AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

I feel as though I've been weirdly silent in terms of reviews over the past week or so. I guess I've been catching up on stuff just as it's closing (for instance Adam Rapp's Kindness at Playwrights Horizons, which I really, really liked) or have been writing for other publications. Tomorrow for instance, my review of Lord Oxford Brings You the Second America Revolution, LIVE will appear in The Village Voice. Additionally, my review of Grace Gummer's NYC debut in The Sexual Neuroses of our Parents will appear on TheaterMania and my review of Mike Birbiglia's Sleepwalk with Me will be in Back Stage.

Today, you'll find my thoughts on the new offering at The Flea, The Footage, in Back Stage (for ease of use, here's a link). Yesterday, my review of the Transport Group's Bury the Dead was on TheaterMania (a link).

As for the remainder of the week, I'll be taking in Billy Elliot, so that review – along with all of the others – will be on the site on Friday, and over the weekend, I'm scheduled to see MTC's Back Back Back and the Broadway revival of Mamet's American Buffalo, also for ATW review. In addition, I'll be catching The Funeralogues and the revival of Kurt Weill's Marie Galante for Back Stage review and the York Theatre Company's My Vaudeville Man, for Time Out New York.

And speaking of the York, one of the other things I'm doing these days is listening to a whole bunch of CDs. I want to return to my practice of doing a series of reviews of the year's music releases as a sort of gift-giving guide. One disc that I've been really stuck with – in the best way imaginable – is Original Cast Records' release of the theater's revival of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's The Body Beautiful, which is just simply a delight start to finish. This goofy tuner from 1958 about New York's then extraordinary boxing community marked the first collaboration between the men who would ultimately pen shows like Fiddler on the Roof together. The York's production has resurrected the show, and the buoyant Bock and Harnick score (which previously had languished on a live recording that had a limited LP and CD release) and I think that musical theater fans may end up wondering why such a fun piece of fluff has been hidden from their ears for so long.

A lot of the music in here is primarily comic – thanks to Harnick's extraordinary word-play, and I don't want to give up his clever rhyme for "what Sartre meant" – and I've found myself returning to "Beautiful" over and over. The show's not just comedy songs, though, there are some wonderfully poignant ballads, and all of the score is delivered with flair by a cast that includes Brad Oscar, Cady Huffman, Capathia Jenkins and Megan Lawrence.

This cast recording is rounded out with four bonus demo tracks for the show, featuring Bock and Harnick themselves. Although the tracks are some half-century old, they sound pretty darn good, and if they whet your apptetite, you may want to get yourself to York or the Original Cast Records website, the company has also issued a companion disc which features a host of additional demo recordings and other material related to the show, which is equally addictive and only available in these two places.

So, back to reviewing….you'll find my review of Roundabout Streamers here tomorrow and the Atlantic's Farragut North here on Thursday.

--- Andy Propst