CDs: Melville Musical

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THE CONFIDENCE MAN Original Cast Records

Along with the new recording of Man With a Load of Mischief, Original Cast Records has distributed two other recent show CDs. The more interesting of the pair is a 2003 studio-cast disc of a thirty-year-old musical based on Herman Melville's The Confidence Man.

It's chiefly of note because its composer is Jim Steinman. In 1974, Steinman wrote the score for a Public Theatre musical called More Than You Deserve. Around the same time, he began collaborating with librettist-lyricist Ray Errol Fox on The Confidence Man, which is set on a Mississippi riverboat in 1861.

The musical was first under option by Joseph Papp and the Public Theatre. Papp ultimately passed on the show, and instead it had its premiere, in a capsule version, in Manhattan Theatre Club's cabaret space in 1976.

Steinman worked on another musical, Neverland, at Stuart Ostrow's Musical Theatre Lab at the Kennedy Center 1977, then shifted to the pop world, where he went on to have considerable success with singer Meatloaf. In the '90s, Steinman returned to musicals with the score for Dance of the Vampires and the lyrics to Andrew Lloyd Webber's Whistle Down the Wind.

As for The Confidence Man, it received its first full staging at Queens College in 1986. With no additional mounting on the horizon, a CD was made, featuring theatre regulars singing individual songs rather than specific roles. In his liner notes, Fox notes the strength of the show's big ballad, "Milady," which has been performed by Barry Manilow and is sung on the CD by Yancey Arias. Fox fails to mention that the melody of "Milady" became "For Sarah," the prettiest tune in Dance of the Vampires. Also finding its way into Vampires is the melody of the Confidence Man chorus called "Something of This Masquerade May Follow."

With a touch of rock, a good deal of music-hall jauntiness, and Melville himself figuring prominently in the action, The Confidence Man opens and closes with the attractive "New Orleans Is Comin' to Me," led here by Norbert Leo Butz, who knows a thing or two about New Orleans musicals. Julia Murney supplies an intense "Edging Into Darkness," while La Chanze effectively croons "Nocturnally Yours." Chuck Cooper delivers a strong rendition of the anti-war aria, "Give Us This Day Our Daily Flesh," and Butz makes the most of "Pain Humbles." The vocalists include Andre De Shields, Garrett Long, KT Sullivan, and Andrea Marcovicci.

Another Melville sea saga, Billy Budd, made a fine opera but a poor Broadway musical. While it's difficult to know how all of this would have played in the theatre, The Confidence Man sounds like it might have made for an intriguing show.

STORYVILLE Original Cast Records

This appears to be a 2001 Miami cast recording of a musical almost as old as The Confidence Man and again involving New Orleans. Set in the first legally recognized red-light district in the U.S., Storyville takes place in 1917, when the murder of a sailor caused the Department of the Navy to close down New Orleans' Storyville, thus releasing to the north such jazz greats as Louis Armstrong and Ma Rainey.

With a book by Ed Bullins The Taking of Miss Janie, The Electronic Nigger and with music and lyrics by Mildred Kayden Ionescopade, Cut the Ribbons, Call the Children Home, Storyville was produced at Washington D.C.'s Ford's Theatre in 1979, with Ira Hawkins, Edye Byrde, and Jackie Lowe in the cast, and direction and choreography by Arthur Faria, who had recently done the musical staging for Ain't Misbehavin'. Directed by Marion J. Caffey, the Miami cast heard on the recording includes Adrian Bailey Smokey Joe's Cafe, Ernestine Jackson Raisin, and La Tanya Hall.

An original story about rival jazz musicians and a sultry cabaret singer, one admires Storyville for featuring an original score rather than the pre-existing, period jazz material one might have expected. There are some infectious rhythms and even a few toe-tappers. But the score, while pleasant, is not very distinctive.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

The most notable musicals derived from the works of Charles Dickens are Oliver!, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and several versions of A Christmas Carol. Pickwick was a hit in London, if not in New York. But the U.K. has also seen musical versions of Dickens' Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickleby, Hard Times, and The Old Curiosity Shop, while Broadway had a flop with Copperfield.

In 1969, a musical version of A Tale of Two Cities shortening the title to Two Cities failed forty-four performances at London's Palace Theatre. It starred Edward Woodward and Kevin Colson, had a score by the father-and-son team of Jerry and Jeff Wayne, and produced a cast LP.

Last week, there were invitation-only presentations at New York's Little Shubert Theatre of Jill Santoriello's musical version of A Tale of Two Cities. They starred Gary Morris, Billy Gilman, Gavin Creel, and James Barbour and were produced by Les Miserables alumni Barbra Russell, Ron Sharpe, and David Bryant.

This version is not exactly new; it extends back at least to 1994, when Richard Kiley narrated a concert premiere in Indianapolis. In 1999, I received a thirty-three-minute CD of the score. But in 2002, a more elaborate concept album was recorded, this one seventy-four minutes and featuring such singers as J. Mark McVey, Christiane Noll, Natalie Toro, Alex Santoriello, Tim Shew, Peter Samuel, Andrew Varela, and Nick Wyman, most of them former Les Miz players. Heard as a seamstress in the final track is Bryce Dallas Howard, of the current film The Village.

It's no accident that Santoriello's A Tale of Two Cities involves so many Les Miz folk. Just as there are obvious similarities between the two source novels, this Tale of Two Cities is very much in the grand, pop-opera style of Les Miz.

The 2002 CD is an impressive recording, featuring fine vocals and lush orchestrations; the piece has been accorded equal treatment with many of Broadway's most celebrated shows. And much of the score is handsome enough, the strongest tunes falling near the end of the first act "All in My Mind," "Out of Sight, Out of Mind," "If Dreams Came True," "Until Tomorrow" and near the end "Without a Word," "Let Her Be a Child." Happily, we're spared a final song called "It's a Far, Far Better Thing," something the London Two Cities actually included.

But the piece is too similar in style to Les Miz and a few of its successors i.e. The Scarlet Pimpernel, Jane Eyre, and the big tunes don't seem to be sufficiently memorable. With shows like the forthcoming Little Women, The Little Princess, and The Color Purple, famous novels may be making a comeback as sources of musicals. Santoriello's A Tale of Two Cities could have a hard time of it, though, because it's written in a style that has fallen out of fashion, and it may not be distinctive enough to revive it.

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