silk Stockings, yet it’s not perfect; the production numbers sound a bit frenetic, and even the overture is rushed. — Gerard Alessandrini

Silk-Stockings-movie copyFilm Soundtrack, 1957 (MGM/Rhino-Turner) 4 out of 5 stars (4 / 5) The treatment of Porter’s score by André Previn and the MGM orchestra is flawless, with musical arrangements and orchestrations far more dazzling than the Broadway originals. Fred Astaire was perfectly cast in Silk Stockings as the male lead, but Cyd Charisse was less well suited to the role of Ninotchka — a moot point when it comes to the soundtrack album, since Charisse’s singing was dubbed by Carol Richards. Janis Paige, Jules Munshin, and Peter Lorre (!) in his only musical are all great fun. Although the movie itself isn’t considered a top MGM musical, the soundtrack is definitely a winner. Previn’s conducting of “The Red Blues” and “Stereophonic Sound” is exciting, the lush orchestrations for Astaire’s vocal and dance in “All of You” are gorgeous, and added to the score are two songs that were written by Porter especially for Astaire; one of them, “Fated to Be Mated,” is a real treat. The only disappointment of this recording is the ridiculous censoring of some lyrics that were considered too explicit for movie audiences of the day. How amazing that an American film released in 1957 couldn’t contain the lines, “If Ava Gardner played Godiva riding on a mare / The people wouldn’t pay a cent to see her in the bare…” — G.A.

Side Show

Side-ShowOriginal Broadway Cast, 1997 (Sony) 2 out of 5 stars (2 / 5) Based on the lives of Daisy and Violet Hilton, twins who were born joined at the hip and who had minor show business careers that exploited their oddity, Side Show was one of the most overwrought musicals of its era. On Broadway, the exciting staging by Robert Longbottom distracted from all the heavy emoting; here, you have to deal head-on with the exhausting score by Henry Krieger (music) and Bill Russell (lyrics).  The book, by Russell, follows the sisters as they fall in love with a pair of promoters, achieve mainstream celebrity, then realize that they will never find happiness in marriage. It’s a touching story undermined by hysterical dramatics and weepy ballads that harp on the loneliness of carnival freaks. Krieger’s score is melodic, but every number is pitched at finale level, and Russell’s lyrics consistently skirt the ridiculous. The acid test is the number “Tunnel of Love,” in which the twins take a spin on the anonymous amusement park ride along with their boyfriends, hopeful of having sex in the dark. Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner are excellent as Violet and Daisy, screaming their heads off as the score demands. Jeff McCarthy and Hugh Panaro are okay as their men, Norm Lewis offers powerful vocals as a factotum who loves Violet, and Ken Jennings strikes sinister notes as the creepy sideshow boss. — David Barbour

Broadway Cast, 2014 (Broadway Records) 2 out of 5 stars (2 / 5) This revisal of Side Show offered a substantial revision of the score, with frequently superb music by Henry Krieger and frequently awkward lyrics by Bill Russell. Despite the all-around sharp performances, the revisions largely take this daring, troubled show in the wrong direction. While the original version and its cast album embrace just enough over-the-top poperetta campiness to make the premise palatable, the revisal’s grim seriousness leaves much of the new material sounding silly rather than self-aware. This is most painfully rendered in an extended flashback sequence during which doctors attempt to sever the sisters from each other and Houdini teaches them mindfulness. As Daisy and Violet, Emily Padgett and Erin Davie are worthy successors to Emily Skinner and Alice Ripley, with an even eerier vocal blend when they sing in unison, although they smooth out the ’90s pop edges that the original pair brought to these songs. David St. Louis sings with compelling warmth as Jake, but Ryan Silverman doesn’t quite match the tortured baritenor climaxes of Jeff McCarthy’s original performance as the slick Terry. Harold Wheeler’s sublime orchestrations — the original cast album’s strongest suit — sound more muted here in somewhat reduced form, and the replacement of three bad-taste vaudeville pastiche numbers with three interchangeable numbers feels like cosmetic surgery on a show whose central problem is bone-deep. — Dan Rubins

