The Secret Life of the American Musical

by Jack Viertel

  Sunday in the Park with George

  Again, the original Broadway cast recording is the one to have. There are two different London versions, but Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, backed by an incandescently transparent orchestration by Michael Starobin, give performances as memorable on the recording as they did onstage. The longtime Sondheim music director Paul Gemignani conducts with dramatic precision. The album was issued by RCA, where Thomas Shepard had moved from Columbia in the mid-’70s, and reflects Shepard’s gift for theatrical record production. The relatively tiny band (eleven instruments) helps create a unique musical palette.

  2. Curtain Up, Light the Lights

  A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

  The original cast album is another case of Capitol having the right performers yet not quite presenting the magic of the show on the recording. But what performances! Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford, David Burns, Ron Holgate, and John Carradine deliver in a way that brushes aside most of the deficiencies of the recording production. The album makes you wish that these kinds of vaudevillians still existed. And the orchestrations (by Irwin Kostal and Sid Ramin) are remarkable—eccentric and joyfully off-kilter. The revival, which starred Nathan Lane, is also fine—it’s much more complete, Lane is brilliant, Lewis J. Stadlen delightfully channels David Burns, and the new orchestration by Jonathan Tunick is certainly worth hearing. But the original captures the madness of that first production more completely, even on a less complete album.

  Mack and Mabel

  Robert Preston again, this time with Bernadette Peters. The original cast album plays like a hit show all by itself. It is perhaps the most perfect of all disguises of a musical that got almost unanimously bad reviews and closed quickly. You’d never know it from the recording. There are two London recordings, one of a concert performance and one of an actual production, and to be fair, Preston’s voice isn’t ideal for the two ballads that Mack sings, but he’s just so damn convincing. And Peters’s versions of “Look What Happened to Mabel” and “Time Heals Everything” are so good (as are the songs) that it feels like the show should have run a season on those numbers alone. No such luck.

  Oklahoma!

  With the exception of a rarely heard recording of Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock, this 1943 original cast album was the first one ever made that was intended to preserve the majority of one score performed by the original performers. It’s historic; and it’s hard to deny the power of Alfred Drake, the modern musical’s first great leading man. But I confess that I turn to the London cast album made in 1998 with Hugh Jackman in the role when I want to hear this score. Jackman isn’t the singer Drake was, and the orchestrations and the dance music are new, which I’m prejudiced against, but the cast dusts off a lot of the antique patina that this show sometimes suffers from, and the album includes portions of the score that the original, which was limited to what could be made to fit on a set of 78 rpm discs, omitted. It’s fun to hear them side by side, actually, and there’s a third album, from a Broadway revival in 1979, that’s not bad either. Surprisingly, the movie soundtrack, which I’m also prejudiced against, is quite good, if a little lush.

  Gypsy

  This one is a tie for me, though I must confess to having been a producer of the Patti LuPone production and therefore have something of a rooting interest. The original is Merman being Merman, which creates a certain kind of joy, an explosive energy, and a real sense of a recording capturing what the show must have been. Credit Goddard Lieberson and Columbia for that. Also, Merman—an astounding singer in her way—is the only Rose I’ve ever heard sing the whole-note triplets that accompany the title phrase in “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” the way they were written. Who wrote them is a matter of conjecture, with Sondheim, the lyricist, sometimes gently suggesting that he put them in the composer Jule Styne’s brain, or possibly in his manuscript. They create such tension and power that I’ve never understood why other actresses shy away from them, but Merman’s the only one I’ve ever heard really embrace them (though they are a thrilling feature of the famous overture).

  On the other hand, Merman was not a great actress, and the tempi on the album are relaxed by today’s standards—we’re used to everything going faster now. So Patti LuPone’s performance on the 2008 cast recording is very much worth having, and in many ways, the album may be every bit the equal of the original. LuPone is a great musical theater actress, and the alarming drama of Rose’s character is alive on the recording. And the 2008 recording features Laura Benanti, who was the definitive Louise, and Boyd Gaines as Herbie, who actually gets to sing more than Jack Klugman does with Merman.

