You could have bet the family fortune that ”City of Angels” would win the Tony Award for best musical last weekend in New York, and its triumph says a great deal about the precarious status of the American musical these days.
Cy Coleman`s shimmering ”Angels” music (which also won a Tony for best score) is an utterly retrogressive, though beautiful, piece of work. Like the show itself, the score conjures up the atmosphere and texture of Los Angeles in the 1940s-or at least a mythic, film noir version of L.A., as seen from a jaundiced gumshoe`s point of view.
The story and the score are cast in dreamy, nostalgic pastels, and therein lie both the pleasures and problems of today`s commercial musical:
Audiences apparently still hunger for stage musicals (witness the ticket demand in New York for ”Angels” and the revival of the Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim musical ”Gypsy”), yet the most successful shows are unabashedly backward-looking.
A case could be made that today`s audiences hunger for old-fashioned melody and easy-listening harmony, and that Broadway is eagerly filling that need. Record companies, too, apparently have discovered that cast recordings of the latest retrograde shows and the old classics sell well, for the CD bins now overflow with such fare.
But if there are musicals aplenty on Broadway, off Broadway and on compact disc, with new issues, reissues and even scholarly archival recordings proliferating as never before, the irony is that the sounds themselves are mostly old and familiar.
Nevertheless, listening to ”City of Angels” (CBS Records) is considerably more satisfying than seeing the show itself. Though the script teems with detective-movie cliches, the score is ingeniously conceived and orchestrated. It may lack the explosive rhythmic power of Leonard Bernstein`s ”West Side Story,” the preeminent jazz musical, but ”City of Angels”
glitters with the period sound of big bands, jazz combos, vocal trios and the like.
Broadway`s other major musical hit, a 30th anniversary restaging of
”Gypsy,” won Tonys for best revival and best actress in a musical (Tyne Daly), more proof that the modern musical is assuming historical forms. Still, the new recording of ”Gypsy” (Elektra Nonesuch) lives up to this production`s many critical accolades.
Granted, Tyne Daly is not a great singer, though she`s a shade more sensitive than either Ethel Merman (who originated the role on Broadway) or Rosalind Russell (who had to rely on some voice dubbing in the 1962 film). But Daly poignantly suggests the driven stage-mother she depicts, and she`s backed by first-rate stage voices and a dynamic orchestra. Music director Eric Stern captures the strip-joint flavor of the score in aptly lurid colors.
The retrospective nature of today`s musical recordings permeates ”Black and Blue” (DRG), last year`s Tony-winning glance into the past. What makes this recording notable, however, is that it not so much re-creates old blues traditions but presents them as if they were new and vital today.
Incendiary singers such as the great Ruth Brown, Linda Hopkins and Carrie Smith perform with a raw passion that rarely survives onto cast recordings. If you didn`t know better, you might think you were in a South Side blues club in the `20s.
There`s more music from the past on ”Hair” (RCA), though this time it`s the soundtrack for the film version. This edition seems a little tamer than the original cast recording (also available on RCA), yet it`s brightly sung and warmly recorded.
Though ”The Gospel at Colonus” (Elektra Nonesuch) has original music and lyrics by Bob Telson and Lee Breuer (whose staging of the musical at Chicago`s Goodman Theatre opens June 18), the sounds represent traditional gospel, albeit covering a range of styles. The passion and fever of the music don`t quite translate onto a recording, but the disc serves as a good introduction to the real thing.
One of the most important looks into the past comes in a new recording of ”Babes in Arms” (New World Records), a 1937 show that overflowed with gems such as ”My Funny Valentine,” ”The Lady is a Tramp” and ”Johnny One- Note.” The recording (beautifully conducted by Evans Haile), follows the tradition of John McGlinn`s definitive ”Show Boat” revival, with original orchestrations and a pervasive sensitivity to the sound and style of the period. (McGlinn conducted the first revival performance of the complete score in Washington, D.C. in 1987.)
Forty-two years after it was created, the long-lost musical ”Magdalena” (CBS) is a similarly critical contribution to the history of American musical theater. Created by classical master Heitor Villa-Lobos in tandem with Broadway veterans Robert Wright and George Forrest (who had adapted Borodin`s music for ”Kismet” and Grieg`s for ”Song of Norway”), ”Magdalena” is as sophisticated as anything by Bernstein or Stephen Sondheim.
It had disappeared because of a musicians` strike at the time that prevented a cast recording. The seasoned forces gathered for the belated recording includes Jerry Hadley, Judy Kaye and George Rose, all evocatively directed by Evans Haile.
Fans who yearn for the golden age of the American musical likely will appreciate a new series of compact-disc reissues of Lerner and Loewe`s ”Paint Your Wagon,” Cole Porter`s ”Silk Stockings,” Jerry Herman`s ”Hello, Dolly!” Lionel Bart`s ”Oliver!” and Sandy Wilson`s ”The Boy Friend” (all on RCA). Each represents the original Broadway cast in essential recordings.
Listeners with a sense of adventure should take note of ”Closer Than Ever” (RCA), an off-Broadway compilation show built on trunk songs and forgotten gems by the witty, veteran songwriting team of David Shire and Richard Maltby, Jr. Though the music, while beautifully crafted, breaks no new ground, the lyrics are devilishy clever.
As one expects of Maltby and Shire, the show brims with satire, zooming in on such modern-day woes as commitment problems (”You Want to Be My Friend?”), rampant sexism (”The Bear, The Tiger, The Hamster and The Mole”) and our bland musical times (”The Sound of Muzak”).
So what does the future of the musical hold? More sounds of the past dressed up as something new.
Andrew Lloyd Webber`s ”Aspects of Love” (Polygram), recently panned by stage critics in New York, sounds much like his other fervently melodic scores, particularly ”Phantom of the Opera.” Lloyd Webber has learned his lessons well from the romantic opera composers, especially Puccini, and that style pervades ”Aspects,” albeit in somewhat simplified form.
If you`ve seen or heard the blockbuster hit ”Les Miserables,” then you know what to expect of ”Miss Saigon” (Geffen), the latest from ”Miz”
creators Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg, with help from lyricist Richard Maltby, Jr. Effusive, hyper-romantic melodies fill nearly every bar of the musical, a London hit that has yet to open in the U.S.
Even ”King: A Musical Testimony” (London), the London show chronicling the life and times of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., is built on traditional gospel, spiritual and popular forms, with a measure of ”Porgy and Bess” thrown in. The excellent cast includes opera pros Simon Estes and Cynthia Hamon, but the sounds borrow heavily from the past.
And that`s the tune now playing at theaters and record stores around the country.