Side by Side by Sondheim

SondheimOriginal London/Broadway Cast, 1976 (RCA) 2 out of 5 stars (2 / 5) When Side by Side by Sondheim opened in London, it was warmly received, as half of Sondheim’s shows had not yet been seen in the West End. In New York, where the material was much more familiar, the show still had a healthy Broadway run with the transplanted London company. The cast album reminds us how very fine these songs are; each included number from Sondheim’s pre-1977 shows, from West Side Story (music by Leonard Bernstein) to Pacific Overtures, is an extraordinary piece of work. Yet, with all of the Sondheim cast albums available, there’s little reason to revisit this one. Why, for instance, opt to hear Julia McKenzie and two pianists perform “Losing My Mind” when we can hear Dorothy Collins and the gorgeous Jonathan Tunick orchestrations on the original Broadway cast recording? Millicent Martin has her moments here, particularly in “I Never Do Anything Twice” from the film The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, but her renditions of other songs simply can’t compare with recordings of the original performances. David Kernan, who conceived the show, is the third and least interesting member of the cast. — David Wolf

Show Girl

Show-GirlOriginal Broadway Cast, 1961 (Roulette/no CD) 3 out of 5 stars (3 / 5) Carol Channing spent many years between Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Hello, Dolly! touring in a successful nightclub act that was gussied up for Broadway as Show Girl.  Critics and audiences were cool to having a legit stage used for what they saw as an illegit show — little did they know what was to come! — so it didn’t stay around long, but the album is charming. The music, lyrics, and sketches by Charles Gaynor draw some material from the star’s breakthrough 1948 Broadway show Lend an Ear, created by Gaynor. Channing was joined onstage in Show Girl by comedian Jules Munshin, but their sketches didn’t make it to the recording; Munshin is only heard sharing two sly songs, “My Kind of Love” with Channing and “The Girl Who Lived in Montparnasse” with Les Quat’ Jeudis, a French quartet. The rest is all Channing, and she’s wonderful, whether singing the faux Rodgers and Hammerstein number “This Is a Darn Fine Funeral” or enacting the tragic tale of silent film star Cecilia Sisson, whose career was doomed by a hilarious speech defect when the talkies arrived. Channing fans should be aware that Show Girl also exists on video, having been taped for TV way back when. — David Wolf

The Wild Party (Lippa)

Wild-Party-LippaOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 2000 (RCA) 4 out of 5 stars (4 / 5) This was the first of the entries in the 2000 competition between two stage musical adaptations of Joseph Moncure March’s epic poem. Although Andrew Lippa is a talented musical dramatist, his lyrics aren’t always perfect here (he employs a lot of metaphors that don’t make any sense), and the pop-rock influence in his music is rarely accurate to the period. Still, the overall effect of the Manhattan Theatre Club production was dazzling. Unfortunately, the cast album doesn’t fully indicate how brilliant the piece was onstage. For one thing, the nearly through-sung score was chopped down to 73 minutes of “highlights,” leaving out a great deal of interesting material. Also, the album was made shortly after the show closed, when its astounding leading lady, the previously unknown Julia Murney, wasn’t in her best voice. Murney still belts the score to high heaven, but not quite as high as she did in the theater. The other excellent leads are Brian d’Arcy James, Idina Menzel, and Taye Diggs, and there are terrific supporting performances by Alix Korey (who delivers the hilarious “Old-Fashioned Love Story”), Raymond Jaramillo McLeod, and Jennifer Cody. Even with the above caveats, this recording is still a fantastic listen; among the highlights are “Raise the Roof,” “A Wild, Wild Party,” “Queenie Was a Blonde,” “Poor Child,” and “Make Me Happy.” — Seth Christenfeld

The Wild Party (LaChiusa)

Wild-Party-LaChiusaOriginal Broadway Cast, 2000 (Decca) 5 out of 5 stars (5 / 5) Composer-lyricist Michael John LaChiusa was not unknown when The Wild Party, his adaptation of Joseph Moncure March’s 1928 poem of the same title, hit Broadway in 2000; but he truly laid his claim as a major force in the musical theater with this work, among the most dazzling of the “postmodern” school.  The cast album is dynamic, a thrilling document of one of the most stirring theater scores of the late 20th century. LaChiusa’s songs are heavily steeped in period jazz and vaudeville styles (aided by Todd Ellison’s flawless musical direction and Bruce Coughlin’s searing orchestrations) while still sounding thoroughly modern and fresh. Beginning with a startlingly dissonant horn blast, the delights of the recording don’t stop. Consider the raunchy “Queenie Was a Blonde,” the rip-roaring “Uptown Downtown,” the torchy “Lowdown-Down,” the bathtub-gin-infused “Wild,” the bluesy “Black Is a Moocher,” the lost-in-life lovers’ duet “People Like Us,” and the 11-o’clock showstopper “When It Ends.” That last number is delivered titanically by the legendary Eartha Kitt, but the whole cast is excellent. Leading the way are Toni Collette, sounding like a veteran in her Broadway debut as the bleached-blonde chorine Queenie, and Mandy Patinkin as her manic and violent lover, Burrs. They receive top-notch support from Marc Kudisch, Tonya Pinkins, Norm Lewis, Brooke Sunny Moriber, Yancey Arias, and other distinctive performers. Although this is not a complete document of the score, there’s a lot packed into the recording’s 78 minutes. — Matthew Murray

