Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals

Heart and Music - a Benefit Recording for Pancreatic Cancer

All right, all you show-tune queens. Stop downloading that bootleg of the Finnish cast of Spring Awakening for a second and do something productive with your time.

One of my Boston Conservatory students -- the very talented and entrepreneurial Tyler Paul -- was recently the associate producer on a benefit recording for the Hirshberg Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research. Tyler tells me that he holds the cause of raising funds for and awareness about pancreatic cancer research very dear to his heart, as he lost his beloved great uncle to the disease early last year.

The recording is called Heart and Music, and it boasts performances from quite a few of my BoCo students, including Marissa Miller, Sarah Drake, Ben Simpson, Niki Sawyer, and Mr. Tyler Paul himself. The recording features a number of popular, contemporary theater songs, such as "In Whatever Time We Have" from Children of Eden, "A New World" from Songs for a New World, and the title song, "Heart and Music" from A New Brain. The recording also includes some pop standards, such as "Let it Be" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water." All of the proceeds go directly to the Hirshberg Foundation.

Heart and Music is available now on iTunes; in fact, it's currently ranked as the #10 vocal album, right between Josh Groban and Norah Jones. As Tyler said to me in an email, "Not too shabby, huh?"

No, my friend, not too shabby at all.

The Story of My Life to Receive Cast Recording

The Story of My Life will indeed live on. The good folks at PS Classics will issue a cast recording of the short-lived Broadway show. Co-stars Malcolm Gets and Will Chase will head into the recording studio on March 13th, and the CD is scheduled for release on June 2nd, according to Tommy Krasker, executive producer for PS Classics.

As I said in my review of The Story of My Life, Neil Bartram's terrific score was the best thing about the show, combined with the wonderfully modulated performances by Chase and Gets. And the cast recording makes it infinitely more likely that the show will enjoy a regional afterlife.

Apparently, that's exactly what the show's producers were thinking. According to a recent report by Peter Filichia, after the disappointing reviews for The Story of My Life came out, the producers made the decision to close the show rather than run through all of the investors' cash. "They felt that the money they hadn’t spent could be put to better use by making a cast album that could spur further productions," writes Filichia. "That would give the investors some return."

As I've said, I really think we're going to see this show blossom in regional theater, much in the same way that The Last Five Years, Seussical, and even Into the Woods didn't reach their full earnings potential until they hit the aftermarket. And I really hope this isn't the last we've heard from Neil Bartram and Brian Hill.

Next to Normal Will Play Broadway

After what appears to have been a successful run at the Arena Stage, the new musical Next to Normal is now Broadway bound. The entire Arena Stage cast -- including Alice Ripley, J. Robert Spencer, and Aaron Tveit -- will make the transfer to New York, where the show will play the Longacre Theater, recently vacated by Boeing-Boeing.

The producers have announced an unusual move: they will close off the Longacre balcony, reducing the number of potential audience members from 1,100 to 820. This is apparently to provide more intimacy for the six-character musical.

Regular readers will recall that I had problems with both the message and the execution of Next to Normal when I saw it at the Second Stage. (Read my review.) Librettist Brian Yorkey continues to contact me about my review and my subsequent postings about his show. I have no intention of responding to his mean-spirited emails, nor any interest in getting into a pissing contest. Although you'd think that someone who has a show about to open on Broadway would be a little more careful in his treatment of potential influencers. I'm no Michael Riedel, but I do have a decent number of readers, and many of them are influencers in their own right.

But, believe it or not, I do plan on taking in the show again when it comes to Broadway, and I encourage my readers to see the show as well, to form their own opinions. I hear there have been considerable changes to the show since its Off-Broadway run, and if I can give Billy Elliot and In the Heights a second chance, I can do no less for Next to Normal. But, if I have the same problems with the show that I had before (e.g. an inconstant tone, a preponderance of clichés, and a message that includes an apparent repudiation of psychiatry), I certainly reserve my right to make those opinions known.

In other Next to Normal news, the folks at Ghostlight Records recently recorded the score, which will be released at a future date TBD. 

Sondheim's Bounce Becomes Road Show

As many of you know, Stephen Sondheim's latest show will play the Public Theater this fall. Yesterday, the folks involved announced two key developments. First, the show formerly known as Bounce will now be called Road Show. Second, the Public production will star Michael Cerveris and Alexander Gemignani as the Mizner brothers.

The latter certainly makes sense, given that the director will be John Doyle, and the pair appeared in Doyle's roundly praised revival of Sweeney Todd. That and the fact that they're both terrificly talented performers who will certainly do the show proud.

And then there's the name change. This will be the show's fourth appellation. ("Um...pardon the big words I apply, but I was an English major at CCNY...") It was originally known as Wise Guys, then briefly as Gold. Sondheim tells Playbill's Harry Haun that the show has seen some major revisions since its 2003 Chicago and DC productions and subsequent recording, and the shift in focus warranted a new title. Characters have been added and dropped, and the overall theme of the show has shifted from "resilience" (ergo Bounce) to "divergent paths" (hence Road Show).

Hit or flop, triumphant success or resounding failure, a "new" Sondheim show, or even a thoroughly revamped version of a long-gestating Sondheim show, is always cause for celebration. I just joined the Public Theater so that I'll be able to obtain what is likely to be a very hot ticket indeed.

The Story So Far: New Sondheim Boxed Set

At first I wasn't all that excited about the recently announced Sondheim boxed set, which bears the title The Story So Far. After all, there have been Sondheim tributes and retrospectives up the wazoo. Then I discovered that Masterworks Broadway will be releasing the four-disc set on September 29th, which is my birthday.

Thank you, universe. Way to make it all about me.

In truth, the fact that the new boxed set will purportedly include more than 30 previously unreleased tracks had certainly caught my interest. (See the full track listing here.) Most of these tracks appear to be demos performed by Sondheim himself, including:

"There's Something About a War," A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
"A Hero is Coming," Anyone Can Whistle
"Happily Ever After," Company
"Can That Boy Fox Trot," Follies
"Silly People" and "Not Quite Night," A Little Night Music
"Prayers" and "There is No Other Way," Pacific Overtures

The recording will also feature previously unreleased studio tracks, such as cut songs from Into the Woods, including "Have to Give Her Someone" and "Interesting Questions." It will also include some recordings that are available elsewhere, including the songs from the "Evening Primrose" soundtrack, which recently came out on a limited-edition CD.

Perhaps most intriguing to me are the cuts from Saturday Night, Sondheim's legendary first effort, which didn't make it to Broadway because of the death of its producer. The songs have certainly been recorded before, but the tracks on the new set feature the late Jack Cassidy singing "Class" and Arte Johnson performing "Love's a Bond." I'm not quite sure where these recordings came from. Perhaps it was some kind of demo recording.

In related news, Broadway Masterworks will also be partnering up with ArkivMusic to distribute on-demand digital copies of Sondheim's and Jerry Herman's shows. Collectors will now have access to shows that have been long out-of-print, including Herman's The Grand Tour and the Pearl Bailey Hello, Dolly!. And, most exciting, the London cast of Hello, Dolly!, starring Mary Martin, will be available on CD for the first time ever. These ArkivMusic CDs are nearly identical to the originals, although some of them will feature bonus tracks. 

The on-demand format makes it far less expensive for the recording companies to distribute more "marginal" recordings. That's the great thing about the digital revolution: it's giving us access to wonderful recordings that we might not otherwise have been able to obtain.