By Steven Suskin
13 Sep 2009
A discussion of British cast albums that have yet to make the jump from vinyl to compact disc.
Compiling a list of British cast albums that I would like to see transferred to CD is somewhat more problematic than a corresponding list of Broadway LPs (as in our prior column, linked here) or Off-Broadway ones (in our next column).
My knowledge of eligible British cast albums is limited by those I happened to have had the opportunity to hear. In the days before the advent of the CD, relatively few British cast albums were imported to the United States, and vice versa. If you went overseas you might return with a handful of new LPs; otherwise, you only got what turned up. Thus I preface this list by saying that there are unquestionably not-yet-on-CD U.K. items that I can't recommend because I never heard them. (The British labels Sepia and Must Close Saturday have brought us a fair number of pre-1970 West End musicals which I now listen to regularly, but might otherwise have never heard of. So I suppose there must be more of the same.) Hence, my list is somewhat restricted. The titles that have made it, oddly enough, all seem to fall in one category: tuneful-and-peppy musical comedies seemingly concerned with little more than providing their audiences with amusement. None of the shows were distinguished, perhaps, but all make for enjoyable listening. To me, at least.
*
On the very day that I started college, I got a job ushering at The Me Nobody Knows at the Orpheum Theatre in the heart of the East Village. Thus it was that during the first act of a Sunday matinee in October 1970, I found a strange, gnome-like man sitting on the stairs in the lobby, crying. He looked odd and East Villagey enough to be a wanderer off the streets, but he had a strange theatrical sensibility. Is something wrong? I asked. "No," he said, "It's just that the music is so beautiful." Maybe he'd like to go back in? I asked. No, later said he. Maybe he wanted a cup of water? No, he'd be fine. And he told me he had just flown in for meetings. He was writing a musical. Sure, I thought; everybody is writing a musical. Yes, he said, based on "Gulliver's Travels."
Now, a musical based on "Gulliver's Travels" seems pretty suspect; but even at 17 I read Variety, and remembered a recent item about this unlikely sounding (and ultimately unwritten) musical by Lionel Bart. Here sitting on the steps of the Orpheum, crying was the amazing Lionel, who had galvanized the British musical theatre in 1960 with Oliver! Yes, he was a pretty strange bird; in my youthful innocence, I didn't comprehend that his enthusiastic but disconnected and disheveled state was probably brought on not only by beautiful music but chemical interference. At any rate, I went off to do something or other and when I returned Bart was gone.
 |  | |
I suppose that if I had seen Twang!!, I might find the cast album intolerable. But I didn't, and I don't, and I resultingly nominate said LP to my little list. Bart's aforementioned common touch and ability to grab you is very much in evidence. The album starts off with a rollickingly bouncy "Welcome to Sherwood Forest," continues with an irrepressible song about chastity belts, and goes on from there. There are two tender songs, "Wander" and "Dreamchild"; a decidedly wretched item called "Roger the Ugly"; and a frenetically wild title song which is hard to resist. Best, for me, is a knockout production number called "With Bells On," which equates to Sandy Wilson's "Big Best Shoes" from Valmouth (the original cast album of which doesn't make our list only because it was released by DRG some years back, although presently out-of-print). Twang!! was undoubtedly a mess, and an irredeemable one at that; but the cast album, which I suppose might have sent Bart even further into hock, makes for joyous listening. As long as it doesn't bring up memories of sitting through what must have been a very trying shambles.
*
|  | |
Secombe revived Pickwick at Chichester in 1993, and that cast album was released on CD; but the original 1963 London cast album, for reasons unknown, remains on the LP-only list. And it's a grand album. The show's one song hit "If I Ruled the World" is there in all its glory, yes; and there's a worthy runner up in the ballad "There's Something About You." But the score is loaded with some ever-so-charming numbers; "That's What I Want for Christmas" alone will light up anyone's gray Monday. What's more, Teddy Green (known on Broadway as the sparkplug of Baker Street and Darling of the Day) almost succeeds in stealing the limelight from Secombe with a trio of delectable turns, "Talk," "You Never Met a Fellow Like Me," and "Every Day You Learn a Little Something." The Chichester recording [That's Entertainment TER 1205] is fine enough, with a grandfatherly Secombe and Roy Castle (of the Broadway cast) singing Teddy Green's numbers with some strangely altered arrangements, but the CD doesn't compare to the delectable 1963 LP.
*
|  | |
If you like the Sixpence songs, you are likely to enjoy these as well. What's more, the score boasts an expert orchestration by Irwin Kostal. The overture is a case in point, featuring not only Kostal's orchestration but his wonderful arrangement (which is to say, the manner in which the songs have been assembled). "Phil the Fluter" is one of French's songs, and one that was well-known to audiences of the time. That being the case, Irv started the overture with a flute soloist playing the song punctuated by the orchestra, which joins in for a bit of a jig. He then goes on a tour of the score, including songs written by the two composers over a hundred-year span, from 1870 beer-hall to 1960s pop; in each case, the eclectic and often rousing songs are separated by the flute, which following a cacophonous melange ends the thing with the same wistful solo with which it began. Hard to describe with words, but highly effective. Let us also mention Heneker's "How Would You Like Me," a very pretty ballad sung by an attractive sounding, self-effacing, bashful heroine (Caryl Little). Again, Kostal's work is a model of understatement that just makes you want to embrace the song and the singer, with a dance arrangement and dance orchestration that positively bubbles over with warmth. Stanley Baker, Mark Wynter and the legendary Evelyn Laye star. Continued...
| View article on single page | Previous Page 1 | 2 Next Page |
