Some Nuggets From a Lean Season

Some years bring an embarrassment of riches. In 1958, for instance, “The Music Man” prevented “West Side Story” from laying claim to a Tony Award for best musical. In 1960, both “The Sound of Music” and “Fiorello!” were awarded the big prize, leaving “Gypsy” empty-handed. And in 1976, “A Chorus Line” stole the thunder from “Chicago” and “Pacific Overtures.”

The 2001-02 Broadway season was not that kind of year. “Mamma Mia!” is no “Gypsy,” and the title alone of the wickedly clever “Urinetown” limits its audience.

Still, the big Tony winners--”Thoroughly Modern Millie” (best musical and five other awards), “Into the Woods” (best musical revival) and “Elaine Stritch at Liberty” (special theatrical event)--offer pleasant and, sometimes, transcendent listening. The cast albums of those shows have recently been issued, as have those of a big Tony loser, “Sweet Smell of Success,” and an off-Broadway charmer, “The Last Five Years.”

**

“Thoroughly Modern Millie”

RCA Victor

Like its make-over mad heroine, this show has continually reinvented itself.

After the many refinements made during its La Jolla Playhouse tryout in 2000, the show underwent further revisions for Broadway, including the replacement of roughly 40% of its music. Most significantly, two more songs from the 1967 movie--”Stumbling” and “Jazz Baby”--joined the list of tunes that had been dropped. Composer Jeanine Tesori and lyricist Dick Scanlan have written eight new numbers, which replace the two movie songs as well as some of their own.

Lively but unremarkable, these mock-’20s replacement numbers substitute hard-sell Broadway bravura for much of the sweet, unfettered fun of the La Jolla production. As Millie, best actress Tony winner Sutton Foster gets the good stuff, her voice blossoming with determination in the title song and softening with love-struck wonder in “Jimmy”--two songs that remain from the movie. The best Tesori-Scanlan number, a roar of independence called “Forget About the Boy,” remains from La Jolla.

*** 1/2

“Into the Woods”

Nonesuch

A marauding giant flattens people in “Into the Woods”--a fate remarkably similar to the one that awaited the cast of the current revival.

Fans had hard-wired the original cast recording into their brains, so they were bound to be skeptical of any voices that didn’t belong to Bernadette Peters, Joanna Gleason or the other towering talents of the 1987 Broadway company.

During the show’s pre-Broadway run at the Ahmanson Theatre, though, it didn’t take long to realize that the new performers had found a fresh sense of humor and a renewed sense of urgency in this grown-up fairy tale, in which composer Stephen Sondheim and script writer James Lapine use the woods as a metaphor for the thrills and terrors of life.

Those qualities are vividly captured in the revival recording--from the sprightly tone of John McMartin’s narration to the catch of emotion in Stephen DeRosa’s voice as his Baker character fathoms his duty as a father-protector.

One of Sondheim’s best-loved songs, “No One Is Alone,” sounds particularly lovely here, as hope shimmers in the voices of characters--especially Laura Benanti’s Cinderella--who pull together after horrific tragedy.

The biggest reason to buy the recording, though, is its documentation of the changes that Sondheim and Lapine instituted for the revival: the addition of a second wolf to “Hello, Little Girl”; the inclusion of the mother-daughter reverie “Our Little World,” written for the 1990 London production; and the reworking of the Witch’s “Last Midnight” number.

The haunting, taunting chills of that number are wonderfully evoked by silky-voiced Vanessa Williams, who stands, unafraid, in this land of giants.

*** 1/2

“Elaine Stritch at Liberty”

DRG

Elaine Stritch has managed to become a legend without actually being famous--a strange, in-between existence that makes for one heck of a show business story in her reminiscence-confessional.

Known for her dry comic delivery, gravelly singing voice and feisty personality, the singer-actress, now in her late 70s, is beloved in the world of musical theater for her association with the songs of Noel Coward and Stephen Sondheim. She was the first to sing Coward’s wry “Why Do the Wrong People Travel?” in “Sail Away” and Sondheim’s self-mocking “The Ladies Who Lunch” in “Company.” On the live, two-CD recording of her show, she yelps, snarls and roars her way through these songs and more than a dozen others--seeming to pour her whole life into every note.

Between songs, she is nakedly honest about stage fright and the booze that once helped her overcome it, and in lighter moments, she shares salty behind-the-curtains anecdotes.

The recording (which contains just a few cuts to make it fit on the CDs) is so crisp and full of personality that Stritch seems to be standing in your living room as she explains, in another Coward tune, “I believe that since my life began / The most I’ve had is just a talent to amuse.”

***

“The Last Five Years”

Sh-K-Boom

Among the many things to marvel at in Jason Robert Brown’s one-act chamber musical, perhaps the most astonishing is its ability to convey just how much in love--yet out of phase--two people in a relationship can be.

The show charts a marriage from first date to breakup, with the man experiencing events in chronological order and the woman in reverse. Their emotions overlap from time to time, but are only fully in sync as the story reaches its midway point at the wedding ceremony.

Brown, a 1999 Tony Award winner for his score for “Parade,” writes the woman’s songs in a folk-pop style that allows her to express herself with full-throated emotion, revealing her as a smart, brave woman who sometimes gets tripped up by her insecurities. Sherie Rene Scott sings the role in a smooth, powerful voice that is shot through with yearning.

The man’s songs roar along in a honky-tonk rock ‘n’ roll style. Norbert Leo Butz, who played the emcee opposite Teri Hatcher in the L.A. presentation of “Cabaret,” delivers them with wicked wit and that overweening sense of self-confidence possible only in someone who refuses to acknowledge his vulnerability.

*

“Sweet Smell of Success”

Sony Classical

The 1957 film “Sweet Smell of Success” made its own kind of music. The tale--about a sinister gossip columnist--had crackling dialogue by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman and a muscular score by Elmer Bernstein.

Then a team of theater veterans--including playwright John Guare and composer Marvin Hamlisch--attempted to give it a different kind of music. The resulting stage musical took a drubbing from critics, won only one of the seven Tonys for which it was nominated (John Lithgow, for best actor in a musical) and then closed.

Hamlisch’s songs, with lyrics by Craig Carnelia, provide an atmospheric ‘50s jazz soundtrack but are otherwise unmemorable. The exceptions are “I Cannot Hear the City,” a smoky love ballad destined to become a favorite of cabaret artists, and “Dirt,” a gritty ode to humankind’s hunger for nasty news.

Lithgow wasn’t given much to sing, so his performance as gossipmonger J.J. Hunsecker is preserved here mainly in sneering, barking lead-ins to ensemble numbers.

*

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.

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Daryl H. Miller is a regular contributor to Calendar.