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GYPSY [Time Life M19659]
There is little sense in comparing the new cast recording of Patti LuPone in Gypsy — or any recording of anyone in Gypsy — with the original 1959 Broadway cast album, that being the one with Ethel Merman. Gypsy was written for Merman; the role of Rose was specifically cobbled to fit her, and the material is what it is, to a significant extent, because Merman was originally there. The authors didn't just write a typical Merman role; they took her traits and stretched them, giving her a histrionic workout and challenging her to surpass herself. Which she did (although a certain amount of evidence suggests that she couldn't quite sustain the performance over the long run — or, more probably, didn't care to). But Rose does what she does, the way she does it, in part because it was Merman they had to work with. One need only look as far as composer Jule Styne, whose early training as a vocal coach (with Merman among his clients) enabled him to write to his singer's strength. When he devised those extended notes in "Some People" ("good-bye-I-I-I-I to blueberry pie-I-I-I-I"), he wrote them because of the singer; he didn't give anything of the sort to Judy Holliday in Bells Are Ringing, his prior hit, or to Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl, his subsequent hit. Because that's not what Judy or Barbra did; those nine-beat trumpet bleats are pure Merman. Patti sings them, just as Angela, Dolores, Tyne, Bernadette and others have sung them; but the notes are there because Merman was first there. So we shall not start comparing LuPone's Gypsy to Merman's.

But we can compare the new cast album of the current Gypsy to all the other, non-Merman recordings of the score. And in this race, I think that I'm going to place Patti and company at the head of the pack. This, for several reasons. We may as well start with LuPone. The lady is an original, all right, and has been back since the beginning of her career. (I saw her four times in The Baker's Wife — I just happened to be in Boston and Washington, and they kept giving me tickets — and let me say, even back in 1976 she was giving a more than satisfactory performance plus something extra.) Once or twice in the 30-odd intervening years she has been known to sometimes appear to be just a tad mannered, and perhaps some affectations have from time to time entered into the act. But not here, not now. LuPone's Rose is a dynamo; different than Merman's, yes, and I suppose different than anybody else's. Which is as it should be. Patti does not try to be Merman, nor does she try to be Rose LuPone, playing to the fans with a wink and a leer and a slur. This is Rose Hovick, with LuPone lavishing her acting and singing skills on the interpretation. Everything comes up roses, here, nothing comes up Patti. [Disclaimer: I provided the liner notes for this album.]

LuPone is matched, in a manner of speaking, by Laura Benanti. Louise has always been a problematic role; the part calls for someone who can act both the awkward teenager and the worldly ecdysiast, plus sing to us and charm us and strip. Sandra Church, who originated the role, couldn't quite do it; there's a heated exchange of letters from 1959 still sitting in the file, with the Messrs. Robbins and Laurents agreeing on nothing except the fact that the strip didn't work. (One blames the actress, the other blames the actress and the director, and both blame the costume designer and more or less claim collusion by the composer.) Some of the subsequent Louises have done a good job — I quite liked Zan Charisse, and I'm told that Julienne Marie was pretty good — but it always seemed like the problem was in the material. Not with Ms. Benanti up there, it isn't. All the pieces fall in place, as a result of which the final scenes of Gypsy, in this revival, are so much stronger than usual. There's a battle of near-equals going on, between mother and daughter; the strong Louise makes Rose vulnerable in a way that we're unaccustomed to.

And the strippers. Well, the strippers have almost always been good, thanks to the material that Laurents, Sondheim and Styne gave them. Put three accomplished musical comediennes up there with those lines and those costumes and those props, and they are sure to rock the house. In this case we have Alison Fraser, who has always been good at directing a line and a leer; Marilyn Caskey, who finds a new and very funny way to be electrifying; and Lenora Nemetz, who makes such a comedic goldmine out of Miss Cratchitt, the secretary with the telephone, that we are still laughing at her when she starts to bump it with the trumpet. A cameo is assigned to Mr. Laurents, delivering the "you ain't getting 88 cents from me" line that was proffered by Mr. Sondheim back on the 1959 album.

