The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built (41 page)

I loved the records. I loved the look of the labels and the cover design almost as much as I loved the songs themselves. They were full of promise. But all of that was a long time ago. What remains today is the music, now available on CD or, more likely, as a download direct to whatever device you play music on. And for Broadway scores, the choices can be bewildering. You can hear
Fiddler on the Roof
in Yiddish, which makes a certain amount of sense, but also in Japanese, which I suppose makes perfect sense if you are Japanese. Since I’ve referenced and quoted from so many theater songs in this book, I thought there might be some value in listing the recordings that have given me particular pleasure, and a few that have been disappointments. So some thoughts—personal and by no means encyclopedic—about what to listen to seemed a worthwhile addendum. For the most part, as the reader will note, I prefer the original cast album, which tends to capture a show at its freshest. Not all these recordings are in print at the moment, but most can be found—dealers in used recordings abound on the Internet.

I put the shows in the order in which I refer to them in the book, rather like the cast members in the playbill who are listed “in order of appearance.” And I began by listing only the shows that I had quoted from, on the theory that you have to draw the line somewhere. The resulting list had a pleasant jumbledness to it—it’s neither alphabetical nor chronological and, without the preceding pages as a reference point, would seem to have been made by pulling titles out of a hat. And what’s wrong with that? But at the end of the day I had to confront certain realities. I’ve not quoted a lyric from
South Pacific
, but I have quoted one from
The Wedding Singer
. How can you have a list of cast albums denoting anything useful that includes the latter but not the former? Why
Flora the Red Menace
but not
Bye Bye Birdie
? Why
Annie
but not
Annie Get Your Gun
? So at the end of the list is a second one, including the most obvious shows that are missing from the first. I hope that goes some distance to repairing the whimsical—not to say chaotic—nature of what follows.

1. Overture

The Music Man

Sometimes casting is the paramount consideration in which album to choose, and with
The Music Man
the combination of Robert Preston and Barbara Cook makes the original Broadway cast album the only real choice. A British cast album has some demo tracks performed by the songwriter, Meredith Willson, but if you’re going to choose only one, it’s Preston and Cook, backed by a host of terrific Broadway second bananas, including David Burns and Pert Kelton. Preston, in particular, was born to make music out of Willson’s percussive style, and it’s almost impossible to hear the songs in your head without hearing his voice. In fact, it’s almost impossible to hear his voice in your head without hearing the rhythmic alarm about trouble in River City. Watch him in an old Western and see if you can keep the sound of
The Music Man
from pleasantly intruding.

Originally recorded by Capitol, a label that never captured the spirit of an overall show, as well as by Columbia (where the producer Goddard Lieberson and, later, Thomas Z. Shepard, understood exactly how to make you feel you were attending the actual show), it nonetheless is indispensable.

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 leading 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.