Albums

HOPE FOR A FRENCH VILLAGE In season five of this extraordinary historical series, it’s 1944 and the Germans are losing  the war and are beginning to leave occupied France. The collaborative Vichy Government, which semi-ruled the southern part of France (the zone libre)  as well as the French colonies in North Africa, was’”until this season’”headquartered in the…

FREE WILLY Imagine if cast recordings from the fifties and sixties recorded  out-of-town tryouts, then changed material, then recorded the Broadway production, then changed material, then opened in London, then… well, you get the picture, or rather the sound. It gets frustrating these days when a show like Charlie and the Charlie Factory, which opened 4/23/17…

SUPERLATIVE HOME FIRES SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN EXTINGUISHED Alas, this  fine British series from ITV, only lasted two seasons (seen in the states  on PBS). A pity, that, as it gave valuable detail to the daily lives of the women and men in the English county  of  Cheshire during WWII. The 12 episodes of  Home Fires, now available on DVD,  are…

AND “DARK” IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU GET ITV’s damning look at the submissive role women had to live in the nineteenth century and how it negatively affected one woman, Mary Ann Cotton, (née Robson, 1832-1873), turning her into a serial killer of men and children, has been chillingly effected in Dark Angel, as shown on…

CD GETS NEITHER  BRONX CHEER NOR FUGGEDABOUDIT It began as a 1989 solo play written by and starring Chazz Palminteri. Robert DeNiro saw this coming-of-age saga and became the powerhouse behind the well-received 1993 film which he starred in and directed. The story concerns  Calogero (or “C”), an Italian lad who had a brief flirt with  organized crime…

TOO MUCH CHOPPED  OFF One of the most famous kings of England and his scandalous six marriages have been hotly portrayed, over and over, over the years in film and on television. Now, PBS and Wall to Wall Media/BBC have made a documentary about the six women coupled to Tudor Court’s Henry VIII: Catherine of Aragon…

A STRONG SAGA OF EAST GERMANY’S STASI & ITS IMPACT ON TWO FAMILIES Set in and around East Berlin between 1980 and 1990, this superior German series is about a family and its involvement with the Stasi, the secret force propping up the dictatorial Communist German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR) from 1949…

DREAM-Y Well, it finally happened. After a slew of cabaret CD’s from solo artists that lack distinction, originality, and cool arrangements, I happened upon a rising-star in both the cabaret and jazz worlds. The first thing you will notice about Gabrielle Stravelli is that voice: Unforced, earthy, flexible, playful and unpretentious, her jazzy/cool Â spectrum of colors…

THE AWESOME LANGUAGE OF BODY AND SOUL The primary value of the American company, MHz Releasing, lies in its ability to ferret out quality dramas and police-procedure shows from around the world, but mostly Europe. DVD releases from Italy, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and more have all been aired in their native languages,…

A SCALED-DOWN  ROBBER BRIDEGROOM STEALS YOUR HEART ON CD It will always remain one of the great unsolved mysteries in Broadway history. Composer Robert Waldman and librettist and lyricist Alfred Uhry took Eudora Welty’s 1942 novella, “The Robber Bridegroom”, and turned it into a musical that Clive Barnes called “a sort of country and western fairy…

A  MANE EVENT Writer/performer Benjamin Scheuer’s one-man autobiographical song cycle, The Lion, has certainly caught fire since it premiered under a different name at the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. His very successful productions in New York and London have resulted in a current national tour which coincides with the CD release of his Songs from the…

BLUEGRASS MEETS BROADWAY Set in North Carolina, Steve Martin and Edie Brickell’s Broadway outing, Bright Star, interweaves the stories of two ill-starred couples, one in the 1920s and one in the 1940s. The cast album, released last month, highlights why the show has both a large fan base and detractors. The stories, as the cast…

NEW SOLO EFFORT OUT FROM  CHEYENNE JACKSON Handsome, self-effacing, loquacious, and convivially  humble, singer / songwriter / actor  Cheyenne Jackson radiates charisma–especially when on stage, where every time I have seen him he is dazzling. The  consummate performer and committed social activist has his career dance card filled, bopping between  Broadway (Xanadu, Finian’s Rainbow), TV (American Horror Story), and concerts…

WHAT HUMP? While Disney has encroached Broadway with film-to-musical adaptations, not one has come out which bettered its source. While the stage version at  the La Jolla and Paper Mill Playhouses both improves and makes less of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), the  Studio Cast Recording of the Paper Mill cast is quite a knockout. It…

A GOLDEN RECORDING It only took 61 years, but, but PS Classics and the Lyric Stage in Irving, Texas have conspired to make legions of musical theater fans  happier than the  first time they heard the overture  to Gypsy. Back in 1954, a  long-neglected masterpiece-of-a-musical you’ve probably never heard of was written by two geniuses you’ve probably never heard…

ALMOST 70 YEARS AFTER IT WAS WRITTEN, PREVIOUSLY UNHEARD  VERNON DUKE MUSIC IS ORCHESTRATED AND RECORDED For over half a century, record companies have given the studio treatment to long-shuttered musicals which had either no original cast album or no complete score recording. Producer Tommy Krasker has gone so far as to track down original orchestrations…