This has not been a very good year for musical theater recordings. Recently, I spent more hours than I really should have listening to an assortment of CDs of new shows and revivals, reissues of golden oldies, compilations and solo efforts by Broadway singer-actors. Alas, for the most part, I was distinctly underwhelmed. When Ethel Merman's disco album makes the cut, you know the pickings have been slim. Here are five that, for various reasons, stood out.
ELEGIES: A SONG CYCLE (FYNSWORTH ALLEY) - Songwriter William Finn has not been heard from much lately, but he'll long be remembered for his 1992 Tony Award-winning Falsettos, about a man named Marvin who leaves his wife and son for a male lover. Only his autobiographical musical A New Brain has appeared since then, and it hasn't been widely produced.
Elegies is a collection of Finn songs about friends and family members who have died, ranging from New York impresario Joe Papp to little-known composer-lyricist Jack Eric Williams. For all its idiosyncratic specificity, the cycle is moving and often surprisingly funny in numbers such as Michael Rupert's treatment of Mark's All-Male Thanksgiving, a warm remembrance of AIDS activist Mark Thale, and Betty Buckley's portrayal of a dedicated English teacher, Only One. Buckley also performs a lovely ode to Finn's late mother and his suburban upbringing, 14 Dwight Ave., Natick, Massachusetts. Other singers in Elegies, which had a brief New York run in March as a staged concert, are Christian Borle, Carolee Carmello and Keith Byron Kirk. A
AMOUR (SH-K-BOOM) - With all the fuss about the movie Chicago, it has been easy to forget the big-screen musical that really was fresh and different, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a delightful French love story told through the music of Michel Legrand. With scores to The Thomas Crown Affair, Yentl, Atlantic City and many others, Legrand is mainly a film composer, and his stage musical Amour ran only a few weeks on Broadway last fall. But this charming piece of fluff has sublime style. It's the tale of a Parisian civil servant, Dusoleil (Malcolm Gets), who employs his magical ability to walk through walls in the courtship of Isabelle (Melissa Errico). A bonus track has Legrand singing and playing the piano in An Ordinary Guy. B
OLIVER! (RCA VICTOR) - Theater composer Lionel Bart was something of a tragic figure in the end, an alcoholic who went bankrupt and had only one hit. But what a hit it was. Oliver!, Bart's brilliant adaptation of Oliver Twist that ushered in a generation of successful British musicals, still stands as one of the best examples of storytelling in song and dance. Never did an orphanage seem so irresistible.
The 1963 original Broadway cast album of Oliver! has been reissued as part of an RCA Victor series of classics that also includes Hello, Dolly! and Fiddler on the Roof. The recordings have been remastered and have bonus material, such as an interview with Oliver! musical director Donald Pippin, who acknowledges that the boys in the show weren't the greatest singers but made up for it with energy and charm. Another Oliver! bonus track is That's Your Funeral, a song not on the original American recording, performed by cast member Barry Humphries, now known as Dame Edna.
Bart's score remains wonderful. To hear Georgia Brown in It's a Fine Life, I'd Do Anything and As Long As He Needs Me is to experience one of the great musical theater performances. A
LAUREN KENNEDY: SONGS OF JASON ROBERT BROWN (PS CLASSICS) - If there's any justice, Lauren Kennedy will someday get the part that makes her a star. The native North Carolinian has had memorable performances in secondary roles, such as her Betty Schaefer in the tour of Sunset Boulevard, and she played Nellie Forbush in a Trevor Nunn production of South Pacific in London. She was Fantine in Les Miserables late in its long Broadway run.
Kennedy has released her first solo album, and it's an artful selection of songs by Jason Robert Brown, who won a Tony for his first Broadway show, Parade. Especially fun is her sardonic rendition of I Can Do Better Than That from Brown's musical that chronicles from end to beginning the breakup of a relationship, The Last Five Years. Brown joins with Kennedy on the duet I'd Give It All for You. B
THE ETHEL MERMAN DISCO ALBUM (FYNSWORTH ALLEY) - You knew it was out there in flea markets and garage sales, but the disco LP Ethel Merman made in the '70s always seemed too deliciously bad to be true. Now it can be heard in all its bizarre glory. Merman sang the words to There's No Business Like Show Business, Everything's Coming Up Roses and others exactly the way she always had, except with a thudding beat and swirling background vocals. Can the reissue of disco albums by Barry Manilow and Barbra Streisand be far behind? C
