The Saturday List: Ten Love Songs by Lerner and Loewe

Posted on February 5, 2022 by David Fick

February is the month of love and this Saturday has caught me in a romantic mood. There’s simply no better time to compile a list of ten great love songs by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Loewe writes gorgeous music that really recalls the eras in which this famed team’s musicals are set, whether it is Edwardian England or the Age of Chivalry as much as it does the sound of Broadway in its Golden Age. While Lerner doesn’t measure up to the likes of Oscar Hammerstein II or Stephen Sondheim, he certainly deserves his place in the musical theatre canon, even if he is rather the Tim Rice of his day. I often wonder if he would have had a better time in the heyday of musical comedy when he would have not been required to craft his lyrics so specifically to character and situation. It’s almost always in those aspects that his lyrics fall short. I guess my point is that I don’t believe he was always as meticulous as he should have been given the era in which he was writing. But that’s opening up a whole can of worms into which I don’t wish to delve today, so let’s just jump into the love songs of Lerner and Loewe. Oh – and by the way, this is a countdown list, so I’ll be ranking the songs as I go.

10. “On the Street Where You Live” from My Fair Lady

The bottom spot on this list was either going to belong to this song, or to “I Talk to the Trees” from Paint Your Wagon. But even though the lyric of “On the Street Where You Live” is flawed, it at least has a winning accompaniment that doesn’t push into the ideologically shaky territory by using generic rhythms to indicate cultural heritage, as Loewe does in “I Talk to the Trees” by associating generic Latin American rhythms as a character marker for Julio. (“I Talk to the Trees” has its own fair share of lyrical transgressions too, making ample use of purple imagery.) As for “On the Street Where You Live”, Lerner would have been better off had he written something like:

People stop and stare; I don’t care at all –
For there’s nowhere else in town that could compare at all

– and thought up something different for the ending. At least that way, we wouldn’t have to suffer through that truly awful ‘bother me’/’rather be’ rhyme that is second only to the suggestion that Eliza should be taken out and hung, like a drape, for her transgressions against the English language.

9. “How Can I Wait?” from Paint Your Wagon

Numbers during which people dance with other people’s clothes make for good romance it seems. It worked here in it would work when Disney staged “Once Upon a Dream” in Sleeping Beauty. There’s a kind of uninhibitedness about this kind of expression through imaginative and transgressive role play that makes the emotions felt, in this case by Jennifer, feel completely convincing in the world of Paint Your Wagon.

8. “I Loved You Once In Silence” – Camelot

This song comes late in Camelot and the tendency is to take the tempo a little more “up” than it should be. Although this perhaps makes sense towards the end of a long show, it’s a song that needs space to land dramatically. It’s a key moment for Guenevere, balancing her first number, “The Simple Joys of Maidenhood” and needs to reflect the development of her character since the top of the show. Bouncing the number along doesn’t help that cause. But Camelot is that most frustrating kind of musical, the flawed masterpiece, a show with a huge emotional impact that seems never quite to have found its best form.

7. “The Heather On The Hill” from Brigadoon

There’s something so seductive about this song, sung in Brigadoon by Tommy and Fiona as they gather heather for Charlie and Jean’s wedding. We all know that Fiona’s been ‘waiting for [her] dearie’ and here, it seems, he is. I’ve loved this song since the first moment I heard it in a revue in which I performed in 1997. That led me to seek out Brigadoon, a show which has always appealed to me more in idea than in execution, although I’ve come to like it more as the years have passed. But however I feel about the show, I’ll always adore this song.

6. “If Ever I Would Leave You” from Camelot

If love is timeless, then this is a song that does its best to capture that sentiment. Lancelot’s thoughts on how he could never leave Guenevere at any time of the year are accompanied by a seductive melody. With a set of lush orchestrations, it’s time to swoon. Yet there’s a curious shallowness that keeps this song from creeping up higher on my list. The song always makes love feel so full of promise and possibility, but there’s an emptiness that remains once it’s gone. Perhaps the kind of love here is a romantic ideal of courtly romance, an idea of love rather than love itself. I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it. Any ideas?

5. There But For You Go I – Brigadoon

Sometimes the biggest battle of being in love is admitting that you are. This song is one of the big moments in Brigadoon, but it so often turns out to be a big blustery ballad and I think that is why it passed me by for a long time. Enter Robert Goulet and his understated and beautifully acted interpretation of the song – and now I find the song haunting, compelling and something that one wants to admit someday, no matter how difficult it might be.

4. “Gigi” from Gigi

I discovered this song long before I discovered the film, as a youngster playing songs that I found in the seat of our piano stool. Besides its simply enchanting melody, I think something in this song immediately connected with me. I often feel quite funny and awkward, as Gigi is described as having been, and I think that I also wanted – and am lucky to have found – someone to see past that and love me the way that Gaston realises he loves Gigi in this song.

3. “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” from My Fair Lady

Some people will argue that My Fair Lady is not a love story, but they’re most likely confusing it with its source material. Pygmalion is not a love story; My Fair Lady is. The ending has something to do with it, so do other key moments in the score and certainly, this song does too. Sometimes love is hard to express. Sometimes the expression is restrained. That’s what makes “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” so moving. It holds back what is there. But those who deny that it’s there would have a difficult time convincing me that it’s not.

2. “How To Handle a Woman” – Camelot

“How To Handle a Woman” is a song that is, in fact, about how to handle anyone you love. Love them. That also means putting aside things like your job, so that you can have the time to love them. It means being passionate about them. It means engaging with them and loving them actively. Arthur doesn’t quite get it right in the end but hopefully, we aren’t all destined for a tragedy of classical proportions. And hopefully, we know that trying to get it right means getting it wrong sometimes. We’re all flawed, and getting that across is a huge part of what makes Lerner and Loewe’s take on Camelot so effective.

1. “I Could Have Danced All Night” – My Fair Lady

The “My Fair Lady is a love story” naysayers may come after me with fire and pitchforks now, but that’s probably not going to change my mind that this is my number one love song by Lerner and Loewe. In Shaw’s Pygmalion, Eliza would be buoyed by her mastery of the English language. Here it is the moment, she says, ‘when he began to dance with me.’ Capturing Eliza’s ebullience in the moment of the recognition that it is the connection made between herself and Higgins as a result of her mastery of the English language is what shifts “I Could Have Danced All Night” into love song territory. And no matter where it ends, that first moment of joy is unique.

So that’s my list for today. Which Lerner and Loewe love songs you would choose for yours? Any that you’re passionate about that didn’t make my list? I’d love to hear about them via the comment box below. In the meantime, here’s a playlist of the songs mentioned in this column. Enjoy!