  On the Merman version, Sondheim speaks the line “You ain’t gettin’ 88 cents from me, Rose!” in the middle of “Some People.” Not to be outdone, Arthur Laurents took on the tiny role on the LuPone incarnation. Neither of them is a great actor. Take your pick, or listen to them both. There are also recordings of productions featuring Angela Lansbury and Bernadette Peters, and Bette Midler’s TV version, but none meets the standards of the Merman and LuPone recordings. All right, go ahead and shoot.

  Company

  The original cast album begins with the sound of a busy signal, an idea that seemed amazingly innovative in 1970. Anyone not around back in those days will be puzzled. Does anyone still recognize a busy signal? Company was the show, and the album, that reawakened a generation of people to the possibilities of the musical theater—that it could treat angst, anger, and the frantic and unsustainable pace of life in New York, and do so with honesty in a musical voice that incorporated the sounds of life as we were living it, not always so happily. Not surprisingly, having captured the moment brilliantly, it was subject to feeling dated as soon as the moment passed. And today, everything about it feels of its period, just the way a well-reconstructed operetta score of the ’20s does. But the recording is a vivid time capsule of a great score bursting with ideas. And there’s Elaine Stritch conquering “The Ladies Who Lunch,” so why would you listen to any other? D. A. Pennebaker’s film documentary Company: Original Cast Album is required viewing as well, perfectly capturing the recording session and giving us a portrait of a group of ace theater professionals at work, and at the top of their game.

  There is an oddity about the recording, which you will probably notice: Dean Jones opened the show in the starring role, and recorded the album, but was quite quickly replaced by Larry Kert, a superior singer. When the show went to London, Kert rerecorded the vocals and his voice replaced Jones’s on the London cast album, which was otherwise identical to the New York recording. The currently available CD (or download) includes Kert’s version of “Being Alive” as a bonus track but otherwise features Jones.

  A Chorus Line

  As with Company, the original cast album of A Chorus Line screams ’70s, but in a different way. Some of Marvin Hamlisch’s tunes lean toward the pop sounds of the day, and the writing isn’t as distinguished as in Company, though the show was wildly more popular. But the album captures Michael Bennett’s propulsive concept of a dance audition in progress. The group of young performers who made names for themselves in the show are featured in ways that show them off at their best. And although he can’t be heard on the album, it’s worth a tip of the hat to Hans Spialek, who orchestrated many of the hits of Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, and others in the ’20s and ’30s. At age eighty-two, he worked on A Chorus Line, copying out parts for the orchestra players from the orchestrations by Billy Byers, Hershy Kay, and Jonathan Tunick. It was his last Broadway job and his only known contribution to a rock-influenced score.

  3. The Wizard and I

  My Fair Lady

  There are a lot of recordings in various languages, though few are readily available. The original—on Columbia, produced by Lieberson—is the gold standard. It gives us Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, and the great music hall star Stanley Holloway performing in a style that was already dying away in the mid-’50s when he took on the leadin
g comic role of Alfred P. Doolittle. Originally released only in mono, it was later reissued in stereo. Look no further.

  Hamilton

  Probably the most kinetically exciting original cast album ever made. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s score is a peppery stew inspired not only by hip-hop but by jazz, pop-opera, the (musical) British Invasion, and Motown, among other genres, with a recurring Afro-Caribbean feel throughout much of it. The references, mini-quotes, and tips of the hat to other sources never stop, yet the whole thing is somehow completely original. Beautifully produced by Amir “Questlove” Thompson and Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter, founding members of the Roots, it has sensational clarity, with vocals out front and the most extraordinary set of arrangements and orchestrations—by Alex Lacamoire—since Jonathan Tunick’s Follies charts. Themes appear and reappear, so that the entire story is told in a layered, complex way that might threaten to become confusing in other hands but never does here. While the album is no substitute for the show, it nonetheless is a complete experience on its own, a little like being shot out of a cannon. It runs almost two and a half hours and bears the distinction of having been released in every format, from vinyl to iTunes download. Obviously an event, and it earns the right to be one.

