Q & A: 1/5/05
A: Now is perhaps a good time to bring up the videotape of the original 1976 Broadway production of Pacific Overtures that was telecast only in Japan. Indeed, Amon Miyamoto, director of the current Broadway revival of the show, credits the Japanese telecast of this tape for inspiring his love of Broadway musicals.
As one continues to see revivals of Pacific Overtures, one comes to realize again the glories of Hal Prince's breathtaking original Broadway version. No revival can possibly approximate the lavish physical production of the original. But the original also had a cast that overshadows that of the current revival, most notably the original Reciter, Mako, who is considerably more imposing than B.D. Wong in the revival.
Yes, I believe I did mention some time ago the rumor that there finally appeared to be some interest in releasing the Pacific Overtures video. I've heard nothing about it since. But the relative disappointment of the current revival makes it clearer than ever that this tape deserves to be released. While such a release isn't likely to be a major seller, the tape would take its place on the shelf next to the commercially released videos of the original productions of Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and Passion.
Incidentally, although I don't have a copy of it, I recently learned that Miyamoto's Japanese-language production of Pacific Overtures, the one that played New York's Lincoln Center and Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center, was also televised in Japan. If Japan can have two telecasts of Pacific Overtures, can't we at least have one?
Q: I seem to recall hearing that Angela Lansbury once did Lady in the Dark. Can you tell me when and where this was?---Michael Reardon
A: In 1969 at Philharmonic now Avery Fisher Hall, there was a Music of Kurt Weill gala benefit. The first half, which starred singers like Lotte Lenya and Mabel Mercer, was a collection of various Weill songs. The second half was devoted to a condensed concert version of Lady in the Dark, with Lansbury as Liza Elliott. The production consisted mostly of the songs from the show, with bridging narration read by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Seeming underrehearsed, Lansbury was not at her best.
Q: Was there a 1963 Bock/Harnick musical called Man in the Moon that played the Biltmore?---Scott Linn
A: In April 1963, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's She Loves Me opened at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on West 49th Street. The same month, there were seven special performances, part of a national tour, of a children's musical called Man in the Moon, at the Biltmore Theatre on West 47th Street. The science fiction show was written to be performed by the Bil and Cora Baird marionettes.
Arthur Burns' book told of Jerry, a young man who journeys to the moon, tailed by a gang of thieves. Bock and Harnick contributed five songs, which are preserved on the Golden Records cast album.
Q: A friend of mine just saw a show in Washington D.C. called The Highest Yellow with Marc Kudisch and really enjoyed it. Has this show ever been on Broadway or will it be going there soon?---Joseph Cross
A: Signature Theatre Company in Arlington, Virginia very near D.C. recently presented the world premiere of Michael John LaChiusa's The Highest Yellow, which concerns Vincent Van Gogh and a doctor who treated him. As is often the case with LaChiusa musicals, the work received mixed reviews. There does not seem to have been any talk of a New York transfer.
Q:Regarding the Frog and Toad DVD you said was recorded, do you have any information when it will be released?---Andrew Tribe
A: I don't have a release date as of yet. The program may air on cable prior to DVD release. A Year with Frog and Toad was filmed in Minneapolis, and the program features four of the five members of the orginal Broadway cast: Mark Linn-Baker, Jay Goede, Frank Vlastnik, and Danielle Ferland. Sarah Litzsinger Amour, Beauty and the Beast is the fifth cast member on the video.
Q: Is it true that, in the days when cast recordings were released in both stereo and mono releases, sometimes the contents of the two releases were different?---Martin Aron
A: There are numerous examples of cast albums whose mono and stereo LP versions differ. For example, the song "Cornet Man" is heard in a noticeably different take on the mono and stereo LPs of Funny Girl. The 1956 cast album of Candide was initially issued in mono; when it later appeared in stereo, the stereo version featured a number of different takes. One can immediately tell the difference, as the stereo version features a spoken introduction to the opening number, "The Best of All Possible Worlds."
A more dramatic example was Jamaica 1957. The cast album was issued in both mono and stereo. The mono version had all the songs but lacked the overture. The stereo version had the overture but was missing three songs.
Q: Why are there two Broadway cast recordings of Kiss Me, Kate, one on Columbia, the other on Angel?---Jeff Cooper
A: Columbia Records recorded the original 1948 Broadway cast album of Kiss Me, Kate. In fact, it was the first show recorded directly for the recently introduced long-playing record LP. In 1959, Capitol Records reassembled five of the original Kate leads -Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison, Harold Lang, Lisa Kirk, and Lorenzo Fuller-and made a new Kate recording, this time in stereo. But unlike the second, stereo My Fair Lady, which represented the London production, the new Kate was a studio event, and did not represent a new stage version of Kate.
Q: Was the '80s Broadway production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Joseph...., the one with Laurie Beechman as Narrator, the first American production?---Jean Riley
A: Between 1968, when it had its premiere at Colet Court School, through 1973, when a production at the off-West End Roundhouse transferred to the West End's Albery Theatre, the Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was seen in London in ever-expanding versions.