Wildcat

WildcatOriginal Broadway Cast, 1961 (RCA) 2 out of 5 stars (2 / 5) Why did the star of Wildcat choose to make her Broadway debut in a show with requirements so far afield from her abilities? Lucille Ball had looks and charisma and great comic timing, but this was a musical, and its leading lady couldn’t sing; all those I Love Lucy jokes about her tin-eared vocalizing were not exaggerations. The show itself is all right, sort of a female Music Man of the oil fields with a synthetic book by N. Richard Nash and a bouncy score by composer Cy Coleman and lyricist Carolyn Leigh. “Hey, Look Me Over” was the hit of the score, but “What Takes My Fancy” and some of the other tunes are also nice. The whole company sounds energetic on the disc, and the male lead, Keith Andes, handles his music very well. Although the recording can’t convey the inventiveness of Michael Kidd’s choreography, it does hint at the gusto with which Ball threw herself into her song-and-dance numbers. Wildcat would have run longer on Ball’s name alone had she not become exhausted with the grind of eight performances a week, but the show is not compelling enough to have ever entered the arena of perennial showcase musicals. — Richard Barrios

Wicked

Wicked copyOriginal Broadway Cast, 2003 (Decca) 4 out of 5 stars (4 / 5) Don’t go to this recording for a perfectly accurate representation of what’s heard in the theater; the songs were somewhat edited for the cast album to remove any hint of the twisty plot of Wicked, a musical based on Gregory Maguire’s novel, which purports to tell the true story of the “good” and “bad” witches immortalized in L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. Still, this is one of Stephen Schwartz’s best scores — an unpopular opinion, admittedly! — and the excellent album boasts more than an hour of knockout songs, terrific high belting courtesy of stars Idina Menzel (Elphaba) and Kristin Chenoweth (Galinda/Glinda), and a fantastic-sounding orchestra conducted by Stephen Oremus. Listen particularly to Menzel’s astounding performances of “The Wizard and I,” “I’m Not That Girl,” “No Good Deed,” “Defying Gravity,” and her two gorgeous duets, “As Long as You’re Mine” (with Norbert Leo Butz as Fiyero) and “For Good” (with Chenoweth). Also pay special attention to William David Brohn’s great orchestrations in a pop-rock idiom that’s unusual for him. Unfortunately, very little of Winnie Holtzman’s adept libretto is included on the disc; the absence of dialogue leaves the estimable supporting performers Carole Shelley, Joel Grey, Christopher Fitzgerald, and Michelle Federer in the lurch. — Seth Christenfeld

Motion Picture Soundtrack, 2024 (Universal Studios and Republic Records) 3.5 out of 5 stars (3.5 / 5) With its extraordinary level of hype and an unprecedented two-part release, the motion picture adaptation of Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s Wicked had a lot to live up to. But fans of the stage musical can breathe a sigh of relief: Wicked Part One is two hours and 40 minutes of nonstop entertainment. Much of its charm comes from its plethora of visual effects, so in that sense, this version is better seen than heard. However, credit where credit is due: The casting of Tony Award winner Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba ensured that the character’s songs would really get the chance to fly. As heard in the movie and on the soundtrack album, Erivo’s “Defying Gravity” knocked this reviewer’s socks off, and her rendition of “I’m Not That Girl” is softly thrilling. Part One of Wicked remains faithful to the stage musical by including the entire score heard in the show’s first act, including a few songs that might have been skipped, such as “A Sentimental Man” and “Something Bad.” The latter is, in fact, quite effective in a deeply felt performance by Peter Dinklage as Doctor Dillamond. If Jeff Goldblum as The Wizard and Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible aren’t quite up to their tasks vocally, their performances do not significantly hinder the listening experience. While Erivo’s Elphaba is staggeringly original, casting aside the inevitable ghost of Idina Menzel (who makes a charming cameo appearance here), Ariana Grande as Glinda finds the perfect balance between echoes of Kristin Chenoweth (also given a cameo in the film and on the album) and her own unique charm and humor; one can only hope that this performance is the first of many starring roles in musicals for her. Jonathan Bailey, who began his career as a West End musical theater actor, is smooth as butter in “Dancing Through Life,” even if the song’s extended instrumental sequences only really make sense with the movie’s visuals. This album does suffer from some of the aural artificiality heard in many soundtracks, but the orchestrations are lush, notably in the “Ozdust Duet.” While the recording lacks some of the raw power present on the original Broadway cast album, it’s an excellent representation of the score and a consistently delightful listen. — Charles Kirsch

