Original Broadway Cast, 1980 (Columbia/Sony) (2 / 5)  This Jim Dale vehicle has a book by Mark Bramble, music by Cy Coleman, and lyrics by Michael Stewart. A fictionalized biography of the showman P.T. Barnum, it’s really a series of production numbers looking for a musical. There is a sort-of plot about Barnum’s up-and-down marriage to the disapproving Charity (a young, chipper Glenn Close), but the real drawing cards were Joe Layton’s inventive staging, Dale’s inexhaustible energy, and the manically cheerful score. Coleman and Stewart’s work is thoroughly professional, especially the witty “There Is a Sucker Born Every Minute” and the catchy “Thank God I’m Old” (sung by Terri White as one of Barnum’s attractions, allegedly the oldest woman in the world). And just try to get the Act II opening march “Come Follow the Band” out of your head. But the score could use a dose of Ritalin; even the ballads are extroverted, and Hershy Kay’s orchestrations add to the forced cheerfulness. — David Barbour

London Cast, 1981 (Chrysalis/no CD) (1 / 5) Michael Crawford had one of his biggest pre-Phantom triumphs in the title role, but this recording of the London Barnum pales next to the Broadway original. Crawford’s performance was touted as having topped Jim Dale’s in terms of physical stunts — a video of this production was made, and is still available commercially — but on the cast album, his more relaxed interpretation lacks pizzazz. If he generally sings better than Dale, the energy of the role’s creator is much missed. Deborah Grant’s Charity is a colorless and vocally uninteresting presence; even Glenn Close naysayers are likely to prefer Close’s singing. The best work here comes from Jennie McGustle, whose zesty rendition of “Thank God I’m Old” is almost worthy of Terri White. As Jenny Lind, Sarah Payne sports an accent as thick as a slice of sacher torte, turning the first-act ballad “Love Makes Fools of Us All” into a mush of vowel sounds. Also missing are the brief musical “chases” between various sections of the show. There are hints of a different approach in a revised opening, which begins with a rather ghostly pipe organ, and a slightly different song order that places Tom Thumb’s solo, “Bigger Isn’t Better,” in the second act. The orchestrations sound altered a bit, with a country fiddle appearing prominently in “Museum Song” and “I Like Your Style.” But overall, next to the original, this disc is so much humbug. — D.B.

Studio Cast, 1950 (Columbia/Sony) (1 / 5) One of the great 1930s Broadway revues, The Band Wagon (1931) was graced with a terrific Arthur Schwartz-Howard Dietz score, including “Dancing in the Dark” and “I Love Louisa,” and a fine cast. It contained too good a collection of songs to pass away when something as temporal as a revue had closed. There was a mangled, sort-of-musical film version in 1949, titled Dancing in the Dark — and then, of course, the 1953 Fred Astaire-Cyd Charisse classic. (See below.) Coming between them, at the dawn of the LP era, was a recording by Mary Martin. This can in no way be termed a re-creation of the original score; instead, it offers a big star singing the show’s best numbers, packaged with Martin’s recordings of several songs from Cole Porter’s Anything Goes to fill out the album. The star is in great voice, but don’t expect any probing vocal drama here — or, indeed, anything other than perfunctory commitment. This is simply a group of fine songs performed in a resoundingly professional manner but with no theatrical flavor. — Richard Barrios

Film Soundtrack, 1953 (MGM/Rhino-Turner) (4 / 5) Fans of this film may not be aware that Fred Astaire starred in The Band Wagon on Broadway in 1931 as well. The movie adds Schwartz-Dietz songs from other shows, and a new gem written for the movie, the evergreen showbiz hymn “That’s Entertainment!” The plot has little or nothing to do with The Band Wagon as it existed on stage, but Astaire is in fine company here: Jack Buchanan, Oscar Levant, and the effervescent Nanette Fabray in her only good film role. Cyd Charisse, one of Astaire’s finest dance partners, is dubbed by India Adams — a good singer, but this is not the best of such match-ups. Two outtake recordings of songs cut from the film are special treats: Fabray’s “Got a Bran’ New Suit,” originally from the Schwartz & Dietz revue At Home Abroad, and Adams’ rendition of “Two-Faced Woman.” (The latter recording was later used in the film Torch Song, with Joan Crawford — in blackface! — lip-synching to Adams’ vocal.) Although this soundtrack CD is obviously not a memento of the show as performed on Broadway, it’s crammed with musical pleasures.  — R.B.

