Theater Thursday: Top Ten(ish) Original Broadway Cast Albums

Just for a change of pace, and because I haven’t done a “Top Ten(ish)” post in a while, here are my Top Ten(ish) Original Broadway Cast (OBC) albums.

Yes, it skews heavily towards the 70s-90s. This is not a judgement. There are a lot of current new shows I enjoy songs from. It’s just that I don’t listen to cast albums the way I did back then, so these are the ones that are the most ingrained.

Note: these are my favorites, chosen for emotional/sentimental reasons.

Note 2: cast albums, not live shows. In high school I didn’t have many opportunities to get to Broadway, so cast albums were my only way to experience the shows (other than occasional Great Performances airing on PBS).

So, in no particular order, my Top Ten(ish) Original Broadway Cast albums:

1.      1776.  William Daniels, Ken Howard, Howard Da Silva, Betty Buckley, Ron Holgate … Okay, so I fell in love with the movie version first. My father bought the OBC that summer instead of the movie cast. “Sit Down, John,” “The Egg,” “But Mister Adams,” “The Lees of Old Virginia.” I even took a stab at “He Plays the Violin” (but changed “he” to “she” when anyone was listening as any closeted boy would do back then.

2.      BARNUM. Sorry, Greatest Showman fans. While I’m sure this 1980 musical was no more historically accurate than GS, it’s the Barnum musical I grew up on and will not be supplanted. The odds of it ever coming back to Broadway are infinitesimally smaller now that GS exists, but I guess I can hope for a City Centers Encores! production at some point. This was my first encounter with the wonders that are Jim Dale and Glenn Close.

3.      PIPPIN. Another “Saw the movie first” or rather “saw the film of the stage play on VHS first.” I love that filmed version (with William Katt as Pippin, Chita Rivera as Fastrada, and Martha Raye as Berthe) and was, admittedly, slightly disappointed at first the OBC had other folks in those roles. But I warmed up to them (John Rubenstein, Leland Palmer, Irene Ryan) and wore that vinyl (as with the two above) out.

4.      ASSASSINS. Okay, maybe this is cheating because it was Off-Broadway, but something just clicked with me the first time I heard that cast: Victor Garber, Jonathan Hadary, Terrence Mann, Debra Monk, Lee Wilkof, Greg Germann, Patrick Cassidy, Annie Golden. Dark humor was definitely my jam in 1990.

5.      HAMILTON. I may not listen to OBCs quite the way I used to … but I think the Hamilton OBC was in the CD player of every rental car I got for my work travel in 2016-17. This was probably the last time I so obsessively listened to an OBC album for a show I hadn’t yet seen.

6.      SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET. Another case where I’m almost positive I saw the televised version of the stage play before hearing the cast album, got obsessed, bought the vinyl, played it incessantly. To my mind, there will never be a better Mrs. Lovett than Angela Lansbury, and I’m split as to whether Len Cariou or George Hearn is the better Sweeney. And oh, look … there’s Victor Garber making his second (but not last) appearance on this list.

7.      JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT. Another entry that’s kind of a cheat. Someone gave me a cassette of the 1971 US release of a 1969 Decca Records recording of a 39-minute version of the show, with an all-male (or mostly male) cast including David Daltrey as Joseph and Tim Rice himself as Pharoah. I don’t remember who sang the Narrator, as that cassette tape got worn out and turned out to not be replaceable. Of course, when the OBC album came out, I picked it up. Which was after (I believe) a high school trip to see it.

8.      DOONESBURY. In the early 80s, Garry Trudeau decided it was time for his characters to graduate college, enter the work force, and start aging the way real people (as opposed to comic strip characters) do. To accomplish this … he put them in a Broadway musical. Another show I never got the chance to see, but man did I love this album (which I believe has only ever been issued on vinyl). There’s so many quippy, snarky, at-the-time-topical lyrics. The political stuff was fun, but songs like “Another Memorable Meal” (making fun of Mike’s cooking inability, which I pretty much share), “I Came To Tan” (Zonker’s ode to his tanning career), and “I Can Have It All” (Boopsie’s ode to the modern woman) still take up space rent-free in my brain. Also, the cast included Mark Linn-Baker, Lauren Tom, Gary Beach, Kate Burton, and Keith Szarabajka. Also never revived.

9.      MAYOR. Another Off-Broadway cheat, another show that has never been revived and probably never will be (even for City Center Encores! this would be a stretch), given how precise a look at a certain era of New York City it is. I believe “You Can Be a New Yorker, Too!” is a cabaret favorite amongst the NYC theater set. I also love “Hootspa,” “What You See Is What You Get,” “I Want to Be the Mayor,” and “The Last I Love New York Song.” The original cast included Lenny Wolpe as The Mayor.

