Revival Recordings: Part One
But when it comes to recordings of revivals, it's easier to distinguish the essential from the unnecessary. It's only natural, of course, that if a revival runs for a season or two, it will receive a recording. So whether or not one admires the Broadway revival CDs of Guys and Dolls, How to Succeed...., The Music Man, Man of La Mancha, Fiddler on the Roof, or Wonderful Town, it was inevitable that those productions would get recorded. Not one of them is as exciting as the recording of the original production. But labels like to add classic titles to their catalogues. And it's frequently the case that, even with their altered orchestrations and score revisions, revival-cast recordings preserve more material than was possible when those shows were first recorded.
Let's attempt to separate the required from the extraneous, beginning with the former. For the purposes of this piece, I'll stick to cast recordings, leaving out studio sets but including some concert-cast discs.
Needless to say, if a revival provides the first recording, or the first full-length recording, of an important score, it's automatically a standout. Place in this category such cast albums as the 1943 Broadway A Connecticut Yankee; the 1952 Broadway Of Thee I Sing; the 1963 off-Broadway Best Foot Forward; Encores!' St. Louis Woman and Ziegfeld Follies of 1936; Carnegie Hall's Louisiana Purchase; York Theater's Billion Dollar Baby; the concert Dreamgirls; and the English National Opera's Street Scene. The first six are especially recommended.
I'll cheat and put in a word for the 1997 Royal National Theatre's Lady in the Dark, the score's first complete recording. This preserves what was, in fact, the show's London premiere; the production even took a prize as the season's best new musical. But because this production happened so long after the Broadway original, it's fair to consider it a revival.
Houston Grand Opera's 1976 Broadway Porgy and Bess was, at the time of its release, the most complete cast recording of that work. Both Broadway recordings of On Your Toes --the 1954 and 1983 revival casts-- are extremely enjoyable. Anything Goes and Pal Joey present more of a problem. The Porter score got perhaps its sprightliest interpretation on the 1962 off-Broadway cast recording, with the often overlooked Reno Sweeney of Eileen Rodgers. But that version of the text was largely supplanted by the Lincoln Center Theater revision 1987, which has produced four Broadway, Australia, two London cast recordings. Because the LCT version now appears to be the standard text, at least one of its recordings must be heard. I especially like Elaine Paige's Reno.
With Pal Joey, things get even more complicated, as Vivienne Segal and Harold Lang, the stars of Columbia's laudable 1950 studio-cast recording, were unable to repeat their roles on Capitol's cast album of the 1952 Broadway revival in which they starred. As I've previously noted, one may wish to think about "burning" a CD combining tracks from the studio and '52 Broadway sets. But you may also want to include tracks from Encores!' Pal Joey CD, the most complete and authentic recording of the score as first heard on Broadway.
Some revival recordings qualify as must-hear revisions. Even though you're likely to find the '58 Flower Drum Song more fun than the 2003 recording, the new one preserves a radically different version. The 1971 No, No, Nanette was a key entry in the history of revisals, and, apart from its demonstration of how to contemporize a vintage piece, the cast album is swell.
The 1981 Broadway Merrily We Roll Along is a great deal more rousing than the two subsequent recordings York Theatre; Leicester Haymarket, but at least one of the latter is required, as they represent the revised version of the show now in use. Whether or not Roundabout's Cabaret will become the standard text for that show isn't clear, but the cast recording is a fine preservation of a major revisal. The same is true of the Royal National Theatre My Fair Lady, providing a fresh sound for a score that one presumed would never be touched.
And what to do about Show Boat? The Angel/John McGlinn triple-CD studio set remains a must for its documentation of the various versions of the score. The 1946 Broadway revival recording demonstrates the influence of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical-play sensations. The 1993 Livent recording is also pleasing, although it doesn't capture much of what made that staging memorable.
Because the 1933 Broadway premiere of The Threepenny Opera was such a quick flop, the 1954 off-Broadway revival, four years after the death of composer Kurt Weill, marks the first time the show had an impact in this country. With a supreme company including Lotte Lenya, Charlotte Rae, Beatrice Arthur, and Jo Sullivan, it's a required disc.
The '50s Threepenny was one of the key productions that established off-Broadway as a force to be reckoned with. While it had an off-Broadway run only a third as long 928 performances as that of the nearby Threepenny, the 1959 revival of Jerome Kern's Leave It to Jane produced a delightful album. Its leads --Kathleen Murray, Angelo Mango, Jeanne Allen, Art Matthews-- don't seem to have gone on to very much. And speaking of Kern, the 1975 Goodspeed revival of Very Good Eddie, brought to Broadway by David Merrick, was a charmer, as is the recording made from it.
Another off-Broadway gem is the 1963 The Boys from Syracuse, on the whole my favorite of the score's four recordings. A follow-up to the Syracuse revival, the 1967 off-Broadway production of another Rodgers and Hart show, By Jupiter, produced the score's only full recording, and it's a winner. I prefer the 1964 off-Broadway revival of The Cradle Will Rock Jerry Orbach, Nancy Andrews, Lauri Peters to the later Acting Company recording with a vivid Patti LuPone. You may want the 1987 off-Broadway version of Flora, the Red Menace, as it features several Kander and Ebb songs not heard on the 1965 Broadway original, but the small-scale performance isn't very exciting.
And then there are those versions of much recorded shows that offer a particularly satisfying performance or a fuller reading. These would include the 1979 Oklahoma!, featuring Christine Andreas, the best Laurey on disc, and the 1978 The King and I, with Yul Brynner allowed to do a good deal more than he did on his first recording of the show. Then there are the Music Theatre of Lincoln Center versions of Carousel and Annie Get Your Gun. Both boast the original stars John Raitt, Ethel Merman repeating roles they recorded previously, but more music is included and the albums better represent what was actually heard in the theatre. Raitt and Merman were still in superb voice, too.
The CD of last season's Little Shop of Horrors revival may not boast a cast superior to the original's. But it offers a more accurate representation of the complete score as heard in the theatre than does the off-Broadway cast album.
The 2001 42nd Street is one of the very few Broadway revival-cast recordings that beats the original in almost all respects. I'd except Jerry Orbach's superior Julian Marsh on the 1980 disc. I'm fond of the way Petula Clark reinvents Maria's music on the 1981 London revival album of The Sound of Music. And as I've stated before, all revival recordings of Gypsy are essential.
Chicago is the most successful revival in history, so one must have at least one of its recordings. If the London version has more vocally appealing female leads, it was the Broadway revival cast that put the show back on the map. And then there's Follies. No new set of principals will ever touch the original Broadway group. But one should have the 1985 concert version for the additional music; the 1987 London premiere for its stars and new songs; and the 1998 Paper Mill set for its appendix of cut material.
In Part Two, I'll note some of the less necessary revival cast recordings, and also mention a few revivals that should have been recorded.