Posted in The Saturday List | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Forgotten Musicals Friday: THE GIRL FRIEND

Posted on February 4, 2022 by David Fick

If The Garrick Gaieties was an important stepping stone for Richard Rodgers and Lorenza Hart and Dearest Enemy finally gave the pair a legitimate show with their names as the sole songwriting team on the bill, The Girl Friend cemented them in the public consciousness of 1920s America. It ran for 301 performances – a smash hit in those days – and paved the way for further musicals that would come from this pair, during which Rodgers would begin to develop some of the techniques that would eventually cause musical theatre to evolve. Directed by John Harwood, with musical staging by Jack Haskell, the show featured a book by Herbert Fields and brought Rodgers and Hart right up to date with a story reflecting the typical crazy pop-culture milieu of the roaring twenties. 

Musical comedies of this period are known for their threadbare narratives and this one is right up there. The rather bizarre plot of The Girl Friend starts off with a cyclist who trains on a wheel connected to a butter churn on his dairy farm! The dairyman in question is Leonard Silver (played by Sammy White in the original production), who hopes to become a great six-day cyclist by winning an important race and thus, the everlasting affection of Mollie Farrell (Eva Puck). Several gamblers and swindlers, including a professional manager and his scheming sister, try to get Leonard to ride for them or to lose the race, but Leonard manages to win both the race and the girl by the time the final curtain falls.

The score’s sweet delights can be heard on a 1987 cast recording from JAY Records, but musical theatre fans will likely be familiar with the runaway hit song of the show, “Blue Room”, which is given a splendid rendition by Ella Fitzgerald (see the album featured on the right). The arrangement performed by the Revellers in the YouTube clip below also offers a great interpretation of the song. A charming number, “Blue Room” is a memorable little ditty from the Rodgers and Hart songbook and like “Manhattan” before it really showcased the style into which they’d grow throughout their collaboration.

On the whole, The Girl Friend is a typical show of its time – a fun bit of silliness that would have resonated with 1920s audiences. Want to add your own thoughts about the show? Head to the comment box below.

Posted in Forgotten Musicals Friday | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Saturday List: Broadway’s 10 Longest-Running Musicals Ranked!

Posted on January 29, 2022 by David Fick

One way of measuring success in musical theatre is the length of a musical’s Broadway run. Of course, that’s just one measure of success and it certainly doesn’t always take craft and artistry into account. As Julian Woolford says in How Musicals Work, it’s easy to write a bad musical, bad musicals can be produced and they can even be huge hits. There’s certainly at least one stinker in the ten longest-running Broadway musicals – but of course, there are more here that have brought years of joy and fandom to show tune-lovers around the world! For the purposes of this list, I’m mostly looking at the shows as dramatic works rather than ranking the particular productions as seen on Broadway – although sometimes the production elements are inseparable from the show itself.

10. Oh! Calcutta!

Let’s get the uncontestably stinky Oh! Calcutta! out of the way first. This so-called erotic musical revue is little more than the gold standard for sexism, misogyny and tastelessness. Well, at least it was the best at something other than raking in the big bucks over its thirteen-year run of 5959 performances starting in 1976, when the show was revived – what an indictment on us as human beings. Conceived by Kenneth Tynan, the sketches were written by Samuel Beckett, John Lennon, Sam Shepard, Leonard Melfi, Edna O’Brien, Sherman Yellen, Jules Feiffer and Tynan himself, while Peter Schickele, Robert Dennis and Stanley Walden provided the score. Beckett withdrew the rights for the use of his scene following the debut of the original off-Broadway production in 1969. At that time, Tynan was so desperate to give the show an air of legitimacy that he tried to seduce Harold Pinter into directing it. That task eventually fell to Jacques Levy, who would return to stage the long-running revival. This one isn’t so bad it’s good, it’s so bad that you can hardly begin to fathom how deeply awful it is.

9. Beauty and the Beast

On film, Beauty and the Beast is one of Disney’s greatest animated features. It’s pretty much perfect, once you get over little flubs like Gaston not noticing the rather prominent pictures in Belle’s book in an early scene in the film. On stage, there were certainly moments of magic to keep it running for 5461 performances, but the show feels a little padded with book-writer Linda Woolverton not having enough of a sense of where this adaptation was going in its transition from one medium to the other. Tim Rice provided additional lyrics for the new songs in the stage show, but “If I Can’t Love Her” aside, the songs don’t really live up to the small masterworks they augmented. The law of diminishing returns was further proved when the property was developed for a live-action adaptation. Still, at the heart of it all, we have Alan Menken and Howard Ashman giving the show its heart and soul in the original set of songs they crafted for the film. For those musical moments, we can very eternally grateful.

8. The Lion King

The Lion King is a show that causes a bit of cognitive dissonance, for want of a better word. It has an incredibly moving opening and some astounding sequences that pop up throughout the show, but it is a little bitty as it shifts modes in pursuit of the different members of its wide target audience. I mean, did anyone really need “The Morning Report,” “Chow Down” or “The Madness of King Scar,” the new numbers provided by Elton John and Tim Rice to augment the 1994 film’s score? The song spots might not be badly identified and the last of the three works in a crucial plot point, but the execution is forgettable. The development of Hans Zimmer’s themes from the film score and the extension of Lebo M’s contributions to the film and on its follow-up concept album, Rhythm of the Pridelands. The thing that really elevates the show, though, is Julie Taymor’s staging and her ingenious use of puppets to tell the story. After all, a little “Circle of Life” goes a long way – so the show’s play for the audience’s love is won at the top of the show and it continues to run more than 9000 performances after its opening night.

7. Wicked

Wicked is a proper blockbuster. Like the perfect summer popcorn movie, it is a super piece of popular entertainment. While its tone is much lighter than the book by Gregory Maguire upon which it is based, Stephen Schwartz proved a wiz at filling the score with memorable tunes and incorporating Oz/was rhymes, while book-writer Winnie Holzman leaves no word unozzified – although she does duff up the ending for the sake of sentiment. Even so, as the years go by, Wicked is a bit of a gift that keeps on giving almost 7000 performances in as we hear new Elphabas riffing it up in “The Wizard and I” and “Defying Gravity” in pursuit of their re-interpretation of the iconic Wicked Witch of the West.

6. Mamma Mia!

Mamma Mia! ran for 5758 performances before it closed on Broadway and remains the longest-running jukebox musical at the time of writing this column. It’s a bit of fluff that has become something of a franchise, with a hugely successful film version that led to a sequel and inspired Cher to record an album of ABBA covers. The first-rate ABBA songs aside, what makes Mamma Mia! work where other jukebox musicals have missed the mark is in Catherine Johnson’s knowledge of what she was writing and the subsequent way she exploits this by weaving that knowledge into its overall tone and including several asides that let the audience into the joke. In many ways, this is the ultimate party show and it a joy to experience.