The first U.S. performance of Joseph is believed to be in 1970, at Long Island's College of the Immaculate Conception. But its official New York stage premiere was at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where it played a limited engagement of twenty-two performances beginning December 30, 1976. The Brooklyn premiere was a reproduction of the 1973 London staging at the Albery, directed by Frank Dunlop. David-James Carroll later David Carroll was Joseph; Cleavon Little was the Narrator; Jess Pearson Bye Bye Birdie film was Pharoah; and Virginia Martin was Potiphar's wife.
Although the Academy of Music hosted a holiday 1977 return engagement of this production with Carroll repeating as Joseph, and Alan Weeks as Narrator, this initial U.S. staging of Joseph came and went twice with relatively little fanfare. So it was inevitable that a piece that was gradually attaining important stage status would be tried again in New York.
In November of 1981, Joseph received a new production, directed by Tony Tanner and starring Bill Hutton and Laurie Beechman, at off-Broadway's Entermedia Theatre, the same theatre where Grease and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas premiered in New York, prior to their Broadway runs.
This new Joseph stirred up enough interest to transfer to Broadway, opening at the Royale Theatre in early 1982 and remaining there for 670 performances.
Q: I have a question about what I seem to remember as a forerunner of City Center's Encores!. Didn't they once try something similar at New York's Town Hall?---Thomas C.
A: In 1977, an attempt was made at staged concert versions of classic musicals featuring name performers. A series of three shows was announced for Town Hall, beginning with She Loves Me, which starred Madeline Kahn, Barry Bostwick, Rita Moreno in the role she had played in London, George Rose, and Laurence Guittard. The production played for three weeks, longer than necessary in light of ticket demand.
The second show was Knickerbocker Holiday, starring Richard Kiley, Maureen Brennan, Kurt Peterson, and Ed Evanko. The next show was to have been The Golden Apple, with Margaret Whiting and George Rose. But when the first two shows played to discouraging business, The Golden Apple was cancelled and the series abandoned.
Q: Yesterday I saw The Mystery of Edwin Drood for the first time. It was an unusual experience for me because by the time I see most shows I am already familiar with the score. I enjoyed the show and am wondering what kind of reception the original production received. I found the first ten minutes or so a little baffling, but things improved quickly after that. Overall, I found the second act more satisfying that the first. After the show I thought it would be great to have the album, but it apparently is out of print. Isn't it unusual for a show that was at least somewhat successful, and not all that long ago, to have its cast album out of print?---Greg Kristensen
A: The Mystery of Edwin Drood was a New York Shakespeare Festival production, first seen outdoors at the Delacorte Theatre in the summer of 1985. The reviews were mostly favorable, with Variety's Richard Hummler stating, "They can start getting a Broadway theater ready for the inevitable jump from Central Park." In The New York Times, however, Frank Rich offered a mixed verdict. While he felt the show was "a charming, attractively cast musical that allows both veteran musical performers and relative newcomers the opportunities to shine," he also felt it was "a diffuse show that would benefit from being a shade tighter, zippier, wittier and more melodic than it is."
But the show did indeed move to Broadway, opening at the Imperial Theatre near the end of '85. In The New York Post, Clive Barnes described the show as "an enjoyable, entertaining evening of style, Dickens, and musical mayhem," but "also unquestionably an odd fish." Douglas Watt in The Daily News felt the show "went on a bit too long and a trifle too unsteadily to win my wholehearted admiration. Even so, it's an eyeful and an earful, and, though this might not be saying much, it's certainly the best musical I've seen so far this year."
Barnes and Watt had been away when the show opened in the park, so they were reviewing Drood for the first time. But Frank Rich reviewed it for a second time when it reopened at the Imperial. He still had major reservations --"Now as before, little else in Edwin Drood can quite match the spontaneous fun of the final 45 minutes"-- but he also wrote, "The main mystery posed by the Broadway arrival of Edwin Drood is whether the show's raucous, not to mention erratic, charms can retain their buoyancy indoors. On that crucial score, the news is good."
With the notable gimmick of allowing the audience to vote on the solution to the plot, The Mystery of Edwin Drood lasted 608 performances, but never returned all of its investment. With weak competition from Song and Dance, Big Deal, and Tango Argentino, Drood had no trouble whatsoever taking the Best Musical Tony Award. During the run, there was a bizarre twist when the title of the show was officially altered from The Mystery of Edwin Drood to Drood.
Polydor released the cast album in LP and CD versions that differed in content. The LP included two musical numbers "Moonfall Quartet," "Ceylon" not on the CD. But the CD included five possible conclusions and seven possible confessions, all of the various possibilities on which the audience was asked to vote. The LP featured only one conclusion and two confessions.
When Varese Sarabande reissued the cast album, the new CD included all of the musical numbers, but only one conclusion and three confessions. I am sorry to hear that the recording is now unavailable, as Rupert Holmes' score is delightful, and the vocals of Betty Buckley, Cleo Laine, Howard McGillin, Patti Cohenour, and George Rose are grand.