Original Broadway Cast, 1978 (Columbia/Sony) (1 / 5) Michael Bennett’s big post-Chorus Line flop is beloved by those who saw it, but sadly, the show’s special qualities are not retained on an audio-only disc. Jerome Kass’s libretto is based on his script for the television film Queen of the Stardust Ballroom. Dorothy Loudon stars as Bea, a lonely Bronx widow who finds glamour and romance at the local dance palace. Fans remember Loudon’s performance and Bennett’s magical staging, but the score by Billy Goldenberg and Alan and Marilyn Bergman contains only a handful of book numbers; everything else consists of dance sequences featuring faux-pop hits covered by the ballroom’s house singers. These tunes are very pleasant in a Steve-and-Eydie kind of way, especially in Jonathan Tunick’s orchestrations, but they don’t convey a sense of the show’s story. Given a chance, Loudon scores big — especially with her nervy, volatile delivery of the scorching 11 o’clock number “Fifty Percent,” in which Bea chooses to accept the love of a married man (played by Vincent Gardenia). Overall, the recording is a disappointment, but if you want to understand what made Loudon one of the most distinct theatrical personalities of all time, it’s worth a listen — David Barbour

Original Cast, 1976 (Take Home Tunes) (5 / 5) This beautiful cast album continues to mystify listeners as to why The Baker’s Wife was a huge flop. Based on the play and subsequent film La femme du boulanger by Marcel Pagnol and Jean Giono, the musical’s book is by Joseph Stein, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. The fable is set in long-ago provincial France, where a middle-aged baker’s young wife leaves him for a torrid affair with a handsome young villager. The show closed on the road to Broadway; most of the cast and creative-team members were replaced during its lengthy tryout tour. When it finally shuttered in Washington, the leads were Paul Sorvino, whose semi-operatic voice sounds great in the songs of Aimable, the baker, on this abridged recording score; Patti LuPone as his wife, Genevieve, belting to high heaven when she has to, but wonderfully warm in the more lyrical passages of the score; Kurt Peterson, appropriately sexy as her young lover, Dominique; and Teri Ralston as Denise, a village woman who gets to sing the lilting “Chanson” in her silvery soprano. All ten songs sung by the principals are superb, from character-establishing numbers like “Merci, Madame” to ravishing ballads like “Endless Delights.” Other highlights include “Gifts of Love,” a gorgeous and poignant piece in which Genevieve resigns herself to a marriage that’s based on companionship rather than passion; “Meadowlark,” the magnificent story-song that the baker’s wife belts out when deciding to go off with her young stud; and “Proud Lady,” sung by the strutting peacock Dominique. Schwartz’s score differs impressively from the style of his monster hits Godspell and Pippin, and the recording boasts lovely orchestrations. — Michael Portantiere