5. Cats

7485 performances on Broadway. A studio proshot that has a huge fanbase. A misguided film that was the cat-butt of all jokes and sent composer Andrew Lloyd Webber in search of a pet dog. These are some of the key moments in the history of Cats, the musical that divides musical theatre lovers into superfans or superhaters. But here’s the thing: despite the endless (and, it has to be said, sometimes valid) nitpicks that the haters list about the marriage of the T. S. Eliot lyrics to Lloyd Webber’s tunes or the lack of a plot (although I wonder whether those who claim this actually understand the definition of the term), Cats works theatrically. When a top-notch cast performs the show and totally understands the nuances of the world it is creating, it makes for a funtastic couple of hours in the theatre. Let the memory live again!

4. The Phantom of the Opera

Having clocked more than 13 000 performances on Broadway, The Phantom of the Opera is another show that divides people into superfans and superhaters. I mean, this appears to be the general trend when it comes to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musicals, no matter who he chooses as his collaborators, in this case, Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe. Lloyd Webber’s work here, layered in style and rich in allusion, played a key role in the trend of musicalising the nineteenth century with elements of pop music, but it never works as well in the copycat shows, in which old vs new music isn’t a key thematic element. What elevates this show is Harold Prince’s approach to it as a campelisious melodrama and his original staging of the piece, which embraces old theatre tech and mixes it with then-current theatre tech to make for some wonderfully entertaining moments of pure theatre. In many ways, the further it strays from its roots and the more seriously it takes itself, the less compelling it becomes. But when it all comes together just right, it’s a blast.

3. Les Miserables

The 6680-performance Broadway run of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s modern classic, Les Miserables, seems short in comparison with how long it feels the show has been around. This is likely because of the London production which ran twice as long, making the show a ubiquitous part of the modern musical theatre landscape. While it has a few head-scratchers when it comes to the way it uses musical motifs and so on, the show’s overall redemptive narrative arc and liberal use of pathos throughout the show connects with all of us who long for a time when we can hear all the people sing rather than the few at the top who set up systemic structures to keep them in their ivory towers. It’s hard to shake the feeling that you’re watching something significant happen in this story about social and personal transformation, the nature of morality and faith. It cuts deep.

2. Chicago

Still running as it heads for the 10000-performance milestone, Chicago is a show that came into its own two decades after its original run. Yes, I am aware that this is not how the show looked in the 1970s and that yes, there was a different approach to the set and costumes back then and that yes, there is are loud arguments about how inferior the approach of the revival is in comparison. In my view, both approaches are valid so that’s not an argument you’re going to win with me. You prefer the old one? Fine. You prefer the revival? Fine! Yes, I’m aware that – shock, horror! – Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse’s book has been tweaked. Fine by me – the show is better off without things like Billy’s homophobic jibe at his tailor and I have no problems with revivals that rebuild a show from the ground up, an approach that works wonders as often as it doesn’t. Chicago was in many ways ahead of its time, but it’s difficult to argue that it didn’t find its stride until the 1990s in a very different world with very different aesthetics. The traditionalists can clutch their pearls, but this streamlined Chicago is all that jazz and then some too. After all, it has what counts most: a convincing concept and a fantastic score from Ebb and John Kander as well as a way of telling a story as old as time in a way that means something to us today.

1. A Chorus Line

A Chorus Line is a classic, one of those great pieces of art that attests to the principle that the more specific a piece of theatre is, the more universally it resonates with its audience. Its memorable score by Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban is studded with numbers that are by turns thrilling, moving and rib-tickling, while the vignettes relayed by the company of dancers in James Kirkwood Jr and Nicholas Dante’s book match them step for step. Paul’s heart-rending monologue about his journey to becoming a dancer is unforgettable, as is Cassie’s laying everything on the line in “The Music and the Mirror.” The show is bookended by two thrilling sequences, “I Hope I Get It” and “One.” The extended “Montage” is a brilliant piece of dramaturgy. Everything that it takes to be a dancer is scaffolded into a story of what it means to be human. There was a time when nobody could imagine a show surpassing the length of the original production’s run of 6137 performances and when revisiting the show today, it is easy to understand why.

Have any thoughts you’d like to share? Think we’ve ranked something too high or low? Head to the comments and let us know!

Posted in The Saturday List | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Forgotten Musicals Friday: DEAREST ENEMY

Posted on January 28, 2022 by David Fick

The success of The Garrick Gaieties opened up doors for Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Although they had tried to get Dearest Enemy produced before, those who were considered to be “in the know” had thought that a musical by a relatively untried songwriting team that dealt with an apparently trivial event during the American Revolutionary War would never fly. But with a hit like “Manhattan” behind them, Dearest Enemy suddenly became a viable proposition. With a book by Herbert Fields, direction by John Murray Anderson, the direction of the libretto by Charles Sinclair and Harry Ford and dance and ensemble direction by Carl Hemmer, the show ended up running for 286 performances. The show made Helen Ford a star and how much of that had to do with her entrance wearing only a barrel is up for conjecture!

At the centre of Dearest Enemy is the historic incident of how Mary Lindley Murray detained the British troops in her home, thereby allowing 4000 American soldiers to sneak past and assemble in Washington Heights in 1776. Fields threw in a couple of fictional love stories, between Jane, Mary’s daughter, and Harry Tyron, the British general’s son and between Betsy Burke, Mary’s niece, and Sir John Copeland, a British captain, and Rodgers and Hart gave them all a sunny score through which all and sundry could be romanced.

It’s nice to have a musical from the 1920s with so much material available to explore. In the 1950s, a television broadcast of the show was flighted and this is now available on DVD – wonderful! A cast recording lifted from the soundtrack of the television special is available, as is a studio recording from the 1980s. Truly wonderful, however, is the 2012 studio cast recording from New World Records, a jam-packed, beautifully performed recording of the score. It has the ring of authenticity in its approach, but it never feels jarring on our modern ear either. It gorgeously showcases the finest moments of the score: its cornerstone, “Here in My Arms,” the characterful and witty “I’d Like to Hide It,” the touching “Bye and Bye” and the catchy and irreverent “Sweet Peter.” Personally, I think it’s an essential cast album in any musical theatre fan’s collection.