10.  CITY OF ANGELS. Oh, look, another Cy Coleman musical that’s never been revived on Broadway. Fairly sure my obsession with this one is my father’s fault. He bought it for the jazzy score and Manhattan Transfer-like “Greek chorus.” I kept it in constant rotation on CD because it was about the golden age of Hollywood and a writer and his private eye creation. My two favorite songs are “You Can Always Count on Me” (which I now love singing a gender-flipped version of) and “Funny,” which was one of the songs my college voice teacher (the late, great Professor Joe Cook) assigned because while I didn’t have faith I could sing it, he did. And I still can. Also, look at that cast: James Naughton, Gregg Edelman, Rene Auberjonois, Randy Graff, Dee Hoty, Kay McClelland, Carolee Carmello.

11.  CHESS. Okay, yes, I know you’re thinking “now you’re really cheating, that’s a concept album!” And I loved that concept album, played the vinyl constantly, pretty much wore out the CD as well – but I also loved (as many people apparently did not), for all its flaws, the OBC cassette tape I had with Phillip Casnoff, Judy Kuhn, David Carroll, and Harry Goz. If nothing else, it was the first time I heard “Someone Else’s Story,” which was not on the concept album; it’s been a favorite song ever since.

12.  CAMELOT. Another one that I came to through the movie. Took me a bit to get used to Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, and Robert Goulet in place of Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, and Franco Nero, but again: I warmed to them quickly enough. And surprise surprise (to me): in the play version, Mordred (played by Roddy McDowall) has a song all about how being naughty is more fun than being good! (“The Seven Deadly Virtues” is not the greatest villain song ever written, but I will choose it every time.)

13.  INTO THE WOODS. A world in which all the fairy tale characters not only co-exist but interact, and some of them are related to each other? I was already a fan of cohesive fictional universes (thanks Edgar Rice Burroughs, Philip Jose Farmer, DC Comics, and Marvel Comics) by the time this musical debuted, and I was smitten from first listen. There have been some excellent revival casts, but give me Chip Zein, Joanna Gleason, Danielle Ferland, Robert Westenberg, Bernadette Peters, Kim Crosby, Ben Wright, and Tom Aldredge any day.

14.  A CHORUS LINE. I mean, when your mother yells at your father to “stop playing that song where the kids can hear!” (I’m looking at you, “Dance Ten / Looks Three”), of course you need to listen to the whole cast album every time she’s not home. (She’d have had apoplexy over certain parts of “Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love” as well, if she’d paid attention). And maybe my obsession with “I Can Do That” should have been a sign of things to come (spoiler alert: not that I’d be a dancer. I can’t dance.)

15.  JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR/GODSPELL. Ending the list on a tie. These two shows are so inextricably linked in my mind not only because they tell the same story from different directions but because songs from each wound their way into our high school chorus and church folk group performances (Yes, I was in the folk group at my Roman Catholic church. Are you shocked?) I may not have listened to either straight through as much as I did the other entries on this list, but those songs were part of the soundtrack to my high school years and after, so I can’t leave them off. (And there’s Victor Garber, showing up for a third time!)

Honorable Mention: OKLAHOMA. My father owned a stack of 78 RPM vinyl, even though the format had long since been discontinued. Among them were the cast albums (plural, yes) of the original Broadway cast of Oklahoma. Alfred Drake, Howard Da Silva, Celeste Holm … I didn’t know who most of them were at that time, but this is probably the earliest Broadway cast album I can recall listening to, so it holds a special place despite not being listened to as much as the others (piling all those thick 78 vinyls up took effort, man!)

 Now, how about hitting comments and letting me know what YOUR favorite Original Broadway Cast Albums are. No judgement! I woke yuck your yum if you don’t yuck mine!

I’ve always loved live theater, and in the past couple of years I’ve been making a stronger effort to see more of it. Theater Thursday is a new occasionally series where I talk about live theater, both shows I’ve seen recently and shows I’ve loved in the past.

Theater Thursday: Water for Elephants

I love watching gymnasts and acrobats do their thing. I love creative puppetry. I enjoy tightly harmonized folk-pop music. And I’m partial to stories about the circus/carnivals. So Water for Elephants piqued my interest when it was announced, even before I found out that Grant Gustin, my second-favorite television Flash (sorry, Grant fans, John Wesley Shipp will always have the number one spot there … but that’s a post for another time), would be making his Broadway debut in the lead role. My goddaughter also wanted to see it, so off we went to the Imperial Theatre a week or so before the 2024 Tony Awards.

Based on the novel of the same name by Sara Gruen, which my office book club read shortly after it came out, with book by Rick Elice and music and lyrics by Pigpen Theatre Co., Water For Elephants is a memory play: elderly nursing home patient Jacob Jankowski attends a nearby traveling circus and regals the staff with his own tale of joining Benzini Brothers’ Most Spectacular Circus during the Prohibition years.  Jacob becomes the circus’s veterinarian and falls for Marlena, the horse trainer, running him afoul of the owner/ringmaster (and Marlena’s abusive husband), August, and his trusted assistant Wade.

