Songs from End of the Rainbow and other Garland classics

This isn’t exactly a cast recording of a show’s score, but it may be of interest in the days before the Tony Awards are announced on June 10. [Read more...]

Alan Menken is on something of a roller coaster ride. He has just pulled off that exceedingly rare feat of having three musicals with his scores playing on Broadway at the same time and, what is more, all three were nominated for the Tony Award for Best Musical. [Read more...]

In defense of Broadway composer Frank Wildhorn

OK – Now you can be the judge. I think Frank Wildhorn and Don Black wrote a great score for Bonnie & Clyde. Some of the most influential critics don’t. Listen and make up your own mind. [Read more...]

My friends and many of my fellow critics/reviewers tell me that Once is a great show. Obviously, the Tony Award nominators agree, having included it in no less than eleven of the categories including Musical, Book for a Musical, Direction, Orchestrations, Choreography, Leading Actor in a Musical and Leading Actress in a Musical.  [Read more...]

The 25 Anniversary of what is now the longest running musical in Broadway history was celebrated last October with not just a concert, but a full staging of the entire show in London’s massive Royal Albert Hall with its seating of over 5,000. It was captured on audio and video discs, each or either of which may make you wish you had been there.

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Before the Tony race starts up in earnest for this year, lets take a look at one show from last year’s race that nearly got away.

The People In The Picture was a klezmer-infused musical of the struggle of Jews in a Yiddish theater troupe to survive in Warsaw during the holocaust. It only ran for two and a half months – and that’s including the three weeks of previews before opening night. It closed without having had an original Broadway cast album recorded. [Read more...]

The search for a full understanding of the life and works of Oscar Hammerstein II might well begin with this twelve-song disc, but it certainly won’t end here. Indeed, the disk will serve only to whet an appetite, not satisfy it. [Read more...]

The surprise of the original cast album “Music from Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark” is that it is better than its show, which, as everyone even marginally aware of musical theater knows, is reported to be the most expensive Broadway musical ever. [Read more...]

Had this two-disc set been listed as the music of an unknown John Smith or Bob Jones, I wouldn’t have asked for a copy to review for the readers of Theater Shelf. Ballet scores aren’t usually thought of as theater pieces but rather as classical music compositions which support storytelling through dance and design. [Read more...]

This ain’t your father’s Godspell.

Fifty-eight seconds into “Prepare Ye”, it becomes clear that this is a new Godspell, one for the early 21st century rather than the mid-20th. The difference is dramatic when the band breaks loose with a thumping, driving, blast of energy which is way beyond what the original “rock musical” provided in the 1970s. [Read more...]