Although the history books sadly seem to consider Dearest Enemy somewhat unremarkable, I think it has a bit more joy on offer all told, even more so given the period in which it was created. And with retooled and “new” Gerswhin shows like Crazy For You and Nice Work If You Can Get It surfacing all the time, perhaps it’s time that someone dusted off Dearest Enemy for the audiences of today.

Want to add your own thoughts about Dearest Enemy? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.

Posted in Forgotten Musicals Friday | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Forgotten Musicals Friday: THE GARRICK GAIETIES

Posted on January 21, 2022 by David Fick

While Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s songs had been heard on Broadway prior to The Garrick Gaieties, neither A Lonely Romeo nor Poor Little Ritz Girl did much to advance their careers. What was missing for them was a breakout hit, a song to infiltrate the public’s mind in the same way pop stars have their breakout hits today. After all, the music of the stage was the popular music of the time. Cue The Garrick Gaieties, which provided just that stepping stone in the career of Rodgers and Hart owing to its introduction (by Sterling Holloway and June Cochrane) of their first runaway hit, “Manhattan.”

This show, which was a revue, would lead the pair forward to bigger and better things. I’m not the biggest fan of revues. They are hard to get right and often their topicality wanes as time goes by. What would modern audiences make of skits and songs based around the relationship between President Coolidge and his wife, the Scopes trial, the New York City subway system and the Theatre Guild itself? Not much, I’d wager, even if they did offer some entertaining insights into the past. As it is, The Garrick Gaieties had two sequels and then faded into obscurity. Does that mean its material should fade along with it? No. In fact, I’d love to see a proper recording of the scores of all three revues.

Because there aren’t, it complicates any discussion of the show somewhat. I certainly haven’t heard all of the songs from The Garrick Gaieties, nor am I familiar with the sketches at all. Of the songs that I do know, I would pick “Manhattan” as my favourite: it is charming and lovely and is such a vibrant personality piece. It’s instantly memorable and it’s easy to see why it was a smash hit for Rodgers and Hart.

It might be somewhat unfair to choose a least favourite song from the show because I’m only basing my choice on a selection of songs with which I am familiar, but I’d say that “April Fool” holds less appeal for me than the rest: it’s not a bad song, but it lacks – perhaps – the effortless charm of the best Rodgers and Hart songs.

Of course, Rodgers and Hart weren’t the only contributors to The Garrick Gaieties. Other songwriters included Benjamin Kaye, Mana Zucca, Edith Meiser and Dudley Digges, while music by Tata Nacho was used for the “Rancho Mexicano” number at the top of the second act. Sketches were also provided by Kaye and Meiser, with other contributions by Sam Jaffe, Morrie Ryskind, Arthur Sullivan and Howard Green. Directed by Philip Loeb, with musical staging by Herbert Fields, The Garrick Gaieties ran for 211 performances from June through November 1925, having had a two-performance benefit in May of that year.

Want to add your own thoughts about The Garrick Gaieties? Head to the comment box and share your thoughts!

Posted in Forgotten Musicals Friday | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Saturday List: 10 Times the Musical Challenged Its Dismissal as a Relevant Art Form

Posted on January 15, 2022 by David Fick

Driving in the car this morning, with the original cast recording of Dreamgirls blaring from my speakers, I was reminded just how vital and versatile an art form the musical is. Although many people dismiss the musical as a relevant form of artistic expression, the musical can easily hold its own alongside any form of theatre you might care to mention. So I thought that today, I might put together a Saturday list of just ten times musicals have been completely in step with the world around them, ten times the musical did more than simply entertain – despite its easy dismissal by those with limited points of reference when it comes to this glorious form of theatre.

10. Dreamgirls

Let’s start with the song that made me think about all of this in the first place. I was grooving along with Effie and company when “Cadillac Car” started playing. There’s been so much to read online about cultural appropriation recently, but I had forgotten how directly Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen address the issue in this musical and in this song in particular. This is even more remarkable when one considers that Dreamgirls was written in 1981! The film version, from which the clip below is taken, softens the commentary a little without losing it completely, so you’ll have to track down a copy of the original Broadway cast recording if you want to absorb the full impact of Krieger and Eyen had to say – or better yet, catch a production of the show when it’s playing near you.


9. Fun Home

More than ever, the worth of open honesty about gender identity in the world that we live in is being affirmed, even though there are still many challenges to face. One moment of triumphant self-expression can be found in the contemporary Broadway hit, Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s Fun Home, a song about the recognition of one’s identity: “Ring of Keys”. The performance of that song on mainstream television at the Tony Awards some years ago now, in which the musical’s protagonist Alison, recognizes her kinship with a delivery woman – ‘an old-school butch’ – in a luncheonette, was a special moment. There’s an ever-growing sense that the time for LGBTIQIA+ issues to take centre stage is now, despite the overwhelmingly and sometimes devastatingly different experiences that exist for people who identify as a part of this community internationally. It’s a great pity that this revolutionary work wasn’t awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

8. Show Boat

Show Boat was a breakthrough musical in terms of weaving serious issues into the fabric of a show. It’s no mistake that the name Oscar Hammerstein II, who created the show in collaboration with Jerome Kern, appears on three musicals in this list. The man knew what musicals could achieve and he had the vision, the courage and the tenacity to shift the form into something more malleable than the operettas, light musical comedies and revues of the day. Show Boat still told a story of enduring love, but it told its tale against a backdrop of racial inequality, miscegenation and racial prejudice, all of which shifted the potential melodrama of its through-line towards tragedy, without ever straying into the pitfalls of the operatic. “Come now,” I hear the sceptics say, “the show is set in the South. It’s impossible for a narrative set in that period not to reference slavery. Besides, it’s a musical. Like Gone With the Wind, Show Boat views the black experience in a cursory and sentimental fashion.” It’s a common misconception that Show Boat deals with slavery; the piece is set some twenty years after the abolition of slavery. What Show Boat addresses, is the dynamics of race relations that came about as a result of the abolition. And while it does not approach the full complexity of black narratives of the time, it did not sugarcoat those experiences either. The hardships faced by Joe and Queenie – characters that are written like real people, not caricatures – are not viewed with a patronizing eye. Interracial marriage was treated seriously, its destruction a biting commentary on the prejudice against black people that raged through the country both in the 1880s and in 1927, the year in which the show premiered. And on the production side, Show Boat was the first musical to feature a cast that was racially integrated from the leads through to the chorus. It was a landmark show that acknowledged the complex social and cultural situation of the time.