The gymnastics/acrobatics in this show are stunning: pole work, ringwork, aerial silks, tumbling, death-drops, trapeze … and probably a dozen other moves I don’t know the names for but love watching. Most of the full ensemble numbers, from “The Road Don’t Make You Young” to the act one closer “The Grand Spec,” from “Zostan” at the start of act two to the various show-ending reprises, feature multiple gymnastic/acrobatic components happening concurrently. Many of these are also performed at top speed. The cast must be exhausted by intermission and burnt out by the end of the show. (I can’t imagine what a two-show day feels like). The seamlessness in which all of them interweave without collisions, without missing timing … it really blew me away. Of particular note: the aerial silk work of Antoine Boissereau during “Easy” is so stunning it brought me to tears (okay, the lyrics, sung beautifully by Isabelle McCalla as Marlena, also helped the tears to flow).

The animal costuming/puppetry work is also wonderful. Since the setting is a circus, the animals have to be represented somehow. Puppet designers Ray Wetmore, JR Goodman, and Camille Labarre, alongside costume designer David Israel Reynoso, went in a different direction from that other long-running Broadway show where humans play animals (The Lion King). Rather than fully-articulated and detailed puppet costumes, they went for broad details that imply – allowing the actors playing those animals to have greater range of movement, which benefitted the show greatly, especially in the climactic stampede scene.

Speaking of that scene – Bradley King’s lighting design is great throughout the show but spectacular in that specific moment. Combined with the way the scene is staged and the cacophonous music, the lighting puts the audience as close to being in that stampede as you can be without leaving your seat.

I’ve given praise to the ensemble’s athleticism. Now, the leads: Gregg Edelman (who I will see in just about anything) is heartbreaking and loveable as the lonely, wistful elderly Jacob. He is counterpointed by Grant Gustin’s earnest performance as the youthful, also lonely and heartbreaking, somewhat naïve younger Jacob. As mentioned, Isabella McCalla is Marlena; her voice is sweet, soaring, and beautiful. Paul Alexander Nolan’s brutish/conniving/charismatic turn as August might have been my favorite villain turn of the season so far.

The supporting cast were equally enjoyable: Stan Brown’s Camel, the man who takes younger Jacob under his wing, is heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time; Joe De Paul’s Walter, the circus clown/comedian, is just hysterical; Sara Gettelfinger steals every scene she’s in as Barbara, who runs the “exotic dancer” sideshow, with a wonderful acerbic wit. And as Wade, August’s right-hand-man-without-a-conscience, Wade McCollum made the part more than just a one-note sidekick.

Pigpen Theater Co’s music is period-appropriate, a nice blend of ballads and folk/pop with lyrics that are emotive and build on character. In the moment, pretty much every song hits the right spot, whether that be infectious joy or deep loss. I must admit, though: after the show was over, I had a hard time calling any particular song to mind. I usually leave a musical humming/trying to remember the lyrics of at least one song. Your experience may be different, of course.

Despite that one little (very personal, not true for everyone) complaint, I would say that if you love the circus, acrobatics, puppetry, and strong vocal performances … see Water for Elephants. I know that as I post this, Grant Gustin is nearing his final performance and Joe De Paul has already left, but don’t let that stop you.

I’ve always loved live theater, and in the past couple of years I’ve been making a stronger effort to see more of it. Theater Thursday is a new occasionally series where I talk about live theater, both shows I’ve seen recently and shows I’ve loved in the past.

Page To Screen: Evening Primrose

Page to Screen is a series of blog posts where I read a book or story and then watch a movie based on said book or story. It will be intermittent, I’m sure, like most of my “regular” features. The first, unofficial Page to Screen entry was my review of The Bitter Tea of General Yen and the classic movie adapted from it.

Okay, so this one is technically a little backwards from the intent, because I first saw the television musical version of Evening Primrose at the Museum of Television Arts in New York City back in the late 90s. I had not seen it since then. When I discovered that the episode was on DVD and that the short story it was based on was available in print, I decided it was time to read the original story and rewatch the movie. WARNING: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS, FOR BOTH THE STORY AND THE TELEVISION EPISODE. I can’t talk about the differences between the two without spoiling stuff.