The rest of them are all fine, including Tony Yazbeck who gives Tulsa more flavor than is usually the case. The other major asset of the cast album is the handling of the music. Patrick Vaccariello has what might be Broadway's finest set of orchestrations ever to work with, from Sid Ramin and Red Ginzler. He seems to have dug in and taken advantage of every flash of color the orchestrators provided him with. Just listen to the overture; every flavor is brought out, every special bit of sparkle is recognized and encouraged. Vaccariello does not do everything the way it was done in 1959; there are changes in tempo here and there, some of them quite noticeable. But he has clearly studied the original cast recording, the better to understand the composer's intentions; and he makes sure that this new Gypsy replicates the musical excitement of the original.

(A note to all those readers — all five of them — who notice such things: on this recording, the opening bars of the overture have been restored to the way they are supposed to be. That is to say, those reinforcing chords under the opening trumpet fanfare that seem to have first appeared in the Bernadette Peters production, and which are presently heard in performance at the St. James, have been omitted. Yes, this figure was written on the original orchestral score; but Styne, presumably with the orchestrators in full agreement, cut them at the orchestra rehearsal before the first performance in Philadelphia in the spring of 1959. The chords add something momentous to the opening bars, perfectly suited to a fanfare heralding an ultra-grand motion picture. But the rough-and-ready Gypsy is not supposed to sound like a grand motion picture, which is presumably why Styne insisted on removing them. And why I'm glad they are not retained for this recording.)

What can you do to make a cast recording extra special when it is the fifth full-scale Broadway production of the show in question? You can go back and dig up the material that was cut in 1959, and which — seeing as how it is the work of Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim — holds more than tangential interest. What we get here are "Mother's Day" and "Tomorrow's Mother's Day," two alternate versions of a number for the younger girls, neither of which was used; "Nice She Ain't," a number for Herbie that Mr. Klugman did not feel equipped to sing; "Who Needs Him?" a number for Rose to sing when Herbie walks out which was written early on, and which pretty clearly doesn't belong in the finished show; and "Three Wishes for Christmas," a production number intended for the Minsky's salute to Christmas at the end of the strip. (Mr. Laurents changed this years ago to a salute to the Garden of Eden, calling for less scenery, less bodies and less costumes). These songs are sung here by the performers who play the roles for which they were intended, which is to say Ms. LuPone, Mr. Gaines, and the girls; Mr. Yazbeck steps in to sing the Christmas song, quite amusingly. Jonathan Tunick has provided fresh new orchestrations for these numbers, and fittingly so as he learned the craft of orchestration from Ginzler; he still uses some of Red's writing tools, which he inherited back in 1962. (Ramin, meanwhile, remains Ginzler's No. 2 fan, and will enthusiastically admit that Red taught him much of what he knows.) So what we get from Tunick are new charts that are very much in the style of the originals.

One of the cut charts, and no doubt the most interesting of them, is a leftover by Ramin and Ginzler. This is the full, original version of "Small World" which incorporated a second song, "Mama's Talking Soft," and ended with the two in counterpoint. This was very much part of the show as they moved into the Erlanger in Philadelphia (which is why it, unlike the other cut numbers, was fully orchestrated). When they tried it at dress rehearsal on the set, though, they ran into an insurmountable problem; it was staged with the girls looking down on Rose and Herbie from a high platform. June, it turned out, was afraid of heights; with no quick fix apparent, and with time at a premium and tensions high, it was decided to just cut the girls' section of the quartet and that was that. So we now finally get to hear the number, 49 years late, as originally written and orchestrated.

Gypsy, like the recent South Pacific, is being released in two versions; an alternate release, with bonus tracks, is available from Barnes & Noble. In the case of South Pacific, this was a somewhat questionable move; why not just put all the tracks on the regularly available CD? Gypsy presents a different situation. They recorded everything they had, including the songs that weren't used in 1959. With too much material for one CD but not enough to warrant a 2-disc set, they took most of the actual show plus all of the cut materials and fit them onto one 79-minute CD. What to do with the eight tracks that remained? The recent example of South Pacific at Barnes & Noble provided an answer. Unlike with South Pacific, though, Barnes & Noble gives you a two-CD Gypsy set for your money, not an alternate single-CD version. The eight tracks on the second CD include, most prominently, the Entr'acte, the Exit Music, and the final scene between Rose and Louise following the "Rose's Turn" number (which, with Ms. LuPone and Ms. Benanti, is well worth listening to). Also on hand, and happily so, is an additional visit with Ms. Nemetz's characterization of Miss Cratchitt as well as several stretches of scene change music. Which makes the extended Barnes & Noble version of more than casual interest. Continued...