7. The Wild Party

There has been no other song since the dawn of the 21st century that has captured the existential crisis of the new millennium as lucidly as Michael John LaChiusa’s “People Like Us” in his version of The Wild Party, created with George C. Wolfe. This adaptation of Joseph Moncure March’s poem achieves something that Andrew Lippa’s simply does not assimilate: it manages to capture the period brilliantly as well as the reason why the poem and its characters still resonate in this day and age. And this song, this meditation on life, exposes humanity’s deepest personal fears to itself. “People Like Us”, like the musical from which it originates, is strident and glorious, a stark reminder of where we’ve come from and where we are.

6. Oklahoma!

In 1943, people were feeling the full force of World War II. It must have been devastating. Seeing your friends and family going off to war. Hearing news about Hitler. Wondering whether peace would ever return. Wondering whether people could ever rise above their differences and circumstances to make a better world. And in the midst of this, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! was born – not simply a musical about a picnic, as some would have it, but a musical about the making of community, about building bridges, about contributing to something bigger than yourself. It’s little wonder, then, that Oklahoma! was a smash hit and that it has endured for more than 70 years, enjoying a landmark revival at London’s National Theatre in 1998 where Trevor Nunn reminded picnic-minded naysayers about everything that Oklahoma! has to offer.

5. District Six

Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that Broadway isn’t the be-all and end-all of musical theatre. Internationally, musical theatre also looks the world around it directly in the eye, and District Six: the Musical is one such example. Broadway babies will most likely know David Kramer and Taliep Petersen by Kat and the Kings, their show which ran on Broadway in 1999. Kat and the Kings, like Kramer’s more recent adaptation of Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers, was also a story set in District Six, the residential area in Cape Town from which more than 60 000 residents were forcibly removed during the 1970s at the hands of the apartheid regime. Neither Kat and the Kings nor Blood Brothers captured the edginess of Kramer and Petersen’s original collaboration, which brought together, during apartheid, diverse audiences in the theatre, highlighted the trials and tribulations of those who were affected by forced removals and served as a springboard for the careers of many disadvantaged performers. Although a post-apartheid revival of the show was preserved on film, the original production captured a moment in time, reminding us that the arts are also a socio-political record of a country’s history.

4. On the Town

Another wartime musical, Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Leonard Bernstein’s On the Town premiered in 1944. It’s story detailed the events of three sailors on shore leave at that precise moment in time in New York, its resonance clear to all who were living in that context. But there was something that pushed On the Town beyond narrative resonance. Although Show Boat had a mixed-race cast, On the Town was also noticed for its multi-racial casting, most notably perhaps for the presence of Japanese American dancer Sono Osato as Ivy. Why did this particular cast member draw such attention? Well, consider for a moment that the USA’s entry into World War II was a direct reaction to the Imperial Japanese Navy’s attack on Pearl Harbour. Think about the heightened conflict between the Americans and the Japanese in the years since that attack. Weigh up what the internment of Japanese Americans meant for those who were forced to relocate their lives and who were subject to incarceration that the government of the time found ways to justify. And then look anew at the original production of On the Town. Ivy is a leading role. She is first presented as a beauty queen, “Miss Turnstiles”. She is the love interest of the US naval officer who is the protagonist of On the Town. And she turns out, like everyone else in the musical, to be just another person trying to make sense of the crazy intensity that World War II forced upon everyday life. Connect the dots, folks – it isn’t difficult.


3. Pacific Overtures

In the context of 20th-century history, the 1970s is viewed as something of a pivot point. Social progression clashed with political conservatism. Economic systems faced huge upheaval. Women’s rights and economic freedom were on the rise. It was the time of Watergate, Harvey Milk, the Camp David accords and Idi Amin. Individualism, conformity, community, decolonization, neo-liberalism – all of these were key points of this decade of change. Perhaps one of Stephen Sondheim’s most difficult shows, Pacific Overtures, with its book by John Weidman, takes a look at the effect of shifting global politics by placing the westernization of Japan under the spotlight. There’s so much going on in Pacific Overtures that it’s hard to sum up briefly: at once, Sondheim and Weidman are tracking the (d)evolution of Japanese culture, deconstructing orientalism (a topic that would become the subject of a critical study by Edward Said two years later) and exploring the interface between American and Japanese musical and theatrical expressions. The original Broadway production was filmed and broadcast on Japanese television in 1976, giving us insight into everything that was packed into two hours and twenty minutes of an unadulterated coup de théâtre. If there’s a place to begin, it’s by watching that broadcast.


2. South Pacific

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were under huge pressure to cut the song “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” during the tryouts of South Pacific. James Michener, who wrote the short stories upon which the musical was based, was approached by a delegation urging him to add his voice to their outrage at the song’s statement against racial bigotry and the insidious manner in which it seeped into society. One of the critics of the show’s Boston tryout, Elliot Norton, also recommended that the song be cut or, at least, softened. Hammerstein would have none of it, exclaiming that the song was what the show was about. And indeed, South Pacific is about that very issue, how learned prejudices affect our daily interactions. Exposing the lie that Americans uphold one of the ideals of equality that is so prominent in the Declaration of Independence is what earned South Pacific its Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and what makes it endure almost seven decades after its premiere.

1. Follies

There are people who think that James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim’s Follies is just about a party. There are people who think that “The Story of Lucy and Jessie” is about Phyllis and Sally. There are people who struggle to see why it’s Ben and not Sally who is at the centre of it all, although Sally certainly does pull one’s attention – after all that’s who she is. But these people aren’t listening to what’s going on. They aren’t watching the show or listening to the score or appreciating the book mindfully. And yet, there are those who simply get it. A song like “I’m Still Here” isn’t only a damn good songs, but also a brilliant deconstruction of American history through the lens of popular culture. Follies also has had the misfortune of suffering a number of revisions and the piece that it was intended to be, exists only in legend. One day, Follies will be restored to its original glory, finally able to resonate and be as devastating as it is in its original version.


I am sure that by now you, dear reader, have realised that this is neither a ranked nor a comprehensive list of musicals that responded to a moment in time and that managed to capture it as well as any other art form could. Musicals are, after all, a medium rather than a genre, capably of embracing any number of subjects and styles. What’s your favourite musical that challenged dismissals of the form as a relevant artistic expression? Share it in the comment box below.

Posted in The Saturday List | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Forgotten Musicals Friday: POOR LITTLE RITZ GIRL

Posted on January 14, 2022 by David Fick

Having taken a look at the birth of the Rodgers and Hart sound last week, the period in which they established themselves, the 1920s, and its musicals have suddenly become quite fascinating to me again. So it occurred to me that this might be a good time to delve into some more of the first few Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart collaborations for the Forgotten Musicals Friday blogs this month. Following Fly With Me, Poor Little Ritz Girl was the first Broadway show that showcased Rodgers and Hart’s talents to any great extent and so that’s what we’re looking at today.