STORY REVIEW

“Evening Primrose” by John Collier is a brief twelve pages, an “accidentally found manuscript” type of story. The story purports to have been found scribbled in a pad of Highlife Bond paper bought by a customer at Bracey’s Giant Emporium. What the purchaser of the notepad (a Miss Sadie Brodribb) thinks of the tale she’s accidentally purchased, we never learn. As is the nature of people, she probably thought it was some kind of practical joke by the store employees (akin to finding a “help, I’m being held prisoner in a fortune cookie factory” note in your fortune cookie). The story itself is the first person account of Mr. Charles Snell, a poet who decides the real world is no longer for him and that he’ll live in Bracey’s. He’ll hide during the day, and eat/drink/write poetry at night, deftly avoiding the store’s night watchman. He quickly discovers he’s not alone in living in the store, that this is a thing people do in stores large and small all across the city – people who for one reason or another have eschewed normal society. The community in Bracey’s has a hierarchy, at the top of which sits the regal Mrs. Vanderpant, and at the bottom of which sits a teen serving girl named Ella. Charles is warned that people who betray the community are sentenced to removal by the Dark Men, who turn the offendees into mannequins. Charles falls in love with the servant girl, who is in love with the night watchman (who remains oblivious to the community living around him). Charles decides to respect Ella’s love for another man and to help them meet and escape. Only in his emotional despair over Ella not loving him, he spills the beans to a community member he trusts. The story ends with Ella trussed up for the Dark Men and Charles determined to find the night watchman and rescue her. Charles’ final lines indicate his plan to leave his notes where a customer might find them, in case his plan to rescue Ella results in himself and the watchman also being killed. 

It’s a tightly-told story, and Collier builds the mystery of the community and threat of the Dark Men smoothly throughout the story – but the ending feels just a bit too abrupt. Charles declares his love, gets rebuffed, accidentally betrays Ella, and sets his plan to rescue her all within the final two pages of the story. I wish Collier had built the suspense of what would happen to Ella and Charles just a little bit more before the end. Regardless, I enjoyed the concept, the mood, the reveal of Charles’ character, the development of the Bracey’s community (and their relationship to communities in other stores) and eerie threat of the Dark Men.

“MOVIE” REVIEW

The television episode “Evening Primrose” first aired on November 16, 1966 as a part of the ABC Stage 67 anthology series. I would have been a whole three months old. I have no clue whether my parents watched it. Given their love of television and my father’s love of musicals, I’m going to guess they did. It starred the perfectly cast Anthony Perkins as misanthropic poet Charles Snell and Charmaine Carr as innocent, uneducated Ella Harkness, with Dorothy Stickney as more dotty-than-regal Mrs. Monday (a renamed Mrs. Vanderpant).

It’s a musical, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Goldman and directed by Paul Bogart. The creators and cast do a wonderful job translating the mood of the story to the screen – all the “free but still sort of trapped” sensibility, the rigidness of the Paul Stern (renamed from Bracey’s) store community, the threat of the Dark Men is there in the staging, dialogue, lyrics and instrumental music – and hey fix the pacing issue I had with the story, giving the romantic relationship more time to develop and giving space to the real threat of the Dark Men at the end. The songs start out character-centric and then become plot-propelling. Charles’ song “If You Can Find Me I’m Here” is one of the best misanthropic “you don’t like my art, screw you” songs ever written, while Ella’s “I Remember Sky” is a wistfully beautiful piece. The duet “When” moves their relationship along and incorporates their fears of being found out, while the duet “Take Me to the World” is the point at which the plot turns towards the big denouement.  

There are a couple of significant changes to the story, as often happens in page-to-screen adaptations. Ella is now an adult (to remove the ickiness of a poet in his late twenties falling in love with a sixteen-year-old, I assume) and her mistreatment at the hands of the older community members is made more explicit (including that they have never taught her to read, write, or do math, and force her to live in the store basement). Instead of unrequited love, Ella falls as much in love with Charles as he does with her. And in what I think is a very sensible change that heightens the drama of the last act, the couple is found out not through Charles intentionally revealing his feelings to his ‘trusted friend’ Roscoe, but because Charles accidentally turns on the store’s speaker system while they are singing “Take Me To The World” and unknowingly lets the entire store community know what they are planning (the night watchman hears too, thus revealing that there are people living in the store even if he can’t manage to find them, which puts him in danger without having to work in the awkward love triangle).

The final act is a wonderful game of cat-and-mouse through the store as Mrs. Monday and Roscoe try to delay Charles and Ella long enough for the Dark Men to catch them. The fate of the characters implied by the structure of Collier’s story is made explicit in the final scenes of the episode. I always thought it was a delightfully dark ending, and I’m glad Goldman and Sondheim didn’t decide to change it for television.

Interesting trivia: while the television episode originally aired in color, the only print remaining is in black and white. And I actually think that adds to the mood and thus effectiveness of the production. I’m kind of glad the color print isn’t available (the DVD has some test footage of Anthony Perkins in Stern Brothers and it just feels too bright for the story being told).

FINAL COMPARISON

While I liked Collier’s story well enough and I want to read more of his short stories, I think I prefer the musical in this instance.

The Collier story can be found in his collection Fancies and Goodnights. The Sondheim-Goldman musical is available on DVD and Prime Video.