Whoop-Up

Whoop-UpOriginal Broadway Cast, 1958 (MGM/Polydor) 2 out of 5 stars (2 / 5) With music by Moose Charlap and lyrics by Norman Gimbel, Whoop-Up was a quick failure set in a Montana bar (“where you don’t have to wear a tie to tie one on,” goes one of the forced lyrics). You’ll shake your head in amazement at such songs as “Nobody Throw That Bull,” “‘Caress Me, Possess Me’ Perfume,” “The Best of What This Country’s Got (Was Taken From the Indians),” “I Wash My Hands,” and “Montana,” which will never become that state’s official song. Susan Johnson has the strangest piece of material: “Men,” in which she speak-sings nearly three minutes’ worth of complaints about the male gender as a Dixieland melody plays underneath. The love songs, including the saccharine “Never Before,” are no better. Particularly bizarre is “Love Eyes,” sung by Ralph Young. (Sample lyric: “Your lipstick’s wet and waitin’ for my smear.”) That there were cover versions of some of these songs would be hard to believe if the  CD reissue hadn’t included quite a few of them. Jazz pianist Dick Hyman’s two cuts are bewitching; they prove that composer Charlap did come up with some fetching melodies for this score. — Peter Filichia

A White House Cantata (1600 Pennsylvania Avenue)

White-HouseStudio Cast, 1998 (Deutsche Grammophon) 1 out of 5 stars (1 / 5) The recording of a previously unrecorded musical theater score is usually a cause for celebration, but A White House Cantata is a maddening misfire. The 1976 Broadway flop 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue deserves better than this, not least because its score was written by luminaries Leonard Bernstein and Alan Jay Lerner. Many of their compositions for the show, which concerns race relations in 19th-century America, are of epic sweep, but in this cantata drawn from the score of the musical, they’re hurt by the style of presentation. From a purely vocal standpoint, the cast is fine: Thomas Hampson and June Anderson sumptuously sing the music of all of the presidents and first ladies, while Barbara Hendricks and Kenneth Tarver are more than capable as their black servants. But the renditions of most of the songs are overwrought and lacking in character and color; this is especially evident in “Duet for One,” in which two first ladies duke it out in song. The choral numbers are rich and full, the orchestra (conducted by Kent Nagano) is beyond reproach, and a good amount of material that was lost during the show’s tumultuous preview period has been restored. A White House Cantata is not a total loss, but the lack of theatrical verve makes this recording a poor representation of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as a theater piece. — Matthew Murray

Whistle Down the Wind

Whistle-Songs-FromStudio Cast, 1998 (Polydor) 2 out of 5 stars (2 / 5) Labeled Songs from Whistle Down the Wind, this collection of 12 numbers performed by a lineup of pop stars is easier to take than the subsequent London stage cast recording of this Andrew Lloyd Webber score. Divorced from the show’s ludicrous story line (detailed below) and arranged as the disposable pop artifacts they really are, the songs actually provide some enjoyment. Tom Jones, aided by Sounds of Blackness, offers a soulful “Vaults of Heaven.” The boy band Boyzone does right by the repetitive “No Matter What,” and Donny Osmond proves to be the ideal interpreter of “When Children Rule the World.” Also on hand are Elaine Paige, Meat Loaf, Boy George, Bonnie Tyler, and Michael Ball. It’s a relatively painless way to enjoy the modest pleasures of a misbegotten show. — David Barbour