A song by the pair, “Any Old Place with You”, had popped up in A Lonely Romeo the previous season, but with Poor Little Ritz Girl, the songwriting team were offered the opportunity to create a complete score. Hart retooled some of the lyrics to tunes that Rodgers had written for Fly With Me, with “Peek in Pekin” becoming “Love’s Intense in Tents,” “Don’t Love Me Like Othello” becoming “You Can’t Fool Your Dreams” and “Dreaming True” becoming “Love Will Call.” (Thanks to Stanley Green for capturing that bit of shobiz history in The Rodgers and Hammerstein Story!)

In the end, eight of the songs they wrote were cut, leaving them seven spots in the score. The rest of the songs were written by Sigmund Romberg and Alex Gerber, and the experience was a devastating one for Rodgers and Hart. Long story short, producer Lew Fields lost faith in the young team and they didn’t find out their songs had been replaced until they arrived for opening night on Broadway. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Fields had bought their songs ouright, Rodgers and Hart might have been able to establish their own memorial pool, a la Patti LuPone following the Sunset Boulevard debacle! Given that they themselves had replaced Joseph Meyer and Vincent Bryan when the show was heading for Boston, an older and wiser pair of writers might perhaps have seen it coming. Although Hart was 25 years old, it’s incredible to think that Rodgers was still a teenager when this show was being created.

Directed by Ned Wayburn with choreography by David Bennett, the show sported a book by Lew M. Fields and George Campbell – at least according to the Internet Broadway Database. The sheet music that accompanies the above image credits the book to Henry M. Stillman. Meryle Secrest credits it to Stillman and William J. O’Neill in Somewhere For Me. Either way, the story didn’t amount to much, with the plot revolving around a Southern hick who rents the New York apartment of a wealthy bachelor who is supposed to be out of town. This all led to the typical musical comedy antics of the period.

It’s really a pity that there’s not much more to know about Poor Little Ritz Girl. There isn’t a recording of the score available and it’s a score I’ve wanted to hear for a long time. Cue one of the joys of the COVID lockdown: a virtual production of the show from a YouTube channel called “Where the Good Songs Go.” It’s a treat and you should really check out everything else they have to offer!

Keen to share any thoughts about Poor Little Ritz Girl? Head to the comment box below. I’d love to hear them!

Posted in Forgotten Musicals Friday | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Saturday List: Multiple Best Actress in a Musical Tony Winners

Posted on January 8, 2022 by David Fick

Today, there is something of a diva-off at Musical Cyberspace. For this week’s Saturday list, we’re going to rank the multiple-Tony Award winners in the Best Actress in a Musical category, mentioning and sharing video clips of some favourite performances. Eleven actresses have won the Tony award in this category more than once, with Angela Lansbury leading the pack with four wins. But let’s kick off the list with one of the two Broadway divas with a triple win at the Tony Awards.

11. Mary Martin

The much-beloved Mary Martin won three Tony Awards, for her work on South Pacific, Peter Pan and The Sound of Music. With a fourth nomination in the bag, for I Do! I Do!, it is safe to say that she is one of Broadway’s golden age treasures. That said, of all those classic Broadway divas, Martin is one whose appeal doesn’t always resonate with everyone today – especially for those who have no memory of her performing live or who haven’t tracked down video footage of her in action. Nonetheless, her body of work can’t be contested and she put her stamp on a couple of other roles she didn’t originate, including Annie Oakley and Dolly Levi. And of course, if one goes back to the start of her Broadway career, it was her performance of “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” in Cole Porter’s Leave It to Me! (with a book by Sam and Bella Spewack) that made her a musical theatre sensation. This performance of that song is from the 1946 film, Night and Day.


10. Christine Ebersole

Christine Ebersole’s first Broadway musical was On the Twentieth Century in 1978, where she was a replacement Agnes and an understudy Lily Garland. She then played roles like Ado Annie in Oklahoma!, Guenevere in Camelot and Gerta in Harrigan and Hart. She only received her first nomination in 2001, for playing Dorothy Brock in 42nd Street. Luckily, it was the one category to which The Producers – which swept that year’s Tony Awards – could not lay claim and Ebersole beat out Blythe Danner, Randy Graff, Faith Prince and Marla Schaffel to bring home the award. Ebersole’s most compelling role was still to come and in 2006, she started her run as ‘Little Edie’ Beale and Young Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale in Grey Gardens, racking up her second nomination and win. With many film and television credits under her belt too, it’s a pity that this great musical theatre actress hasn’t appeared on the Broadway stage more often in her musicals in a career that spans more than four decades. Here she is, performing “The Revolutionary Costume of Today” from Grey Gardens.


9. Sutton Foster

Many Broadway traditionalists are clutching their pearls at the idea of Sutton Foster’s current gig at the time of writing, playing the traditionally legit soprano role of Marian in The Music Man. As for me, I’m all for new interpretations when it comes to revivals and the buzz from the first previews was great – so let’s see. Foster won her first Tony Award as Best Actress in a Musical playing the titular role in Thoroughly Modern Millie. Having covered roles like Sandy in Grease and Eponine in Les Miserables and appeared in The Scarlet Pimpernel and Annie, Foster then replaced Erin Dilly when Thoroughly Modern Millie transferred to New York. Her success in that show led to performances in Little Women, The Drowsy Chaperone, Young Frankenstein, Shrek and Violet, a set of musicals ranging in quality from mediocre to magnificent. Foster earned nominations for all of them, except Young Frankenstein. In 2011, Foster had her second win playing Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes. Here is she performing “Show Off” from The Drowsy Chaperone, where she was nominated against Patti LuPone, Kelli O’Hara and Chita Rivera and lost the award to LaChanze, who won for her performance in The Color Purple.

8. Lauren Bacall

Lauren Bacall starred in just two Broadway musicals, Applause and Woman of the Year and won Tony Awards for both. One of the great movie stars, Bacall earned herself a third spot in musical theatre history, with her name dropped into “Rainbow High”, one of the songs in Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Evita. That lyric would be sung on Broadway by another two-time Best Actress in a Musical Tony Award winner, Patti LuPone. It is a testament to how distinctive Bacall was as a star, her gravelly voice being unmistakable in the Charles Strouse-Lee Adams and John Kander-Fred Ebb songs that studded the scores of her two shows respectively. When she passed away in 2014, it was a loss felt by many in the entertainment industry. Here she is at the Tony Awards, singing the best number from Woman of the Year, “One of the Boys”.

