By Steven Suskin
05 May 2002

SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESSSony Classical SK89922
It is no surprise to report that Sweet Smell of Success sounds a whole lot better on CD than it does in the theatre. The stage production has an assortment of problems that we needn't expand upon here. The songs, though, tend to get lost at the Martin Beck. Stripped of the staging and reformatted for recording, we get a much clearer idea of what composer Marvin Hamlisch and lyricist Craig Carnelia were trying to do. But it still doesn't work.

Sweet Smell of Success — the 1957 film — was quite wonderful, and remains so. It is about power and pressure; the action never stops, propelled by an expert jazz score by Elmer Bernstein. Like the film, the stage version is highly underscored; but the characters keep interrupting to sing to us. Music, yes, but a different type of music; place an actor in a spotlight so he can spend three minutes explaining his motivations and illuminating his aspirations, and the pressure is off. Imagine Sweet Smell of Success without pressure, and — well, that's what you have at the Beck. The authors have chosen to spread out the show's time span by adding exposition; they have also expanded the presence of two characters, Susan and Dallas, who serve as pawns in the film. This was done, presumably, to allow Hamlisch and Carnelia to write love songs — which, again, stop everything cold (and not in a good way).

I'm the first person to insist that changes are necessary when adapting a film to the stage; otherwise, the new product will seem like a pale carbon of the old. The songwriters and their librettist, John Guare, earnestly attempted to find a way to transform Sweet Smell. The results don't work, though; maybe it was an impossible dream. Poor guys, for their honest efforts they have been paraded into the town square and unceremoniously bopped in the nose with a rolled-up copy of yesterday's Globe. That's show business.

Only one song truly works in the context of the show, in my opinion anyway: Falco's solo "At the Fountain." This took us in the wrong direction, perhaps, humanizing and creating sympathy for a character who in the movie was chillingly inhuman and unsympathetic. Be that as it may, the song is strong and effective. Too many of the other songs in the score aren't; several seem to come from another score altogether, and not a good one. (Prime examples: "Rita's Tune" and "Don't Look Now.") I wrote several years ago that Hamlisch seemed stylistically well suited for Sweet Smell, and I'm afraid that turned out not to be the case. Listening to his work here, I can't shake the impression that he was consciously trying to write a score like Cy Coleman's City of Angels. But Coleman was rooted in jazz; at the time of the Sweet Smell film, he was a nightclub pianist (albeit very different and more talented than the corresponding character in the musical). This is not Hamlisch's milieu, resulting in a strained score. Some of the music for Sweet Smell sounds like it belongs, but none of it — sadly — has the authentic flavor Cy brought to his film noir musical.

The disc performances are pretty much as in the theatre. Brian d'Arcy James is very strong despite his material; John Lithgow isn't; the lovers are out-of-place and somewhat pained; and the poor girl who plays Rita does the best she can with her severely unsuitable solo (which I can only suppose was a desperate attempt to re create Oolie's second act showstopper in the Coleman musical). For what it's worth, the CD is well produced (by Hamlisch, Carnelia and Jay Landers) and features an impressively snazzy booklet with a well-turned — but uncredited — synopsis.

Despite its flaws, Sweet Smell of Success makes for interesting listening. Some CDs are played once or twice and then filed away. This is one that I suspect will remain on the changer for repeated listening.

—Steven Suskin, author of "Broadway Yearbook 1999-2000," the forthcoming "Broadway Yearbook 2000-2001," "Show Tunes," and the "Opening Night on Broadway" books. He can be reached by E-mail at Ssuskin@aol.com