Whistle-OLCOriginal London Cast, 1999 (Really Useful Records) 1 out of 5 stars (1 / 5) This egregious Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, based on a novel by Mary Hayley Bell and a subsequent screenplay by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, is about a group of poor children in rural England who mistake an escaped murderer for Jesus Christ. Told with restraint, it could have been a moving tale. Unfortunately, a committee of librettists — Patricia Knopf, director Gale Edwards, and Lloyd Webber himself — made the disastrous decision to reset the action in the American South during the 1950s. The show begins with one of the composer’s finest songs, the gospel tune “Vaults of Heaven,” but the score quickly turns into an unpalatable mixture of sticky sentiment and violent melodrama. Catchy tunes are often laughably unsuited to the onstage action, and matters aren’t helped by Jim Steinman’s clunky lyrics. The songwriters’ try-anything approach includes a pair of faux Brecht-Weill items, “Annie Christmas” and “Charlie Christmas,” plus the unbearably cute “When Children Rule the World” and the ridiculous “A Kiss Is a Terrible Thing to Waste.” The nadir is “Tire Tracks and Broken Hearts,” which recycles the melody of “English Girls” from Lloyd Webber’s Song & Dance. As the simple young waif Swallow and the escaped convict whom she believes is her Savior, Dottie Mayor and Marcus Lovett provide plenty of vocal emoting, but the songs are further sabotaged by the vulgar orchestrations of David Cullen and the composer. — D.B.

Where’s Charley?

Wheres-CharleyOriginal London Cast, 1958 (Columbia/Angel) 4 out of 5 stars (4 / 5) Based on Charley’s Aunt, the reliable old farce by Brandon Thomas, Where’s Charley? was a big hit on Broadway in 1948 with Ray Bolger in the lead. But the show didn’t yield an original cast album, apparently due to a musicians’ strike; nor has there ever been a commercially released soundtrack album drawn from the obscure 1952 film version, in which Bolger recreated his stage role of Charley Wykeham. Fortunately, the 1958 London production yielded a good recording of the delightful score by composer-lyricist Frank Loesser. British stage and film comedian Norman Wisdom may not have had quite the same type of high-wattage comic energy that Bolger possessed, but he was much better suited to the part of Charley in terms of accent and singing ability, and his performance here is ingratiating. The supporting cast is generally fine: Pip Hinton is adorable as Amy Spettigue, while Pamela Gale and Marion Grimaldi sing beautifully as (respectively) Kitty Verdun and Donna Lucia d’Alvadorez. Felix Felton is very funny as Mr. Spettigue, who has no idea that Charley’s aunt — the woman he’s wooing for her money — is actually Charley in drag. The one inadequate performance on the album comes from Terence Cooper, who exhibits an unattractive, throaty singing voice as Jack Chesney. “Once in Love With Amy” is the show’s big hit, but the score is chockablock with skillfully crafted charm songs and comedy numbers (“Better Get Out of Here,” “The Woman in His Room”) and beautiful love ballads (“My Darling, My Darling,” “Lovelier Than Ever,” “At the Red Rose Cotillion”). Disappointingly, only a fragment of the title song is included on this recording; a lengthy ensemble number as written, it’s here reduced to one brief chorus introduced by Wisdom’s quotation of the show’s most famous line of dialogue: “I am Charley’s aunt from Brazil — where the nuts come from!” The album would be essential if only because it’s the sole recording of a fine Loesser score, so it’s good news that the performance is so praiseworthy overall, and that the early stereo sound is excellent. — Michael Portantiere

When Pigs Fly (aka Howard Crabtree’s When Pigs Fly)

When-Pigs-FlyOriginal Off-Broadway Cast, 1997 (RCA) 2 out of 5 stars (2 / 5) The second of two revues that showcased the talents of outré costume designer Howard Crabtree was an evening of bright, largely gay humor. Though several of the songs by composer Dick Gallagher and lyricist-librettist Mark Waldrop are fun, the show’s real strength was visual, matching sketches to outrageously elaborate costume designs. A number called “Light in the Loafers” loses something when you don’t see dancers wearing electrified shoes; so does “Not All Man,” which was delivered onstage by David Pevsner done up as a centaur. A sketch featuring Stanley Bojarski as Carol Ann Knippel, the doyenne of a Midwest community theater, doesn’t slay on the recording the way it did live. Still, there are pleasures to be found here — many of them courtesy of Jay Rogers, who delivers a series of torch songs aimed at the right-wing ideologues Newt Gingrich, Strom Thurmond, and Rush Limbaugh. Rogers also gets the show’s best number: the touching, ruminative “Laughing Matters,” which only gains in poignancy when one knows that Crabtree died of AIDS shortly after this show opened. — David Barbour

What Makes Sammy Run?

