2005 on Disc
The cast album of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels confirmed composer-lyricist David Yazbek as a distinct talent, and the score sounded even better on disc than it did on first hearing in the theatre. By comparison, Spamalot's score makes much less of a contribution to the success of the show than does Scoundrels', so the cast recording of Spamalot is cheerful but somewhat negligible. The Little Women disc preserves a mediocre score that has its moments, and the recording is likely to promote stock and amateur productions of the show.
Two jukebox musicals, All Shook Up and Jersey Boys, received appropriate documentation, with the latter coming off as a more theatrical album than the former. Two other jukebox musicals, Lennon and Good Vibrations, went unrecorded, and few mourned. It was similarly difficult to get upset over the lack of a Broadway recording of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, although one would have been nice. For a variety of reasons, though, I would have liked cast recordings of Dracula and In My Life. The former appears to be getting a studio-cast set, and one suspects that the latter could still happen.
The new La Cage aux Folles didn't get a recording, but the other two Broadway musical revivals of last season were preserved. The new Pacific Overtures is an attractive account that offers more material than the original Broadway recording but in a less distinctive performance. And the new Sweet Charity recording can't compete with the original Broadway and London recordings. A concert revival of Hair yielded a worthwhile recording featuring a wide variety of young talent. In the studio, there were effective recreations of Bright Lights Big City a score I still can't get into and Leonard Bernstein's version of Peter Pan. And there was, of all things, a Las Vegas cast recording of Forever Plaid that didn't seem deeply necessary.
Off-Broadway was heard from on disc as well. If the Altar Boyz cast recording lost much of the show's verbal humor, it did preserve the catchy songs. The Immigrant produced a fairly dull recording. The latest Forbidden Broadway CD was respectable, while Captain Louie was hard to ignore simply because it was Stephen Schwartz. I will soon be reviewing the recently released cast recording of the latest Ahrens and Flaherty musical, off-Broadway's Dessa Rose. Also worthy of mention is On the Record, a two-disc set preserving a Disney stage musical that toured but never made it to New York.
In recent seasons, there has been a noticeable slowdown in the production of London cast recordings. This year, such West End musicals as The Big Life, The Far Pavilions, and the revival of Guys and Dolls went unrecorded. A pair of big guns, Mary Poppins and Billy Elliot the latter to be reviewed here soon, were the outstanding entries. There was also the Sydmonton cast recording of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice curiosity The Likes of Us a review will be forthcoming, and an unexpected London cast recording of Simply Heavenly.
The most necessary reissues were those of the Bette Davis Broadway revue Two's Company; John Kander's first Broadway musical, A Family Affair; Lionel Bart's London musical Blitz!; and the long-awaited studio Brigadoon with Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy. But there were many others, ranging from the worthy a combination of Seventeen and High Button Shoes and another of Inside U.S.A. and The Band Wagon; The Mad Show; Cyrano; the television cast of Lady in the Dark; the London cast recordings of Virtue in Danger, Stop the World... and the original Boy Friend; the French Man of La Mancha to mere curiosities New Faces of 1968; The Boy Friend 1970; Sweet Charity 1986. The Gay Life and Roberta are always welcome, even if this year's versions were reissues of reissues. Other British cast recordings that got reissued in 2005 include Wedding in Paris, Can-Can, After the Ball, and Bashville. And EMI's Classics for Pleasure label provided a slew of studio operetta recordings from the '50s and '60s which I'll soon be reviewing.
Film soundtracks included the two big entries, Rent and The Producers, along with the television A Christmas Carol. And from Town Hall came the 1926 entry in the Broadway by the Year series; a disc of numbers left off the previous CDs from that series; and the intriguing experiment Broadway Unplugged, which featured some strong singers performing without the aid of amplification.
In terms of solo vocal releases, the most unique were two volumes of Stephen Sondheim singing and playing his material. Sondheim's enthusiastic if vocally uneven performances are always arresting, and one never expected such demos to see commercial release. As usual, Barbara Cook's latest disc, Tribute, was one of the year's outstanding recitals. But also deserving of kudos were new discs from Klea Blackhurst Vernon Duke, Bernadette Peters the remainder of her Carnegie Hall concert, Philip Chaffin, and the team of Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley. Although Ethel Merman performs some questionable novelty material on The World Is Your Balloon, a disc consisting of her Decca singles from the early '50s, any Merman is a must-have, particularly when it has the star singing material she never sang again.
Moving on to the year's DVDs, 2005 saw the long-awaited release of several film adaptations of Broadway musicals. The happiest inclusions were the movie versions of Bells Are Ringing and Li'l Abner, with Finian's Rainbow and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever not far behind. Home video companies like to reissue the same films repeatedly because they know that, given enough new special features, fans will buy them again. Thus we got the latest editions of Oklahoma! including the CinemaScope version for the first time on DVD, State Fair the DVD debut of the '62 version, and The Sound of Music. Similarly, Chicago came out again, this time in a double-disc package review to follow.
Four television musicals found their way to DVD. The first, Bye Bye Birdie, appears to have been released in late 2004, but I did not discover its existence on DVD until this year. Also out were the elaborate new TV films of Reefer Madness, A Christmas Carol, and Once Upon a Mattress a review of the latter is coming soon.
Of course, there was the DVD release of the less-than-triumphant film version of The Phantom of the Opera, which is likely to have a healthier life on video than it had in theatres. One of the classic Hollywood musicals, The Band Wagon, finally appeared on DVD. And for a curiosity, there was the film musical My Sister Eileen, allowing for an interesting comparison with Wonderful Town. A rarity was the film version of the World War I London smash Chu Chin Chow. The movies of Jumbo and the '50s Anything Goes bore little resemblance to the stage shows. More valuable were the DVD releases of the film versions of some choice Broadway plays, including The Matchmaker, The Philadelphia Story, Dinner at Eight, Stage Door, and The Rainmaker.
Theatrical DVDs included the superb filming of Jerry Springer: The Opera review to come; concert versions of Candide and Wonderful Town; a long-lost document of the celebrated '60s comic revue Beyond the Fringe; the third volume of musical excerpts from past Tony Awards shows, Broadway's Lost Treasures III; and a taping of the smash hit Viennese musical Elisabeth review to follow. The DVD of the London stage production of Taboo came out again, this time with more extras crammed onto three discs.
Two interesting documentaries appeared on disc, one on The Fantasticks Try to Remember..., the other on a young people's production of Into the Woods Children Will Listen. As for female singers, nothing tops the release of fifty minutes of Barbara Cook performing on "The Bell Telphone Hour" in the early '60s, not even the release of five Barbra Streisand specials, although a couple of those are great. And it was also good to have the DVD of Ute Lemper's cabaret show, filmed at the Carlyle.