969 stories by "Michael Portantiere"
World Premiere Cast, 2014 (Yellow Sound Label) Based on the '80s cult film of the same title, Heathers is a musical that's sometimes fun and frothy, though not particularly strong. Writers L…
Original Broadway Cast, 2005 (Decca Broadway) This show, based on the classic film comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail, attempts to spoof the formula of musical theatre while still adheri…
Original Broadway Cast, 2015 (Ghostlight) The more one knows about Broadway musicals, the more convulsed with laughter one becomes upon experiencing Something Rotten!, a smart stew of shrewd…
Original Broadway Cast, 2011 (Ghostlight) With its all-star cast and creative team, and a hilarious movie by Pedro Almodóvar as its source material, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakd…
Original Broadway Cast, 2005 (Ghostlight) This show, about a regional spelling bee with prepubescent contestants, marked the Tony Award winning composer/lyricist William Finn's return to Bro…
Original Broadway Cast, 2015 (PS Classics) Alison Bechdel's Fun Home may seem like strange fodder for a Broadway musical. A memoir in the form of a graphic novel, it chronicles Bechdel's…
Los Angeles Cast, 1995 (DRG) Here, Gerard Alessandrini has as much fun with Hollywood excess as with Broadway idiocy. But this recording differs from the Forbidden Broadway albums in one cru…
Original Cast, 1982 (DRG) Gerard Alessandrini's revues lampooning Broadway hits and personalities have been a reliable source of merriment in cabaret rooms, Off-Broadway theaters, and other …
Original Broadway Cast, 1984 (RCA) Few Broadway composers could successfully make a painting into a musical, but Stephen Sondheim turned Georges Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of…
As the 20th anniversary of Rent's Off-Broadway debut approaches, we look back to our 1996 interview with musical director Tim Weil, who talked about putting the finishing touches on …
Original Broadway Cast, 2015 (Atlantic, 2CDs) From start to finish, this recording marvelously captures the vibrancy of composer-lyricist-star Lin-Manuel Miranda's groundbreaking and record-…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2009 (Nonesuch/PS Classics) What started off as a coruscating musical-comedy cavalcade ended dour and dumpy with the 2008 premiere of Road Show, the final (?) inc…
George and Ira Gershwin's utterly delightful 1926 musical Oh, Kay! is the current production of Mel Miller's essential Musicals Tonight! company.
Original Broadway Cast, 1974 (Columbia /Sony) Designed to do for the 1940s what Grease did for the 1950s, Over Here! is a supremely silly tale of romance and espionage on a cross-country tra…
Original Broadway Cast, 1950 (Columbia/Sony) For Out of This World, a modern-day retelling of the Amphitryon legend, Cole Porter produced a gorgeous score. Unfortunately, it was tied to an u…
Studio Cast, 1996 (Original Cast Records) A Richard Rodgers Award-winner and a minor Off-Broadway hit, this chamber musical by Robert Lindsey-Nassif (or Robert Nassif Lindsey, depending on h…
Studio Cast, 1952 (Columbia/Sony) One of musical director/conductor Lehman Engel's sturdier studio-cast efforts, this rendering of the 1936 hit by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart tries harde…
Original Broadway Cast, 1981 (Original Cast Records) Although the subject was ripe and the characters were fascinating, Onward Victoria was a one-performance disaster that nonetheless yielde…
Original Broadway Cast, 1978 (Columbia/Sony) Based on the stage farce Twentieth Century, best known as a Hollywood film starring John Barrymore and Carole Lombard, this 1930s spoof might hav…
Original Broadway Cast Members, 1944 (Decca/MCA) Record companies treated Broadway musicals pretty poorly until the concept of the original cast album became firmly entrenched, so this colle…
Original Broadway Cast, 1943 (Decca) This incomplete recording of composer Kurt Weill's One Touch of Venus paints a very deceptive picture of the score. While there are 17 songs in the score…
Original Broadway Cast, 1980 (Original Cast Records) From overture to finale, One Night Stand is as dynamic a score as Jule Styne ever wrote. But Herb Gardner proved to be inept as a librett…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1980 (Warner Bros./no CD) Beginning in the late 1970s, the theater turned a nostalgic and admiring eye on the black musicals of earlier years " the imperishable s…
Original Broadway Cast, 1963 (RCA) 110 in the Shade is the Harvey Schmidt-Tom Jones musical based on N. Richard Nash's The Rainmaker. As heard on this recording, the songs are replete with s…
Original Broadway Cast, 1959 (Kapp/MCA) The fairy tale source material is "The Princess and the Pea," given a satirical fleshing-out. But Once Upon a Mattress was really a Cinderella show. I…
