To purchase the 2011 Broadway Revival Cast Recording of ANYTHING GOES, click on the image above.

It’s Double Take December at Musical Cyberspace! Every musical pretty much has something one likes and something one doesn’t in it. This month I’ll be listing one of each for a range of musicals, a different one each day.

Anything Goes

Something I Like: I really enjoy watching Patti LuPone singing the title song on Broadway’s Lost Treasures. What a pity it is that there will never be another disc in that series. The score is also filled with other delightful Cole Porter gems, none better than the brilliant “You’re the Top”. Other highlights are the wisely reinstated “Easy to Love”, the effusive “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” and the charming “It’s De-Lovely”.

Something I Don’t Like: The interpolation of “Friendship” has never sat all that well with me, perhaps because (unlike “It’s De-Lovely”, which was first heard in a revue) the song is part of another legit musical comedy, DuBarry Was a Lady. The book, originally by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse before being revised by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, also sometimes has a rather tenuous grip on its multiple narratives. At its core, Anything Goes is a farce with musical theatre romance thrown in as a nod to convention, and I’d like it to have been made just that bit tighter in its construction when John Weidman and Timothy Crouse revised the book in the 1980s.

Feel free to share your “double take” on Anything Goes in the comment box!