CDs: A Trip to Monte Carlo
Sebastian Bach will reprise the title roles that he played on Broadway in the North Carolina Theatre production of Jekyll & Hyde next month.
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CD: LUCKY STIFF JAY
Presented for a short run at Playwrights Horizons in April, 1988, Lucky Stiff introduced the important musical-theatre team of librettist-lyricist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty. Playwrights Horizons would have better luck with the team a few seasons later, presenting the acclaimed Once on This Island that transferred to Broadway.
Lucky Stiff at least made it clear that this was a highly professional team. Based on the Michael Butterworth novel The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, Lucky Stiff is an intricately plotted farce about a British shoe salesman who stands to inherit $6 million from an American uncle he never met, provided he accompanies the uncle's corpse on a trip to Monte Carlo. If he fails to carry out this stipulation, the money will revert to the uncle's favorite charity, a Brooklyn home for dogs.
No cast recording was made of the Playwrights production. But in 1994, Varese Sarabande made a studio-cast CD, and the company included Playwrights cast members Mary Testa, Paul Kandel, and Barbara Rosenblat. They were joined by Evan Pappas in the leading role of Harry Witherspoon, Judy Blazer as Annabel, the dog-home representative, and Debbie Gravitte as a cabaret chanteuse.
Now JAY has released an unexpected second recording of Lucky Stiff, featuring the cast of York Theatre Company's October 2003 Musicals in Mufti revival. As it happens, Testa, Kandel, and Rosenblat were present again, so they have now re-recorded the roles they created. Also present from the Playwrights cast were Stuart Zagnit in a role sung by Jason Graae on the first recording, Ron Faber, and Erick Devine. Malcolm Gets is Harry, and Janet Metz plays Annabel. The Mufti production was directed by Graciela Daniele, whose Ahrens and Flaherty projects have included Once on This Island and Ragtime and who will be staging their next musical, Dessa Rose.
Lucky Stiff's score is consistently bright, tuneful, and adept. Particularly nice are the "Good to Be Alive" ensemble, Annabel's "Times Like This," Annabel and Harry's "Nice," and Rita Testa's "Fancy Meeting You Here." In fact, Lucky Stiff is as accomplished a piece of work as any Ahrens and Flaherty score, yet it's probably my least favorite of their shows, simply because it's the only one that's unashamedly, overtly silly. Lacking significant emotional content, it can become a bit wearying by the second half.
But because Lucky Stiff is the first major score by a major team, at least one recording of it is probably essential for fans. In one department, the recordings are equal: On both sets, Testa is extravagantly amusing as the near-sighted Rita. The first recording has a fine company, with Blazer and Gravitte especially strong, and five musicians playing seven instruments.
The new set is accompanied only by David Loud's piano, although that matters less than you might think. It has the advantage of a superlative leading man in Gets, along with a nice turn by Metz. It also runs about ten minutes longer than the first recording, featuring a couple of pieces not on the first set, plus a bonus track of a sweet cut song, "Shoes," sung by Gets.
CD: PACIFIC OVERTURES: HIGHLIGHTS/ENO JAY
The original 1976 Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim's Pacific Overtures was a financial failure, as was the 1984 off-Broadway revival. When it came time for the show's London premiere, a West End commercial mounting was pretty much out of the question. So the show had its London premiere in the fall of 1987 as an English National Opera production at the London Coliseum, where it was performed for the first time by a Caucasian cast. Cameron Mackintosh's commercial London premiere of Follies opened a few months earlier.
English National Opera's Pacific Overtures also failed to set the box office on fire, and while it played out its scheduled run, the piece never returned to the company's repertoire. It's perhaps understandable that Roundabout has scheduled its forthcoming Broadway revival of Pacific Overtures for only a three-month engagement at Studio 54.
TER released the London/ENO cast recording of Pacific Overtures in three distinct versions. The most valuable may be the two-LP set offering the complete score. This included a considerable amount of music not on RCA's Broadway cast recording of Pacific Overtures, including complete versions of "The Advantages of Floating in the Middle of the Sea," "Chrysanthemum Tea," "Welcome to Kanagawa," and "Next," along with the previously unrecorded March and Lion Dance.
TER's double-CD version offered not just the complete score but the entire show, dialogue included, with a playing time of two hours. While this is a fine reference, one isn't likely to want to listen to the complete work very often. The third release of the London cast recording was a seventy-minute, single CD of highlights. While this includes most of the score, it lacks some of the extra material to be found on the other two versions. The highlights disc features shorter versions of "Welcome to Kanagawa" and "A Bowler Hat," and lacks the March and Lion Dance.
Just reissued on JAY is the ENO highlights disc. This Pacific Overtures always boasted crisp sound, and the recording has been newly remastered for this release. The recording also features fine conducting by James Holmes and the imposing Reciter of Richard Angas.
But ENO's Pacific Overtures also takes some getting used to. In place of Broadway's natural accents and show voices, we get clipped British accents and operatic vocals. Still, this disc is welcome as an alternate to the Broadway set. No doubt the forthcoming New York revival will produce a third Pacific Overtures cast recording. For the record, the ENO Pacific Overtures produced an additional recording, in the form of a live radio broadcast.
As for the Pacific Overtures score, it remains a remarkable achievement. It's unlikely that anyone other than Sondheim would have attempted this project, and surely no one else could have brought it to such imaginative fruition.