What-Makes-Sammy-RunOriginal Broadway Cast, 1964 (Columbia/GL Music) 1 out of 5 stars (1 / 5) Longtime theatergoers will recall that, for a brief time decades ago, Steve Lawrence was touted as the next great Broadway leading man. Exhibit A is this now-forgotten hit (540 performances), adapted by Budd Schulberg and his brother Stuart from the former’s scalding novel about Hollywood climbers. Lawrence is Sammy Glick, who rises from the position of copy boy for a New York newspaper to top Hollywood producer in record time, by any means needed. Sally Ann Howes plays a buttoned-up screenwriter with a yen for hustlers; she’s loved from afar by Robert Alda in the role of a fellow screenwriter and student of Glick. All three are fine, but they’re let down by composer-lyricist Ervin Drake’s score, which strains for ring-a-ding sophistication and doesn’t achieve it. Every number sounds like the opener of a Vegas floor show. Lawrence and Howes do well in “A Room Without Windows,” and Lawrence teams effectively with Bernice Massi, as a studio exec’s predatory daughter, in the appropriately titled “You’re No Good.” Don Walker’s generic orchestrations are no help; neither is the CD edition of the recording, released in mono by Lawrence. It was mediocre shows like this, with their derivative melodies and almost-clever lyrics, that helped bring down the curtain on Broadway’s golden age. — David Barbour

What About Luv?

Luv-editStudio Cast, 1990 (JAY) No stars; not recommended. The only reason to musicalize a play is to add something to it, to enrich the original material. But again and again in this show based on Murray Schisgal’s unique, distinctive, and uproarious 1964 comedy Luv, moments from the play are flattened out by what can only be called by-the-numbers musical theater writing. For instance, one famous scene in the play has two men comparing their miserable childhoods, each trying to prove that he had a tougher upbringing; simply putting the scene into song form robs it of most of its surprise, and about half of the original material is missing entirely. In another scene in Luv, the wife of one of the men comes on with a graph illustrating their lack of a sex life, and the no-nonsense tone of her speech is immensely funny; but composer Howard Marren and lyricist Susan Birkenhead have set the sequence as a jazz waltz, which is not only emotionally inappropriate but also makes it very difficult to understand the words. The plot point is covered, but it’s not the least bit funny anymore. Throughout, the thoroughly conventional songs sentimentalize the characters in a complete betrayal of the loopy original material. The cast of this recording includes Judy Kaye (who starred in the original Off-Broadway production) along with her husband David Green and the unrelated Simon Green. — David Wolf

Simply Heavenly

shOriginal Broadway Cast, 1958 (Columbia/Masterworks Broadway) 3 out of 5 stars (3 / 5) Strong reviews kept Simply Heavenly on the boards for about four months in all. The show opened Off-Broadway, later moved to Broadway for a while, then went back to Off-Broadway in a different venue and finished its run there. Sometime in the middle of all that, this album was recorded. The show was also telecast by WNET-Channel 13 for five consecutive evenings in 1959 as part of the station’s “Play of the Week” series. Langston Hughes fashioned the book and lyrics from “Simple Takes a Wife” and other stories he wrote about the life of the character Jess Simple in Harlem of the 1950s. The evocative music is by David Martin, and the jazzy arrangements make good use of electric guitars and throbbing trumpets. Melvin Stewart, who plays Simple, is not the greatest singer, but he’s effective in his three monologues included on the recording. Vocal honors go to Claudia McNeil, who sashays through her 11-o’clock number, “I’m a Good Old Girl,” with humor and style. Partnered by John Bouie, McNeil also rips into “Did You Ever Hear the Blues?” and “When I’m in a Quiet Mood.” Other pleasures include the sweet title song, sung by Marilyn Berry; “Let Me Take You for a Ride,” an amusing duet for Simple and Anna English; and Brownie McGhee’s artful interpretation of “Broken Strings.” — Jeffrey Dunn