Original London Cast, 1990 (JAY, 2CDs) (1 / 5) Even as musical theater completists appreciate the fact that a high-profile London production of The Baker’s Wife yielded this much lengthier recording of the score, it must be said that the results are unpersuasive in terms of both text and performance. Directed by Trevor Nunn, this version has some new Stephen Schwartz songs, along with several that were in the original production but not previously recorded. Still, the two-CD album is disconcerting.  First of all, as presented here, the songs carried over from the earlier recording have many unfamiliar lyrics; Schwartz has a penchant for tinkering with his own work after the fact, but it’s hard to understand the point of such revisions when the new lyrics don’t represent an improvement over the originals. In “Chanson,” for example, we now hear lyrics about gulls crying rather than sheep bleating. Was this change necessary? Severely truncated as the original recording is, it’s sad to report that the new/old songs included on the JAY recording aren’t very interesting. Many of them involve the villagers gossiping about the Aimable-Genevieve-Dominique affair (although, here, the young man’s name is spelled “Dominic”). As for the leading players: Alun Armstrong’s attempt to compensate for his substandard singing voice with fine acting isn’t successful. He also sings the baker’s songs in much lower keys than Paul Sorvino’s, and the results are dispiriting. The plum role of Genevieve is filled by Shar Lee Hill, who is…no Patti LuPone. As Dominic, Drue Williams sings poorly and sounds effeminate, which certainly doesn’t work for this character.  Jill Martin displays the best voice of all the London principals  in Denise’s “Chanson,” but here again, the song is performed in a considerably lower key than on the American cast album, and is therefore far less effective. — M.P.

Original Broadway Cast, 1965 (MGM/Decca) (2 / 5) One of the last in the cycle of My Fair Lady wannabes, Baker Street is complete with handsome Victorian settings, a misogynistic hero (Sherlock Holmes), and a Cockney chorus high-kicking all over London. The problem was that songwriters Marian Grudeff and Raymond Jessel emphatically were not Lerner and Loewe, not even with Bock and Harnick ghostwriting three numbers (”I’m in London Again,” “Cold Clear World,” and “I Shall Miss You”) during the troubled tryout period. The melodic lines are facile, the lyrics occasionally intricate — as in the ironically named “It’s So Simple” — yet it’s all on the surface. As Holmes, Fritz Weaver is fine, but he can’t make anything memorable of the material. His leading lady, Inga Swenson, by all accounts impressive onstage, doesn’t come across on this recording. Even the old-fashioned, three-part, would-be showstopper “Letters” lands with a thud. Martin Gabel as Moriarty, Peter Sallis as Watson, and Teddy Green as a leading Baker Street Irregular round out the cast; they all work hard, but in vain. Although the album is well designed, with color photos and a verbose synopsis, it never convinces you that this was “the hottest musical of 1965.” It’s worth noting that an even shorter-lived show from that year, Drat! The Cat!,  had one throwaway number in it (“Holmes and Watson”) that encapsulated what was special about the duo better than this entire score. — Marc Miller

Original Broadway Cast, 1964 (Columbia/Sony) No stars; not recommended. Some ethnic groups have all the luck — and some don’t. The same year that Fiddler on the Roof so beautifully celebrated the joys and sorrows of Jewish life, Bajour featured Nancy Dussault as an NYU anthropology major who latches onto a tribe of gypsies led by Herschel Bernardi. Top-billed Chita Rivera plays the daughter of a rival tribe, doing her trademark spitfire thing and belting out cheesy numbers like “Mean.” Ernest Kincy’s libretto and Walter Marks’ score (astonishingly, inspired by New Yorker stories by Joseph Mitchell) are a mishmash of gypsy intrigue that’s enough to induce a heart attack in the politically correct. The recording starts off with a dynamic overture orchestrated by Mort Lindsey and Dussault’s amusing “Where Is the Tribe for Me?” But too often, Bajour is merely desperate and loud. The second-act show-stopper, “Honest Man,” with Bernardi and rival gypsy king Herbert Edelman trying to con each other, is pretty embarrassing. Give it one star if you’re a Chita fan. — David Barbour

