CDs: Wrong Note Rag
It's rare that a replacement in a Broadway musical gets a recording. Pearl Bailey got her own RCA Victor Hello, Dolly!, but then she caused a sensation when she arrived in town with her own, all-black company. Mercury Records was sufficiently interested in promoting Vanessa Williams to record a new Kiss of the Spider Woman during Williams' replacement run, which also provided replacement co-stars Howard McGillin and Brian Stokes Mitchell the chance to preserve their roles.
Considering that Brooke Shields isn't one of our better vocalists, it's staggering that the popular star has twice gotten her own cast recording when taking over roles in Broadway musical revivals. In the case of the 1994 Grease, Shields replaced Rosie O'Donnell, and Shields' tracks were dropped in to replace O'Donnell's for a second edition of RCA Victor's Grease cast album, which also got a new cover sporting Shields' photo.
And now much the same thing has happened with Wonderful Town. Shields has recorded all of her numbers from the production in which she successfully replaced Donna Murphy, and DRG has put out a second edition of its cast album, with Shields' tracks replacing those of Murphy. Shields' lucky co-star, Jennifer Hope Wills, who replaced Jennifer Westfeldt's Eileen when Shields came in as Ruth, has also gotten to preserve her vocals on the new, 2005 edition of DRG's cast recording. And once again, the second CD sports cover-girl Shields' photo, replacing the production's original logo.
One can't help feeling that the second Grease CD made slightly more sense than this new Wonderful Town. After all, with Grease, Shields' vocals were replacing the relatively weak ones of O'Donnell. This time around, Shields' tracks have replaced those of a superior vocalist, Murphy. Then too, Grease ran several years beyond the release of Shields' disc, so a second CD wasn't such a luxury. Shields is only doing Wonderful Town through the end of this month, when the production closes, making the new Wonderful Town disc all the more surprising.
Wills offers a pretty Eileen, including a very nice "A Little Bit in Love." Shields' singing voice is not a great deal more than adequate. Her "One Hundred Easy Ways" is passable but broad; her "Conga" is enthusiastic, but there are pitch problems; her "Swing" is okay but lacks Murphy's rangy scat vocalizing.
In general, Shields is not a particularly appealing singer, and this was not a vocal performance that required preservation. If Donna Murphy was no Rosalind Russell, Shields is no Murphy, so the first version of the revival's cast album is decidedly preferable. The liner notes accompanying Shields' CD still include a reference to Murphy as "the show's current star."
Odd as this new release is, though, the Leonard Bernstein-Betty Comden-Adolph Green score is among my favorites, so I'm happy to have yet another CD to add to a crowded field that includes two Rosalind Russell recordings original '53 Broadway and 1958 TV cast; two London cast recordings Pat Kirkwood/Maureen Lipman; JAY's complete, double-CD set Karen Mason, Rebecca Luker; Angel's very comprehensive disc Kim Criswell, Audra McDonald; and now two versions of the Broadway revival.
LIZA OF LAMBETH Thames Based on W. Somerset Maugham's first novel, written in 1897, the musical Liza of Lambeth opened at London's Shaftesbury Theatre in June 1976, and lasted 110 performances. It was set at the turn of the century in the East London neighborhood known as Lambeth, a district previously immortalized in Me and My Girl's "Lambeth Walk." Playing the title role was Angela Richards, previously seen in such London musicals as Robert and Elizabeth, On the Level, Cole, and Applause she was the West End Eve opposite Lauren Bacall.
About Liza of Lambeth, Kurt Ganzl's book British Musical Theatre notes that "the story of Liza Kemp, the working class girl who allowed herself to fall for a married man and died bearing his child, became little more than a jolly romp with all sense of drama lost." The critic for The London Times noted that Liza of Lambeth was "three hours and feels longer," with "flat, witless lyrics, a graceless evocation of the music hall."
The writers were from television. The music by Cliff Adams is marginally superior to the often crude lyrics by William Rushton and Berny Stringle. There are numerous local-color cockney numbers, all of them pretty dreary. The best number is a male counterpoint duet called "Good Bad Time," and Richards does her best to belt her routine first-act-closer, "Beautiful Colors." But Liza of Lambeth, recently issued for the first time on CD, is one of the weakest of all recorded West End scores.
Concerned with a power struggle in Tombstone, Arizona in 1881 and featuring in its narrative Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, and the OK Corral, the musical Sundown received a staged reading at York Theatre Company in 2001. The following year, it had its premiere at the Lyric Stage of Irvin, Texas. A year later, it was seen at Virginia's Barter Theatre.
The music for Sundown is by Peter Link, composer of Broadway's King of Hearts and Lysistrata the 1972 version that starred Melina Mercouri. Link also composed off-Broadway's Salvation and wrote incidental scores for a New York Shakespeare Festival Much Ado About Nothing and for Neil Simon's The Good Doctor. Link's Sundown collaborators are Larry Rosler lyrics and book and Joe Bravaco book.
Original Cast Records' studio cast recording of Sundown was produced and orchestrated by Link, who also plays almost all of the instruments. It stars Steve Blanchard and Judy McLane, co-stars of another recent musical Western, Johnny Guitar. Unlike that tongue-in-cheek piece, Sundown is straightforward and serious.
While I prefer my Western musicals to sound like Destry Rides Again rather than the more authentic Sundown, this country-inflected score has several attractive numbers, notably Doc Blanchard's opening number "Arizona Morning" and title song; "Prodigal Son" and "Another Time" for Doc and Kate McLane; and Kate's solo "Bridges."