7. Donna Murphy

In many ways, Donna Murphy is the thinking man’s diva. When Murphy takes the stage, you can be sure that you’re going to get a layered and beautifully acted performance. There are things that she finds in the roles that she plays that are surprising to see, even in a tried and tested show like The King and I. This trademark of Murphy’s performances was also evident in her ebullient turn in Wonderful Town. Murphy’s other Tony Award was for a role she created, the often but unfairly maligned Passion, in which her knack for getting deep under the skin of her characters was fully on display, as can be seen in the clip of “Loving You” below. Murphy’s most recent Broadway stint was as Bette Midler’s alternate in Hello, Dolly! Let’s look forward to the day we see her above the title in a vehicle suited to her talents once again!

6. Gwen Verdon

Gwen Verdon is famous for two things. Firstly, there is the Bob Fosse link. For many years she was known primarily as Fosse’s muse and it is pleasing to hear increasingly more about her own agency in working with Fosse. Secondly, there is her distinctive voice. Like Judi Dench, she has that catch in her throat that allows the voice to ramp up the pathos or play things up for laughs as needed. Verdon introduced some fine solo character spots in her career, including “Whatever Lola Wants” in Damn Yankees, “If They Could See Me Now” in Sweet Charity and “Funny Honey” in Chicago, but it’s her two numbers with a whole bunch of boys that leave us with the biggest grins, namely “Roxie” (Ethan Mordden does a great breakdown of this number in his book, All That Jazz) and “I’m a Brass Band,” which performed in the clip from The Ed Sullivan Show below. Gosh, she knew how to own a stage!

5. Liza Minnelli

Perhaps if Liza Minnelli’s spot on this list were to be considered with only her two Best Actress Tony Award-winning performances in Flora the Red Menace and The Act in mind, she might not place this high. But Minnelli is a legend. She may not have spent the larger part of her career on Broadway, but in many ways, she represents absolutely the spirit of Broadway. She is “New York, New York.” She is her speech about Ethel Merman before her performance of “Some People” on My Favourite Broadway: The Leading Ladies. She is the great gay icon who dares to sing Sondheim songs in the style of the Pet Shop Boys. Few know how to build a number like Liza, something she’s always had. Here she is at 19, doing just that in “Sing Happy” from Flora the Red Menace.

4. Chita Rivera

With a staggering eight nominations in the Best Actress category at the Tony Awards over a career that spans more than seven decades, Chita Rivera’s wins came for her legendary performances as Anna in The Rink and Aurora in Kiss of the Spider Woman. Rivera is pure class and an absolute pro, elevating everything she lends her name to. She wrote the blueprint for the best kind of Velma in Chicago and scored two further nominations in the Featured Actress category when she wasn’t billed above the title. Rivera wasn’t nominated at all for her legendary breakthrough performance as the original Anita in West Side Story. That year, the Featured Actress category was filled out with some of the leading ladies of the season so she couldn’t get a look in. Anyway, here she is making everything look effortless in “Where You Are” from Kiss of the Spider Woman.

3. Bernadette Peters

Is it possible for anyone not to adore Bernadette Peters? Anytime she appears in a musical, she lights up the stage. And yet for everyone who loved her in Sunday in the Park like with George, there’s someone who didn’t love her Tony Award-winning turn in the title role of Annie Get Your Gun. And for every brickbat thrown her way on a musical theatre message board for her work in Follies, there are a dozen bouquets for her Tony Award-winning performance in Song and Dance. It’s a conundrum. Nonetheless, she’s warm and funny and by all accounts, a brilliant human being. And her concerts are amazing. Here she is in one of them at the Royal Festival Hall in London, performing “Unexpected Song” from that last-mentioned show.

2. Patti LuPone

Patti LuPone will take on anything from challenging roles (winning Tony Awards for Evita and Gypsy) to Andrew Lloyd Webber (enabling her to build The Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool after the Sunset Boulevard scandal) to photographers in the audience (earning the love and respect of theatregoers worldwide as they listened, somewhat ironically, to the bootleg of her having someone escorted from the house as she headed into “Rose’s Turn” in Gypsy). Bless her, she is even doing her part to bring in audiences after the COVID-19 lockdowns by delivering safety messages as part of the marketing drive of the current Broadway production of Company in which she is playing Joanne. The winning thing about LuPone is how passionate she is about what’s close to her heart – and the theatre is very close to her heart. Her autobiography is an excellent read. Here are some clips from 1980 of LuPone in Evita. She’s a force of nature.

1. Angela Lansbury

Angela Lansbury always refers to herself as a character actress and attributes this as the main thing that has enabled her to play the wide range of roles she has played in her career. On the musical stage, she was definitive as Mame and Nellie Lovett. She is the greatest Rose. Those performances earned her three of her Best Actress in a Musical Tony Awards, the fourth coming from a second-tier Jerry Herman show, Dear World. That wasn’t her only musical flop, though. She started off her musical theatre career in the distinguished flop, Anyone Can Whistle, one of those shows that would have had a longer run had all the people who claimed to have seen it did. What a career transition that was! While her last Broadway musical was the 2009 revival of A Little Night Music, she’s still “bobbing along, singing a song” and introduced the finale of 2018’s Mary Poppins Returns, “Nowhere to Go But Up.” Here’s something from a bit further back though, the footage from her 1974 turn in Gypsy.

And that’s that! Who’s your favourite of these multiple Best Actress Tony Award winners? And who do you think will be next to double up? Head to the comments and let us know!

Posted in The Saturday List | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Forgotten Musicals Friday: FLY WITH ME

Posted on January 7, 2022 by David Fick

For the first Forgotten Musicals Friday of 2022, we’re jumping back in time more than 100 years to take a look at an early Rodgers and Hart show, one that had some of the first Rodgers and Hammerstein songs thrown in for fun: Fly With Me. The combination of the talents of Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II, two of them being students and the third a young professional, makes Fly With Me quite the curiosity piece, perhaps even more so than it might be when simply viewed as a snapshot of the origins of these three theatremakers. This is of course, for the uninitiated, because Rodgers would go on to have extensive separate careers with both Hart and Hammerstein.

Fly With Me was created as an entry for the Columbia Varsity Show competition of 1920, and beat out three other entries to take home the top prize. As student shows are wont to be, Fly With Me is a show that has a clear target audience in mind. Descriptions of the gag-filled storyline, which placed a bunch of students onto a Soviet-ruled island, link closely with what student interests must have been following the Great War and during the revolution of the Russian Empire into the socialist Soviet Union, the latter which was taking place at the time. One of the highlights of the performance was reportedly a group of chorus girls who turned out to be men in drag. Charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent are so often qualities celebrated by campus audiences, as they deserve to be!