Original Broadway Cast, 1983 (Polydor/]AY) (5 / 5) The too-busy opening sequence is a bumpy ride, with some smarmy humor about the conception of a child. Then Liz Callaway sings to Todd Graff, “Picture a flailing spermatozoan / Not even knowin’ where he is goin”‘ — and the sun breaks out, never to leave. The David Shire-Richard Maltby, Jr. score is easily one of the best of the decade, thoroughly contemporary yet melodic and as clever and hilarious as it is heartfelt. When Callaway lets loose with the soaring “The Story Goes On” or when Graff offers the beautiful ballad “I Chose Right,” you could weep at the bad career luck of Maltby and Shire. Other highlights: the strong women’s trio”I Want It All,” the joyous “Fatherhood Blues,” James Congdon’s funny-sad “Easier to Love,” and Beth Fowler’s “Patterns.” (The last-named song was cut from the Broadway production but is generously included here.) Martin Vidnovic and Catherine Cox are wonderful as an infertile yuppie couple, and a belting Kim Criswell figures prominently in the chorus (she’s the mom lamenting the pain of childbirth in “The Ladies Singing Their Song”). Jonathan Tunick’s orchestrations make a great score sound even better, as does Peter Howard’s conducting. Although this musical couldn’t find an audience in its Broadway mounting, it has done well in community and regional theaters. Thanks to Polydor for having given the score such a full recording; just zip past the first two minutes or so, and bliss out.  — Marc Miller

Off-Broadway Cast, 2023 (Yellow Sound Label) (2 / 5) For the Out of The Box Theatrics production of Baby, which had pre- and post-pandemic runs with slightly different casts in 2019 and 2021, lyricist Richard Maltby, Jr. collaborated with the Off-Broadway company’s leadership on a major revision of the show, including Sybille Pearson’s book. The biggest change is that the characters Pam and Nick are now Pam (Christina Sajous) and Nicki (Gabrielle McClinton), a lesbian couple struggling with IVF. The gorgeous voices and moving performances of Sajous and McClinton are the main reason to listen to this recording, even if the rewritten lyrics range from very effective (the ironic “Romance” works even better in the context of Pam’s injections) to overly on-the-nose (“Look, a turkey baster’s coming your way,” sings Nicki in the opening number). McClinton’s thoughtful “At Night She Comes Home to Me,” featuring some new verses, is also an improvement over the original. Most of the other discernible alterations are minor, including some sort-of-modernizing lyric swaps — such as, among the notable personages and characters name-checked in “I Want It All,” Althea Gibson replacing Scarlett O’Hara and Margaret Atwood replacing Margaret Thatcher.  (Very different people!) Four 30-second “Transitions” that were not included in the OBC have made their way onto this recording; they help tie the score together, especially the choral “Transition #3—Commencement.” Johnny Link’s “I Chose Right” is sweetly affecting, and Julia Murney brings appropriate pathos to “Patterns,” but the majority of this album pales significantly in comparison to the superbly produced original recording. It’s hard not to miss Jonathan Tunick’s full orchestrations, which so superbly conveyed the inexpressible immensity of the pregnancy and birth experience. (This new album has some mixing issues, too, with the band often drowning out singers in ensemble moments.) The absence of expansiveness feels especially disappointing in the performance of the score’s greatest asset: the eruptive “The Story Goes On,” here rendered unconvincingly by Out of the Box’s founder Liz Flemming with frequent semi-spoken lines and abrupt shifts in vocal register that work against the song’s epic build. Credit Flemming, though, with giving Baby new life and giving us a ripe reminder of the score’s joys, even if they’re captured more potently on the 1983 cast album. — Dan Rubins

Studio Cast, 1951 (Columbia/Sony) (2 / 5) Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s 1937 classic, the father of all those hey-kids-let’s-put-on-a-show movies with Mickey and Judy, has an expendable book and a gold-plated score: The first song on this recording is “Where or When,” and only a few tracks away are “I Wish I Were in Love Again,” “My Funny Valentine,” and “The Lady Is a Tramp.” While Babes in Arms was a good show to inaugurate Lehman Engel’s studio cast series, this 36-minute sampler LP plays more like “Mary Martin and Friends Sing Songs from Babes in Arms.” Miss M. commandeers most of the hit songs and overworks her adorableness, yet she delivers a spectacular “The Lady Is a Tramp.” Engel’s orchestrations reflect the originals, but they’re heavy on strings and include some obvious effects — whistles in “Johnny One Note,” clip-clops in “Way Out West.” Jack Cassidy leads a stirring performance of the title song, with chorus; he also brings intensity to “You Are So Fair,” but he doesn’t get to do the whole number. And Mardi Bayne, rather than singing both great verses of “Way Out West,” does the first one twice! How nuts is that? — Marc Miller

