AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

DRG Records has started off 2009 with a bang in terms of releasing recordings of older shows on compact disc, including one, To Broadway With Love, which has never been on CD before.

Before getting to "With Love," let me talk about the two shows that are making a return to disc thanks to DRG, Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh's Wildcat and Bob Merrill's Take Me Along. Both original cast recordings of these shows have been long-out-of-print, and available really only to folks who've scrounged eBay and who've been willing to pay dearly for them. Listening to the shows anew in these releases – which sound absolutely pristine – it's kind of apparent why cost seems to have been no object. They're both true delights.

Wildcat, of course, is the show that starred Lucille Ball and gave us what's turned into a standard, "Hey, Look Me Over!" While I have to admit that Ball's singing of this and some of the other tunes here has never been among my favorites, I can't quibble with Coleman's melodies or Leigh's lyrics, and when I hear something like the lushly romantic and yet somehow colloquially lyrical "You've Come Home" (sung with bittersweet earnestness by Keith Andes) I'm hooked.

Take Me Along, based on Eugene O'Neill's sole comedy Ah, Wilderness!, has always been a favorite from start to finish, though. Whether it's Robert Morse and Susan Luckey, as the two teens in the show, pledging their unconquerable love for one another in ""I Would Die," Walter Pidgeon's melancholy-infused "Staying Young," or Jackie Gleason and Eileen Herlie comically making love to one another in "I Get Embarrassed," I just sort of smile from ear-to-ear when I put this one on. For those who've never experienced this recording, I can't recommend it highly enough.

Now for those folks who already have these two shows on disc, the question becomes do I need to get the new releases. Well, in terms of sound quality, I do find both of the DRG discs to be crisper than the original RCA Victor releases. So that's a certain asset. If you do opt to buy the new releases, do keep your old liner note booklets because DRG has omitted cast lists from both of the new booklets. Beyond this, with Wildcat, the new release has notes from bookwriter N. Richard Nash that were not found with the RCA release, and some pictures have been changed, and with Take Me Along, the notes, but not photos, remain the same. So, I'd have to say that, if one had to choose in these tight economic times, a duplicate purchase of Wildcat alone might be the way to go.

Less familiar a title, without a doubt, is the show that's getting its premiere release on CD: To Broadway with Love. This is a show that played at the New York World's Fair in the Musical Hall in the Texas Pavilion in 1964. It's a big, brash revue that features medleys of songs from the early 20th century some tunes that followed and also specialty material. It's the latter tunes and some of the rarities that are tucked in the medleys that make "With Love" truly interesting and a worthwhile addition to any musical theater lovers' collection. The title song is a bit half-baked, but it’s a little-known collaboration from Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, whose Fiddler on the Roof would hit Broadway a few months after the bow of "With Love." The team also contributes a hilarious trio of songs that come on the end of the disc, including the prescient "Mata Hari Mine," which, jokingly, imagines what a biographical musical about the spy might be like (three years later, such a creation, from Edward Thomas and Martin Charnin, would aim unsuccessfully at Broadway). Incidentally, Charnin also contributes to "With Love;" he, with composer Colin Romoff, provides a tune that's sandwiched in what begins as a Cohan medley.

DRG has put together a lovely booklet for this release that includes the titles and author credits for all of the tunes that are heard on the disc, and the singers, which came from two separate companies, are simply, but thankfully credited. A new essay from Peter Filichia and notes come from the original LP are flavorful and informative and one can get a sense of the epic quality of this spectacular from the black and white photos that run alongside the text.

---- Andy Propst