  Little Shop of Horrors

  I was a producer of the Broadway revival of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s breakout musical, but I confess that I prefer the off-Broadway album. The show’s hand-to-mouth style is perfectly captured by the tiny band and a cast of unknowns-about-to-be-known. And Ellen Greene is definitive as Audrey. The Broadway cast album features some wonderful performers, but it lacks the scrappy, poverty-row authenticity of the original. And it lacks Greene.

  The Producers

  There’s a soundtrack album of the movie, but the original cast is the only one to have—Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick were so identified with the roles of Max and Leo that the show had trouble sustaining itself without them. Mel Brooks’s score, astutely dressed up by the musical supervisor, Glen Kelly (Brooks reportedly sang the songs a cappella into a tape recorder), is surprisingly delightful, and the performances couldn’t be better. Not a great contribution to the canon, exactly, but a really good time.

  Little Me

  This is, for me, Cy Coleman’s best score (Sweet Charity, I know, I know, and City of Angels and On the Twentieth Century), and it features a great set of comedy lyrics by the vastly underrated Carolyn Leigh. Sid Caesar and a cadre of supporting clowns bring a great and now long-lost kind of theatrical energy to the whole record, and Nancy Andrews and Virginia Martin share one of the show’s only sentimental moments, the charming “Here’s to Us.” Swen Swenson’s “I’ve Got Your Number” was the hit, but Caesar, and Coleman, and Leigh’s ways with comedy pastiche were the joys of the event. Would that more of the dance music had been recorded, but this show, like Forum, presented the last great days of vaudeville comedy on Broadway, and it’s worth hearing. Interestingly, there is also a British album, which demonstrates the complete bewilderment of the English in the face of this kind of material.

  Flora the Red Menace

  Kander and Ebb’s first Broadway score as a team, Liza Minnelli’s Tony-winning Broadway debut (at eighteen!), and a charming, lightweight score. The show flopped, and deservedly so, but it was full of promise, quickly fulfilled by Cabaret. The album is adorable.

  Funny Girl

  There are many devotees of the movie soundtrack, but I prefer the more compact (and brilliant) Ralph Burns orchestrations for the cast album. Jule Styne’s music for the first half of the show speaks volumes about his early days as a jazz and barrelhouse pianist. Then the famous ballads start to stack up. Streisand is young and not the least bit self-indulgent yet, and it makes for a great show album. The overture, which does not quite equal Gypsy’s, was apparently put together in secret by Styne and Burns, who pretended that they hadn’t figured it out until the last minute so that the director-choreographer, Jerome Robbins (who had stepped in in Philadelphia), wouldn’t have time to try to change it. A contentious show, this one, with lots of screaming going on behind the scenes, but an undeniably great score and a terrific album, especially for Capitol.

  Camelot

  Take your pick of the London or New York cast album. Pomp and circumstance and some lovely songs carried off with great earnestness. And a bit of a bore, I think.

  West Side Story

  There are many recordings to choose from—the original cast, a studio album featuring real opera voices, another conducted by Bernstein, the film soundtrack, and more. As usual, I cling to the original cast album (Columbia and Lieberson at their best), but of course the soundtrack is what became famous, and it has its many fans. I’m always uncomfortable with those metasize Hollywood orchestras playing show music, even Bernstein’s, but I can understand those who swoon over it. It has grandeur, though I’m not sure that’s a quality that benefits West Side Story. As for the studio cast albums, the most peculiar features Kiri Te Kanawa and another presents the Italian tenor Vittorio Grigolo. Neither sounds comfortable and neither recording sounds like idiomatic theater music. And, as is almost always the case with “studio” albums, there isn’t a whiff of an actual theatrical production to be found, because there was none. Somehow the original cast albums, even when featuring inferior singers, always seem to carry a different energy because, when the recording is being made, the performers are playing the roles nightly in a particular style in a particular version of the show. Without all that rehearsal and all that performance energy behind them, even superior singers never seem to connect to the material in the same way, which is hardly surprising. This doesn’t make studio albums unworthy, just usually disappointing.

  Annie

  The cast album does the show proud. This is a score that is sniffed at by some, but I find it irresistible—charming, tuneful, and actually touching. It’s light material, but it celebrates an American spirit in an unashamed way. Dorothy Loudon finally broke out as Miss Hannigan, Andrea McArdle became the subject of endless parody and ridicule, which couldn’t stop her, or “Tomorrow,” from becoming ubiquitous, and Reid Shelton sings Daddy Warbucks beautifully. It’s all on the record.