Studio Cast, 1989 (New World) (4 / 5) Now, this is more like it: a nearly complete recording with restored Hans Spialek orchestrations, all the ballet music (Babes in Arms was a George Balanchine show), and Evans Haile energetically conducting the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. All that’s missing is the now-unacceptable “All Dark People,” written by R&H as a specialty for the Nicholas Brothers. Although the ballet music isn’t all that interesting, the orchestrations are terrific, from the pearly celesta in “My Funny Valentine” to the twangs and woodwinds in “Way Out West.” There’s also some spiffy close-harmony work from the guy group JQ and the Bandits. While the casting is vocally deluxe, Judy Blazer, Gregg Edelman, Judy Kaye, and Jason Graae aren’t convincing age-wise as the needy teen offspring of down-on-their-luck vaudevillians. But it would be hard to top Blazer’s reading of “My Funny Valentine,” Kaye’s sarcasm in “Imagine,” or the sheer joy of the title song. It makes you want to go paint a barn, wheel the piano in, and start the auditions! — M.M.

Encores! Concert Cast, 1999 (DRG) (4 / 5) This is a welcome addition to the musicals-in-concert canon. Surprisingly, it doesn’t surpass the 1989 studio version in terms of theatricality; the lead-in dialogue to the songs merely betrays what a wispy book Babes in Arms has. Rob Fisher’s conducting isn’t as vibrant as that of Evans Haile, but the orchestrations come through with more clarity here. Melissa Rain Anderson is no vocal match for Judy Kaye, nor can Erin Dilly wring nuances from a ballad as Judy Blazer can. But David Campbell is more ingratiating than Gregg Edelman and, in general, this cast is more age-appropriate than the other. The New World album has more ballet music, but this one has “All Dark People” — although it’s listed as “Light on Their Feet,” and only the verse lyrics are included. Which of the two most recent recordings to buy? The New World, 10 minutes longer, is for the archivists; the DRG has a less expert but more persuasively up-and-coming cast. As listening experiences, both are just dandy. — M.M.

Original Broadway Cast, 2003 (RCA) (5 / 5) What a devilishly clever parody of Sesame Street this Tony Award-winning musical is! Robert Lopez and ]eff Marx’s songs are mostly upbeat and catchy (“Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist”), yet tender when called for (“Fantasies Come True”). The guys have come up with everything from a fast, funky waltz (“My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada”) to upbeat rock (“Purpose”) to soul (“You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want,” which Natalie Venetia Belcon growls perfectly). But there’s also a fine, fine melody line in “There’s a Fine, Fine Line.” The Lopez-Marx lyrics are often monosyllabically simple, which they should be for a kid’s-show spoof, yet they can also be wildly funny and raunchy. Talent-wise, along with librettist Jeff Whitty, are Lopez and Marx the real turtle soup (or merely the mock)? To quote their own creation, Lucy T. Slut: “Yeah, they’re real.” By the time you reach “Mix Tape” — a masterstroke of a song in which one puppet infers that another likes her from the songs that he’s selected and recorded on a cassette for her — you’ll realize that you don’t want a mix tape of songs from different shows, you just want the Avenue Q CD, which showcases the superbly talented ensemble cast of John Tartaglia, Stephanie D’Abruzzo, Rick Lyon, Jennifer Barnhart, Ann Harada, and Jordan Gelber, along with the aforementioned Belcon.  — Peter Filichia

Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1991 (RCA) (3 / 5) There’s no doubt that Stephen Sondheim’s scores are brilliant. His lyrics are innovative; he’s the master of intellectual argument in rhyme. His best melodies, though often overshadowed by acclaim for his superb wordsmithing, are slyly inventive. Yet when the messages in his musicals are examined, they sometimes turn out to be less than the sum of the sung parts. So it is with this revue, written in collaboration with librettist John Weidman, which trots out a bevy of men and women who shot at, and in some instances killed, U.S. presidents. Sondheim and Weidman suggest that, for many unfortunate citizens, the American Dream is a nightmare. Accordingly, they set forth a series of songs — some portentous, some ironically lighthearted — to show how a sense of disenfranchisement can lead to assassination. Sondheim’s pastiche score is jaunty. Weidman’s sketches aren’t included in their entirely on this recording, with the exception of the attenuated Lee Harvey Oswald sequence, wherein John Kennedy’s murderer is visited in his Texas Book Depository hideout by the spirits of assassins past and future. (The idea is that Oswald acted as a representative of a continuing, perhaps inevitable tradition.) The cast assembled to play this group of history’s outcasts includes some of the best musical theater performers of the time, although only Victor Garber as John Wilkes Booth really gets to shine. Among the others warbling and emoting are Annie Golden, Jonathan Hadary, Patrick Cassidy, Eddie Korbich, William Parry, Terrence Mann, Lee Wilkof, and Debra Monk. — David Finkle

Broadway Cast, 2004 (PS Classics) (4 / 5) It’s likely that there will never be a better production of this revue about bumping off presidents as a pastime for disgruntled citizens with irrational gripes. From start to finish, the Roundabout Theatre Company staging was a honey. Tony Awards were handed to the production, director Joe Mantello, and supporting actor Michael Cerveris, who infused the plum role of John Wilkes Booth with great fervor. The same kind of care has been given to the recording, on which Becky Ann Baker, James Barbour, Mario Cantone,  Mary Catherine Garrison, Alexander Gemignani, Neil Patrick Harris, Marc Kudisch, Jeffrey Kuhn, Denis O’Hare, and Cerveris raise their voices in disturbing song. Sondheim’s Americana pastiches, with big-and-brassy and plangent arrangements by Michael Starobin, fully demonstrate the composer-lyricist’s mastery — most definitely including a powerful new song, “Something Just Broke.” Much of the dialogue by John Weidman is retained on the CD, including the penultimate scene in which Lee Harvey Oswald’s predecessors come out of the shadows on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository and cajole their hesitant boy into firing. This is bold if not always convincing material, polished to near perfection.  — D.F.

Off-Broadway Cast, 2022 (Broadway Records) (5 / 5) In common with other works of art, some musicals become “dated” in a negative way over the years and decades, but quite the opposite has happened with Assassins.  When the show premiered Off Broadway and the score was first recorded in 1991, many critics and audience members were put off by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s often ironically vaudevillian, sometimes earnest exploration of certain Americans expressing their unhappiness, frustration, and rage over their sorry lots in life by killing, or at least attempting to kill, Presidents of the United States. But subsequent events, such as the 2016 election of Donald Trump as President and the attempt by a violent mob  to overtake the Capitol when Trump was not reelected four years later, have underlined the remarkable prescience of this show in identifying and examining a cancerous underbelly of national disaffection that shows no signs of healing. All of which may at least in part explain why Assassins was largely hailed as a masterpiece in the Classic Stage Company’s 2022 Off-Broadway revival. The minor flaws of that production, directed by John Doyle, were limited to a few moments of unfocused staging and an odd inconsistency in costuming; but neither of those issues arise when one is listening to this superbly well produced cast album, sparked by the excellent performances of Eddie Cooper as the Proprietor, Ethan Slater as the Balladeer/Lee Harvey Oswald, Steven Pasquale as a compellingly tormented John Wilkes Booth, Judy Kuhn as Sara Jane Moore, Brandon Uranowitz as Leon Czolgosz, and Will Swenson as an absolutely insane Charles Guiteau. The entire album is aces, with especially strong performances of “The Ballad of Booth,” the “Gun Song,” “The Ballad of Guiteau,” “Something Just Broke,” and “Unworthy of Your Love,” the eerily sweet ballad that has been a highlight of every Assassins recording, here sung and acted to creepy perfection by Adam Chanler-Berat as John Hinckley and Tavi Gevinson as Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme.  Talk about eerie: Hinckley, who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981, was released from psychiatric care in 2016, and all court restrictions on his lifestyle and freedom were lifted in 2022 — the very year of this Assassins revival. — Michael Portantiere

