970 stories by "Michael Portantiere"
Original Cast Members, 1972 (Kilmarnock/Original Cast) Here's one of Broadway's legendary disasters, described by Otis Guernsey, Jr. in the Burns Mantle Yearbook as "an ardent questing for e…
Original Broadway Cast, 1982 (Geffen/Decca Broadway) What were they thinking? The most exciting Broadway score of the 1980s was carved up to fit on one disc, and thereby was stripped of its …
Original Broadway Cast, 1965 (Blue Pearl/no CD) It's a cliché among cast album collectors to hear a good score of a flop musical and ponder, "Why wasn't this a hit?" But the recording of th…
Original Broadway Cast, 1960 (RCA) Right after Gypsy, you'd have expected composer Jule Styne to test his powers in another meaty Broadway project. Instead, he regressed to formula musical c…
Original Broadway Cast, 1983 (MCA) For the stage musical version of his political-satire comic strip, Garry Trudeau fashioned his own book and lyrics, proving himself to be a surprisingly ad…
Original Broadway Cast, 1972 (Polydorl/no CD) Here's an example of the sort of show that's much more effective onstage than on record. It was easy to get caught up in a live performance of t…
Original Broadway Cast, 1972 (Stax, 2LPs) This Melvin Van Peebles musical is as different from his earlier Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death as it could be. Though plotless, the earlier …
Original Broadway Cast, 1961 (Kapp) This musical based on the movie The Quiet Man was a spirited but unsuccessful show. Donnybrook! did boast an excellent cast that included Susan Johnson, E…
Original Broadway Cast, 1982 (Original Cast Records! Bay Cities) A Doll's Life is about what happened to Henrik Ibsen's Nora after she slammed the door at the end of A Doll's House. Betty Co…
Original Broadway Cast, 1965 (Columbia/Sony) Stephen Sondheim has often bad-mouthed Do I Hear a Waltz? " perhaps because it can't compare to his trail-blazing hits, and also because Sondheim…
Original Broadway Cast Members, 1985 (Bay Cities/Original Cast) No stars; not recommended. No matter how "informed" the writer of a review is, the critique is largely a matter of opinion. Or…
Anyone who knows the work of the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár only through his beautiful, deeply moving drama Lilliom or his elegant, thoughtful comedy The Guardsman may be taken ab…
Original Broadway Cast, 1964 (Capitol/Angel) It's rare that we have concrete recorded proof of the exact moment when a performer became a legend, but that's the case with the original Broadw…
Original Broadway Cast, 1990 (Columbia/Sony) Cy Coleman's blending of 1940s musical styles " swing, blues, film noir soundtrack, and more " with David Zippel's deft and witty lyrics helped m…
Original Broadway Cast, 1975 (Columbia/Masterworks Broadway) In 1975, A Chorus Line was a phenomenon. The conception of the show began with Broadway wunderkind Michael Bennett's idea tha…
Original Stage Cast, 1993 (Columbia/Sony) The Alan Menken-Lynn Ahrens musical version of A Christmas Carol lit up Madison Square Garden for 10 seasons, and though the production's spectacle …
Original London Cast, 1981 (Geffen) Before it became a joke, Cats was a true phenomenon. While Trevor Nunn's direction placed spectacle above emotion and story, the show has a better score t…
Original Broadway Cast, 2004 (Hollywood Records, 2CDs) Tony Kushner writing the book and lyrics for a musical full of inanimate objects? If you did not see Caroline, or Change onstage, you m…
Original Cast, 2004 (Nonesuch) Stephen Sondheim's first new musical in nearly a decade, Bounce was highly anticipated when it played Chicago and Washington in 2003. Though this recording ben…
Original London Cast, 1964 (Must Close Saturday) If you saw The Boy Friend and wondered what happened to its characters 10 years later, Sandy Wilson answered that question with this delightf…
Original Broadway Cast, 1958 (Decca) Harold Rome's whip-cracking western musical comes complete with good guys, bad guys, saloon girls, respectable prostitutes, and gun fights. The atmospher…
Original Broadway Cast, 1980 (DRG) Can so trite and scattershot a revue about the joys of moviegoing really have charmed Broadway audiences for 588 performances? Apparently, thanks to a brig…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1994 (Fynsworth Alley) This is a country-western musical takeoff on Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, set in Texas. It's one-of those cases where the show…
Original Broadway Cast, 1968 (RCA) This luckless show suffered from constant turnover on the creative team, arriving in New York without a credited librettist and closing after 31 performanc…
Original Broadway Cast, 1987 (TER) Alan Jay Lerner's sad farewell to Broadway was this 1983 one-nighter, loosely based on Robert E. Sherwood's 1936 drama Idiot's Delight and updated to the C…