  4. If I Loved You

  Carousel

  This is tough. I count nine cast recordings of Carousel, including one, like Fiddler, in Japanese. The original cast album from 1945 features the incomparable John Raitt singing “Soliloquy,” and the equally heartbreaking Jan Clayton singing “What’s the Use of Wond’rin?,” but it leaves out most of the musical part of the bench scene—the limitations of those 78 rpm discs again. The 1965 revival cast, from a production at Lincoln Center, gives you the bench scene and an older John Raitt, but no Jan Clayton. Probably the finest production of the show itself, Nick Hytner’s astonishing 1992 staging seen first in London and then at Lincoln Center, featured the best-acted Billy and Julie ever recorded but, alas, the least vocally impressive. On the other hand, Audra McDonald played Carrie Pipperidge in the Lincoln Center run, and she can certainly sing it—almost too well. And the two studio cast albums, one from 1955 and one from 1987, are all about singing—no acting required or demonstrated. Name your poison. For one of the greatest of all musical theater scores, there is no definitive recording.

  The New Moon

  New York City Center’s Encores! series presented this Sigmund Romberg operetta in 2003, which occasioned the first full recording of a score that typifies the operettas of the first part of the twentieth century. There are a few incomplete recordings from earlier decades, but if you want to hear something that likely resembles what a Broadway operetta sounded like in 1927, this is essential listening. Although it features a couple of opera singers, Rodney Gilfry and Brandon Jovanovich, it has no scent of the opera house about it—it’s antique Broadway. The melodies are almost foolishly lush, the chorus often enters for no discernible reason, and the whole thing is blissfully idiotic, beginning with the leading lady’s declaration that she wants to live bravely and f
reely like one of those wooden figurehead goddesses that adorn the bows of eighteenth-century schooners. “Let me be like the girl on the prow!” Christiane Noll sings, ecstatically. The whole thing is almost too good to be true.

  Guys and Dolls

  Two choices here, both good. The original cast, featuring that flat Decca sound, also features Viviane Blaine doing “Adelaide’s Lament,” Stubby Kaye singing “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat,” and the tone-deaf but wonderful Sam Levene joining Blaine for “Sue Me.” On the other hand, the 1992 revival, which featured Nathan Lane and Faith Prince, matched the original performers and in some ways outpaced them. It contains “Adelaide’s Second Lament,” which is absent from the first album, and a saxophone solo under the dialogue before “My Time of Day” is played by Benny Goodman alumnus Red Press; it’s worth hearing. I don’t think you can live without both recordings. There are others as well, but you can live without those.

  Into the Woods

  The original cast album is terrific, and the current issue of it contains bonus tracks—demo recordings and the like—but the soundtrack recording isn’t bad either. The score has aged beautifully. Back in 1987, it sounded to some as if Sondheim was reluctant to finish a thought or put a proper button on a number, but in the intervening years, this has proved to be just another example of his restlessness needing other ears to catch up. Bernadette Peters is in top form, and Joanna Gleason gives a memorable contemporary twist to the role of the Baker’s Wife that comes across on the recording. There is a revival album featuring a lovely performance by Laura Benanti as Cinderella, but overall, the original is better.

  City of Angels

  The composer Cy Coleman made two great personnel decisions when he wrote this send-up of Raymond Chandler–style noir thrillers: he hired the great jazz arranger Billy Byers to orchestrate, and the tight harmony group Manhattan Transfer’s music director, Yaron Gershovsky, to do the vocal arrangements. The result is a cast album that actually sounds like jazzmen had their hands on it; the ballads have the chromatic quality of Ellington and Strayhorn, and much of it sounds a little like a movie soundtrack from RKO or Warner Bros. in their best black-and-white years. It’s an acquired taste, but I had no trouble acquiring it. And James Naughton, on the original cast album, gets the rhythms and wry, detached attitude of a Philip Marlowe or a Sam Spade perfectly. The show—like its score—is a genuine original.