Original Cast, 1989 (Polydor) (1 / 5) Beyond being one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s most inscrutable shows, Aspects of Love is also one of his most ridiculous — more soap opera than pop opera. Though the show’s story doesn’t diverge much from the 1955 David Garnett novella on which it’s based, you may wish it did when listening to this almost complete recording (only a few bits are missing). The endlessly foolish romantic machinations of the characters are not made more palatable by the performances of the leads, Ann Crumb and Michael Ball; they serve the score well, but they can’t do much to make their sex-obsessed characters ingratiating or sympathetic. Kevin Colson, Kathleen Rowe Martin, and Diana Morrison, who have supporting roles in this game of musical beds, come across better. With lyrics by Don Black and Charles Hart, some of the score is attractive, and musical director Michael Reed gets rich results from the orchestra, but the performers’ emoting is so overwrought that suffering through the whole thing for the sake of a few good songs is exhausting. The recording is worthwhile for “Love Changes Everything,” “Seeing Is Believing,” “The First Man You Remember,” and “Anything but Lonely,” but not for the sort of plot twists and relationship games that even daytime television might reject. — Matthew Murray

Original Broadway Cast, 1966 (Columbia/Sony) (4 / 5) What could Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick do to follow Fiddler on the Roof? The team answered that question with an unconventional evening of three one-act musicals, each only tangentially connected to the others. It was a concept that would show off the versatility of the performers as well as the writers. The first act, “The Diary of Adam and Eve” (adapted from a Mark Twain short story), is written in standard musical theater form; the second act, “The Lady or the Tiger” (based on a Frank R. Stockton story), has a pop-operetta writing style; and the third act, “Passionella” (based on the Jules Feiffer fantasy book), is cartoonish with a mid-’60s flavor. The Apple Tree is primarily remembered for the tour-de-force performance(s) of Barbara Harris as Eve, Barbara, and Passionella (plus Ella). Listening to this recording, one can fully understand why Harris won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical over Mary Martin in I Do! I Do! and Lotte Lenya in Cabaret. After using a light, dry voice for Eve’s innocent exploration of her first feelings and singing the lullaby “Go to Sleep, Whatever You Are,” the star then rises to a sexy combination of breathlessness and belting for the almost-striptease number “I’ve Got What You Want.” She employs a wonderfully realized, barely-on-pitch sound for the determined dreamer Ella and then, finally, her voice rises to a full-throated Broadway belt for Passionella. Equally versatile, if not quite as dazzling, is Alan AIda: He morphs from a simply acted and sung Adam to a pseudo-legit Captain Sanjar and then to a rock ‘n’roll star turn before a surprise reconciliation with Ella. The recording works hard to give you enough of each segment so that you can almost follow the stories; this is aided by the presence of Larry Blyden as The Snake, The Balladeer/Lion Keeper, and The Narrator. If one laments that even more music and dialogue (especially from Act I) was not recorded, the cuts were very well thought out. Those who want a more complete document of the score should seek out the hard-to-find two-CD Takarazuka recording in Japanese.  — Jeffrey Dunn