The score of Fly With Me includes many songs typical of the period, including satirical ditties and song-sketches of life with twists of what was considered exotic from an American point of view. Creating the show was a serious business, including a rewrite of the original book. The rewrite was based on another play submitted to the competition by Milton Kroopf at the suggestion of Hammerstein, who was serving as a judge on the panel selecting the winning show that year. Hammerstein’s lyrics were also interpolated into the final product through the inclusion of two songs written for a 1919 show first titled Up Stage and Down and then, with many revisions and Hart serving as its director, Twinkling Eyes. So that he could conduct the orchestra of Fly With Me himself, Rodgers had to join the musicians’ union, thus becoming the youngest conductor in New York.

While there aren’t vast resources when it comes to Fly With Me, there is a cast recording of a 1980 university revival of the show available. What’s so interesting about the show is that certainly sounds of its time, but yet it showcases Rodgers’s genius in creating a musical hook, Hart’s typical wit with emotions at a distance and Hammerstein’s sense of reaching for the poetic. As a historical document, it’s a worthwhile investment for a serious musical theatre fan. Other snippets of information can be found in books like Meryle Secrest’s Rodgers biography, Somewhere for Me, Frederick Nolan’s The Sound of Their Music and Stanley Green’s The Rodgers and Hammerstein Story, all of which were consulted as I put together this post.

Keen to share any thoughts about Fly With Me? Head to the comment box below. We’d love to hear your reactions and insights!

Posted in Forgotten Musicals Friday | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Saturday List: The Best WEST SIDE STORY on Record

Posted on January 1, 2022 by David Fick

There are many recordings of Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents’s classic musical West Side Story on the market: several cast recordings and two soundtracks as well as countless studio recordings and cover versions. More than six decades since the show’s 1957 debut, this is irrefutably one of the great musical theatre scores. To mark the release of Steven Spielberg’s new film and its accompanying motion picture soundtrack, Musical Cyberspace is revisiting a favourite topic: just which recording of West Side Story is ‘the gold-medal kid with the heavyweight crown?

5. Tie: 1985 and 1993 Studio Cast Recordings

Here are two recordings for the price of one, mainly for the completists. The earlier operatic recording of West Side Story includes all the instrumental bits and pieces while the later studio recording based on the Leicester Haymarket Theatre’s production has valuable snippets of dialogue that place the numbers in context. Conducted by Leonard Bernstein himself, the 1985 recording is – star quality aside – miscast. The cast sounds far too old and the delivery is sung with little emphasis on interpretation, let alone acting. There’s no spirit or passion, which are the two things that ignite a good production of the show and which should characterise any good recording of the score. The 1985 recording has only one thing to recommend beyond being complete: Caroline O’Connor as Anita. However, her performance is so energized and committed that she seems over the top in comparison with her mysteriously comatose colleagues.

4. The 1961 Film Soundtrack

The 1961 soundtrack is fine in that it’s a record of the hugely popular film, but the performances generally lack something that makes them truly distinctive. There’s a kind of generic blandness, particularly in Jimmy Bryant’s vocals for Tony and Marni Nixon’s singing as Maria. Bryant could be delivering a vocal for any romantic lead in any musical – there’s nothing particularly “Tony” about it, no defining characteristics that make you remember the character – while Nixon hits the notes and that’s that. While dubbing performers was the standard modus operandi in the good old days of the Hollywood musical, the approach hurt this version of West Side Story in a way that is evident in the lack of colour in the vocals and the “bigger is better” approach to the orchestrations. On the plus side, the recording includes the revised lyrics of “America” in its boy-girl competition song format, an approach that only really made sense once the number was opened up even further in the more recent film adaptation.

3. The 2009 Broadway Revival Cast Recording

While this Broadway revival cast recording of West Side Story can’t – for the same reason that it makes a great addition to a cast recording collection – supplant the original cast recording, the idea of having Sharks largely speak and sing in Spanish was one that transformed the material and which certainly makes for interesting listening. The idea that language can be a weapon as powerful as sticks, rocks, poles, cans, bricks, bats, clubs, chains, bottles, knives and even guns drove this interpretation of the show and offered audiences a new way of connecting with the material. That the approach alienated so many people that the lyrics for “Siento Hermosa” and “Un Hombre Así” were changed back to English during the run only underlined the show’s main conceit. The everyday things that divide us lay the foundations for profound conflict and devastatingly, the world hasn’t changed enough since West Side Story first bowed in the 1950s. In terms of performances, this recording is solid throughout and it is an important one for fans of the show to have.

2. The 1957 Original Broadway Cast Recording

The major plus of the original recording of West Side Story is the original Broadway cast: as an ensemble, they’re just great. They’re raw and passionate, everything you need from a recording of the show. Carol Lawrence (Maria), Larry Kert (Tony) and Chita Rivera (Anita) offer memorable interpretations of their roles and the orchestra provides a reading of the score that is sensitive and spirited. One thing that sets this recording apart from many of the others is the colourful supporting cast and ensemble. There’s an immediate vitality to numbers like “Gee, Officer Krupke” and “Cool” that is simply missing in many other albums. It’s not complete, but that’s a small price to pay for what is really one of the great cast recordings, documenting a seminal moment in musical theatre history. As far as theatrical cast recordings of the show go, it’s still head and shoulders above the rest.

1. The 2021 Film Soundtrack 

There’s an incredible level of polish in the motion picture soundtrack of the newer film adaptation of West Side Story and some standout performances to recommend it. David Newman and Gustavo Dudamel are the perfect guardians for Leonard Bernstein’s score, the layers of which continue to be simultaneously delightful and deeply moving. The definitive moment of this recording – and the film itself in some ways, – arrives in 1961 film alumnus Rita Moreno’s delivery of “Somewhere,” which is pure magic. Rachel Ziegler emerges as a definitive Maria, while Ansell Elgort offers fine interpretations of Tony’s songs, including a recontextualised “Cool” opposite Mike Faist’s mafioso kingpin-in-waiting reading of Riff. Ariana DeBose gives us another fabulous Anita for the books, although it’s a pity that the film didn’t use Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Spanish lyrics from the 2009 revival to further underscore the character’s journey in her relationship with America, as woven into the screenplay by Tony Kushner. Even so, this recording of West Side Story emerges as the one that is just right for right now – and in all likelihood, for some time to come too.

So there you have it. It’s taken almost seven decades for a new recording that can rumble with the Broadway cast recording. All things told, there’s very little to set place one ahead of the other and it is great to have two such excellent albums of the score. What’s your favourite recording of West Side Story? Head to the comments below and let us know what you think?

Posted in Broadway, Cast Recording Reviews, The Saturday List | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments