CDs: Tea With the Mad Hatter

Concurrent with its recent reissues of the London cast recordings of Divorce Me, Darling! and Belle, the Must Close Saturday label has released three other CDs of interest.

Alice in Wonderland is an uncharacteristic release for the label, for while it involves an English composer, it's actually a Broadway cast recording, one that has seems to have been unavailable for more than fifty years. Richard Addinsell 1904-1977 was an important composer of film scores and material for revues. In 1932, he wrote the songs and background music for an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass that was co-authored and directed by actress Eva Le Gallienne for her Civic Repertory Theatre on West 14th Street in Manhattan. Le Gallienne herself appeared as the White Chess Queen throughout a run of 132 performances.

In 1947, Le Gallienne staged a Broadway revival at the International and later the Majestic Theatre of her version of Alice in Wonderland, again featuring Le Gallienne, along with another theatrical grande dame of the period, Margaret Webster as the Cheshire Cat and the Red Chess Queen, plus Eli Wallach and Henry Jones. Winning acclaim in the title role was Bambi Linn, who had danced in the original Oklahoma!, created the dancing role of Louise in Carousel, and would go on to dance Laurey in the film version of Oklahoma! Linn would turn up again on Broadway in 1962, in I Can Get It For You Wholesale.

Le Gallienne's 1947 revival of Alice in Wonderland ran for 97 performances, and RCA Victor made a recording of it, allotting a generous album of six twelve-inch 78s that provided a running time of almost an hour. Narrated by Le Gallienne, the recording offers a condensed version of the play, songs, and incidental musical, and Must Close Saturday's CD appears to be the first time the recording has been made available since its introduction on 78s.

Addinsell's contribution to this Alice in Wonderland won critical praise. In The New York Times, Brooks Atkinson wrote, "The score includes some lovely arias, but the undertones of light orchestral music all the way through capture the fairy-tale quality of the play." In The News, John Chapman called the score "not just background music; it is a work of art."

And it makes for a charming disc. True, most of this CD falls into the spoken-word category. But the brief songs are lovely, Linn is a perfectly unsentimental, appealingly inquisitive Alice, and the performance as a whole harks back to a vanished theatrical era.

One more try was made at reviving this Alice in Wonderland, but it didn't take. In 1982 at the Virginia Theatre, Le Gallienne once again appeared in and directed her own adaptation. Tickets for the first preview were sold at 1932 prices. Kate Burton played Alice, Bambi Linn was back to supply the "movement," and Jonathan Tunick adapted Addinsell's score. But the result was gone after only 21 performances.

STEP INTO THE LIMELIGHT Must Close Saturday

Based on the chapters concerning the acting family the Crummles in Dickens' novel Nicholas Nickleby, the musical Step Into the Limelight was first seen in Bristol, England, in 1962, with its librettist-lyricist, Edgar K. Bruce, taking the leading role. The music was by Betty Lawrence, who was the resident accompanist at London's Players Theatre, where The Boy Friend was first performed.

In 1969, Step Into the Limelight was picked up again for a potential West End mounting. The tryout began in Manchester but shuttered after the next stop, once again in Bristol. In truth, Step Into the Limelight was about fifteen years too late for late-'60s London. With a substantial dose of operetta, the old-fashioned, twee nature of the piece may be gathered by song titles like "Two Saucy Sailors," "My Sad Heart," "A Little God Called Cupid," and "As Long As I Am Dancing."

The Step Into the Limelight CD represents a real obscurity, Must Close Saturday having unearthed two demos from the show, one from '62, the other from '69, both with piano accompaniment by Lawrence. Both demos feature Josephine Gordon, from the '69 production, and the later demo also features Elric Hooper, also from the '69 cast. The '69 demo repeats eight of the songs from the earlier recording.

This disc will be of interest only to hard-core collectors of British musicals. But Lawrence's music is tuneful and pleasant. In addition to its celebrated Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation, Nicholas Nickleby was the basis for at least two additional U.K. musicals. A 1973 BBC TV version called Smike produced a cast LP starring Beryl Reid and Leonard Whiting. And in 1976, London's Stratford East played host to Nickleby and Me.

VIVIAN ELLIS AND LIONEL BART SING THEIR SONGS Must Close Saturday

This CD combines two Decca LPs first released in 1960, both featuring British theatre composer-lyricists performing their work: You Never Had It So Good has Vivian Ellis 1904-1996, and Bart for Bart's Sake features Lionel Bart 1930-1999.

A theatrical contemporary of Noel Coward and Ivor Novello, Vivian Ellis's best known West End shows were Mr. Cinders 1929, Bless the Bride 1947, and The Water Gypsies 1954. Mr. Cinders had a successful London revival in the '80s and has been performed at Goodspeed, but Ellis's work is little known in this country, even though the scores of Cinders and Bless the Bride are enchanting.

On You Never Had It So Good, Ellis, accompanying himself on piano and offering spoken introductions to each piece, comes across as a sweeter, gentler version of Coward. He performs several songs from revues, including one of his most famous compositions, the statement of a proud nanny called "Other People's Babies." Other tracks are more topical, including a song about current celebrities with references to Princess Margaret, Joan Littlewood, and Brigitte Bardot, and another about the ordeal of being the subject of TV's "This Is Your Life." He sings about "Small Time" variety artists, and provides a spot-on imitation of Coward that depicts the Master as the "Rip Van Winkle" of the stage.

Thanks to Oliver!, Bart is, of course, much better known internationally. Bart for Bart's Sake, which features the songwriter accompanied by an orchestra, was released just a few months before Bart's life changed when Oliver! arrived in the West End. Also featuring spoken introductions to each number, this recital includes two songs from Lock Up Your Daughters music by Laurie Johnson, the conductor of Bart for Bart's Sake and two from Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be, the two shows that comprised Bart's West End career at the time of this recording.

There's "Dear Mum," in which a cockney lad finds success as a continental gigolo. The rest of the songs tend toward the topical, including one revue piece, "Newmarket Nightmare," imagining the competition between British and Soviet racehorses; a comment on changing sexual mores called "Dr. Kinsey Says"; and a nod to a current dance craze in "My Baby Won't Cha Cha Cha."