The Recent Unrecorded
Let's first try to isolate those titles that rank as the most unfortunate omissions. It's safe to say that the best-reviewed Broadway musical to go unrecorded in recent years remains James Joyce's The Dead. Indeed, one imagines that the show, special as it is, might be more frequently produced in regionals had a recording been made. True, The Dead boasted a decidedly strange score; only at the end were there a couple of character numbers, with almost everything before that consisting of performance pieces, set forth at the holiday party of Joyce's setting. Still, The Dead should have been recorded, if only to preserve the performances of such interesting cast members as Christopher Walken, Blair Brown or her replacement, Faith Prince, Alice Ripley, Emily Skinner, Stephen Spinella, Sally Ann Howes, and Marni Nixon.
Few of the other unrecorded Broadway musicals from recent years represent productions of particular quality. With no cast album of Shogun, we lost an American attempt at pop-opera spectacle. With Circle in the Square's Anna Karenina going unrecorded, we lost a misbegotten dramatization of a novel better left unmusicalized. I've heard few laments for the lack of cast albums of Urban Cowboy and Never Gonna Dance, perhaps because neither show featured much in the way of distinctive vocals.
Because The Red Shoes was Jule Styne's final Broadway show, a cast album from the instant flop would have been welcome. That's notwithstanding the fact that some of the music was purloined from previous Styne projects, or that, by the time it opened, there wasn't a great deal left of the show's vocal score.
There are a slew of titles that went unrecorded on Broadway but do possess a recording from an earlier production or a studio recording. There's a Polish cast album of Metro, even though it would have been amusing to have the Tony-nominated English translation preserved. One of my greatest regrets in this category is the lack of a Broadway Dance of the Vampires. True, the German-language cast recording starring Steve Barton features most of the music that was heard at the Minskoff. But what a hoot it would be to put on a Broadway album, with Michael Crawford's embarrassing star turn and the high-powered vocals of Mandy Gonzalez and Max von Essen. The Broadway Vampires was worth preserving for the "Garlic" number alone. One suspects that Crawford was perfectly content with not preserving the show.
I for one regret that no Broadway recording of Mamma Mia! was made; the vocals of Louise Pitre, Judy Kaye, and Karen Mason were worth documenting, and certainly Mamma Mia! is the sort of blockbuster that could support multiple recordings. Although Bombay Dreams was recorded in London, the New York tunestack was substantially different, so a Broadway recording would have been useful. That's not to mention the fact that the U.K. CD doesn't precisely reflect what was heard in the London production.
There's a Dutch CD of Cyrano, but the Broadway cast and Sheldon Harnick's English-language lyric translations never got preserved. Cyrano wasn't good, but some of the music was attractive. There are London and German recordings of Saturday Night Fever, but the New York company never got to preserve its account.
Frank Wildhorn's The Civil War got a fairly uninteresting concept album; resistible as the show was, it would have come off better in a Broadway recording. And it appears that Wildhorn's Dracula is going to follow the same pattern, only in reverse: The Broadway cast went unrecorded, while a subsequent studio version is being pursued. Once again, one would have preferred a stage-cast album, particularly with singers like Melissa Errico and Kelli O'Hara.
The short-lived Adventures of Tom Sawyer produced no commercially available recording, but there is a CD featuring at least some of the Broadway principals, I believe distributed to companies interested in staging the show. The by-the-numbers Mitch Leigh-Lee Adams score for the unintentionally amusing flop Ain't Broadway Grand would have been fun on disc; instead, there was a cassette, sold only at the theatre, that featured some of the stage leads in some of the songs.
Out-of-town closers like Whistle Down the Wind D.C. and Martin Guerre L.A. were preserved in London cast recordings. But other U.S. road-closers went unpreserved, notably the Sherman Brothers' Busker Alley and, more significantly, the regional productions of Kander and Ebb's Over & Over based on The Skin of Our Teeth and The Visit. Of course, one didn't expect recordings of those productions to be made, particularly as they were presumed to be just the first step in the production life of those musicals. Another road-closer, Bounce, did get recorded, but then that was Sondheim.
Several songbook revues went unrecorded, and few seemed to care. There were Johnny Mercer's Dream, The Gershwin's Fascinating Rhythm with Patrick Wilson and Sara Ramirez, the ghastly Band in Berlin songs of the Comedian Harmonists, and the likewise ghastly The Look of Love Bacharach-David.
And two special cases: The Paul Simon Broadway disaster The Capeman did get a two-disc Broadway cast recording, but it remains in limbo, unreleased but for a mailing to 1998 Tony voters. Then there's Putting It Together. The first New York production of the show, off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club and starring Julie Andrews, received a double-CD RCA cast album. The Broadway premiere starring Carol Burnett produced no CD, but was instead preserved on video and released on a DVD which ranks as a cast recording.
Looking over the list of Broadway musical revivals since 1990, most titles got recorded, even if many of the cast albums that resulted were negligible by comparison to the original versions. David Merrick's revival of Oh, Kay! with Brian Stokes Mitchell might have made for a pleasing CD. But there wasn't a great need for a new recording of On the Town; the 1998 version was the show's second Broadway revival to go unrecorded. It's hard to argue that the Roundabout's Follies revival needed to be preserved, even though a recording might have been interesting. There was little need for a recording of the Roundabout's The Boys from Syracuse, and the same company's Big River, with its mix of deaf and hearing actors, would not have translated to disc.
The Royal National Theatre Oklahoma! got both a CD and DVD in England, so there wasn't a great demand for a Broadway recording another unrecorded Patrick Wilson performance. And I doubt that anyone cares much that the Broadway revivals of Jesus Christ Superstar leading man Glenn Carter got to preserve the title role on DVD and One Mo' Time went unrecorded. Two current revivals have yet to announce recording plans; one doubts that the Roundabout's Pacific Overtures will be preserved, although one suspects that a recording of the new La Cage might still happen.
And let's conclude by putting in a word for some off-Broadway titles. Several shows by interesting composers have slipped through the cracks, such as Michael John LaChiusa's The Petrified Prince and Little Fish; Ricky Ian Gordon's Dream True; Kirsten Childs' The Bubby Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin; and Cy Coleman's Exactly Like You, the latter a reworking of the unrecorded Broadway flop Welcome to the Club. The Public Theatre's Radiant Baby had its admirers. Manhattan Theater Club's Time and Again had few, but its score was worth preserving.
Off-Broadway's Reefer Madness came and went too quickly for preservation, but there was an L.A. cast recording, and the musical will get another chance when the forthcoming cable-TV version airs, with several principals including Kristen Bell from the off-Broadway company. The long list of unrecorded off-Broadway titles also includes Captains Courageous, Summer of '42, Enter the Guardsman, and Newyorkers.