In late June (simply earlier than Delight…hmm) New York Metropolis hosts starry live performance variations of two middle-period Stephen Sondheim masterpieces: Follies and A Little Evening Music. As a prelude, Chris’s Cache reaches again to early Sondheim for pirates of A Humorous Factor Occurred on the Technique to the Discussion board and Anybody Can Whistle.
Supplied are dwell recordings of Sondheim’s first two solo (as each composer and lyricist) Broadway exhibits: Discussion board arrived in 1962, Anybody briefly two years later. After Anybody flopped, it could be six years earlier than he returned to Broadway with Firm.
I’ve, after all, seen the well-known Discussion board film with Zero Mostel and Buster Keaton(!), however I’ve by no means attended a dwell efficiency of the present. Phil Silvers, who performed Lycus within the movie, strikes to the main function of Pseudolus for this pre-Broadway touring manufacturing recorded in Los Angeles.
Encores! did Anybody in April 2010 with Donna Murphy, Sutton Foster, and Raul Esparza and it was fairly fantastic. It’s a loopy present about crazies with many nice issues and lots of issues, but it surely contains one in all Sondheim’s most powerfully transferring songs.
A battle prevented me from going to the latest MasterVoices presentation of Anybody, however a recording of it will definitely discovered its manner into my assortment.
Sondheim: A Humorous Factor Occurred on the Technique to the Discussion board
Domina: Lizabeth Pritchett
Philia: Pamela Corridor
Pseudolus: Phil Silvers
Hysterium: Larry Blyden
Senex: Lew Parker
Hero: John Hansen
Lycus: Carl Ballantine
Erronius: Reginald Owen
Miles Gloriosus: Carl Lindstrom
Conductor: Jack Lee
Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles
October/November 1971
In-house recording
Sondheim: Anybody Can Whistle
Narrator: Joanna Gleason
Cora Hoover Hooper: Vanessa Williams
Faye Apple: Elizabeth Stanley
Bowden Hapgood: Santino Fantana
Comptroller Shub: Douglass Sills
Treasurer Cooley: Eddie Cooper
Police Commissioner Magruder: Michael Mulheren
Conductor: Ted Sperling
MasterVoices
Carnegie Corridor
10 March 2022
In-house recording
Anybody can obtain Discussion board and Anybody by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio participant above and the ensuing mp3 file will seem in your obtain listing.
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Photograph: Nina Westervelt
