CDs: Alessandrini's Latest
DRG has done its best to document the two-decade run of the off-Broadway perennial Forbidden Broadway. Preserving the current edition of the Gerard Alessandrini revue, this new CD is the eighth DRG set devoted to the production. And it's a generally respectable outing.
True, some items the Bombay Dreams sketch are already dated. And some others Billy Joel, Patti LuPone, Mel Brooks, Stephen Sondheim could be sharper. But there's more that's amusing, beginning with the "Law and Order" opening, in which Ron Bohmer does a fine impression of Jerry Orbach, star of "the flop version of Chicago."
In "It Sucks to Be Us," we get Brooke Shields, Tom Hewitt, Stephen Schwartz, and a Japanese tourist lamenting their particular Broadway plights. There's a sharp salute to "Thoroughly Perky Millie" "the worst best musical ever". In the 'Night Mother sketch, Edie Falco guest star Christine Pedi threatens suicide because the new theatre season gives her nothing to live for.
"Welcome to the Tonys" pays tribute to the gayness of that occasion. To the tune of "Luck Be a Lady Tonight," there's "No Leading Lady Tonight," noting the frequent absences of today's performers. The first act closes with a Wicked sequence that turns on the question of which above-the-title diva is the bigger star. An extended sequence is devoted to "Fiddler with No Jew," a British director's controversial take on a Broadway classic. And that's topped by Jennifer Simard's remarkable spoof of Bernadette Peters' "Tony-losing performance" as Rose in Gypsy.
With additional sharp work by performers Jason Mills and Megan Lewis, and with David Caldwell at the piano, Forbidden Broadway: SVU is a reasonably sharp salute to the current, often unfortunate state of the art.PHILIP CHAFFIN: Warm Spring Night PS Classics
In addition to an attractive, warm, and direct manner of singing, baritone Philip Chaffin has excellent taste in material. His first solo CD, "Where Do I Go from You?," began the PS Classics label. For his second solo CD for the label, Warm Spring Night, he performs fifteen show tunes, most rarely sung, several unjustly neglected.
The title track and the handsome "When In Love" are from the too-hastily-dismissed score for King David Chaffin appeared in the Alan Menken/Tim Rice oratorio. Even more bravely, Chaffin takes up a difficult song from the Ricky Ian Gordon/Richard Nelson My Life with Albertine and makes it sound more accessible than one might have thought.
Chaffin does the beautiful "There's a Room in My House," from John Kander's first Broadway score, A Family Affair. There's the haunting "Haunted Heart," from the Dietz/Schwartz revue Inside U.S.A.. There's the handsome "You've Come Home" from Wildcat, paired with an unknown, cut song from the same Cy Coleman-Carolyn Leigh score. Of particular note is the first recording of a song by George and Ira Gershwin, "Evening Star," cut from Lady, Be Good!
There are a few numbers that are more widely familiar, like "My Romance," "Out of My Dreams" with some unfamiliar pop lyrics, "Don't Ever Leave Me," and "That's All." Most of the songs are accompanied by Kevin Stites' lush orchestra, with three tracks backed by solo piano. Rebecca Luker joins Chaffin for the stately "Sailing at Midnight," from Sadie Thompson.
Chaffin handles everything here in impassioned yet elegant fashion, and the program is a pleasure. It's an outstanding recital.BASHVILLE JAY
Musicals based on George Bernard Shaw plays range from the glorious My Fair Lady, based on Pygmalion to the disastrous Her First Roman, taken from Caesar and Cleopatra, with others The Chocolate Soldier, Androcles and the Lion falling somewhere in between.
A lesser-known Shaw adaptation is Bashville, based on Shaw's obscure play The Admirable Bashville, and presented in the summer of 1983 at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, London. The music was by Denis King Privates on Parade, the book and lyrics by Benny Green.
The musical's central character is prizefighter Cashel Byron Peter Woodward, who falls for young heiress Lydia Carew Christina Collier, who wants Byron to give up his illegal profession and become a gentlemen. In this spoof of the class system, the title character is a footman, also in love with Lydia and ultimately transformed into a boxer with a future. Bashville is sung by Douglas Hodge, currently playing Nathan Detroit in the London revival of Guys and Dolls.
Shaw first wrote the story as a novel, Cashel Byron's Profession, in 1882, about in the words of lyricist-librettist Green "the gentleman-prizefighter, the paid puncher who is more gentlemanly than any gentleman when it comes to drawing-room etiquette." After pirated theatrical adaptations of the novel appeared, Shaw was motivated to write his own stage version, The Admirable Bashville, for London in 1901, fashioning it in mock-Shakespearean blank verse.
In 1982, Shaw's play received a rare revival at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park. It was sufficiently successful to motivate the writing of the musical version, which was seen in Regent's Park the following summer. The '83 cast recording has just received its CD premiere.
With a dozen musicians playing King's own orchestrations, the pleasantly traditional score is highlighted by Byron's very pretty hymn to "Lydia"; the bouncy servants' chorus "One Pair of Hands"; "A Gentleman's True to His Code," for Byron and the footmen; "He Is My Son," a waltz for Byron and his mother Joan Davies; "Boats Are Burned," for two marrying couples, Byron and Lydia and Byron's mother and Lord Worthington James Cairncross; and a Jerry Herman-style title song for the ensemble, reprised as the finale.