All for One and One for All

I got the new Decca Broadway CD of Cyrano, the 1973 musical, and am playing it over and over and over again — which is something that didn’t happen when I got the two-record-set LP on the day it was released in June, 1973. But back then, I didn’t expect to play it much. The story of the swordsman whose nose is almost as long as his epée played a pre-Broadway tryout at the Colonial Theatre in Boston, where I caught it — and was disappointed within its first 10 minutes. Have you ever read Cyrano de Bergerac’s opening speech in Edmond Rostand’s original play? It is easily one of the most well-conceived and thrilling monologues in all of theater history.

It comes after a viscount is disgusted with Cyrano’s terrible behavior in driving an incompetent actor from the stage and decides to criticize Cyrano’s greatest weakness. “Sir,” he says, “your nose is very big!” But Cyrano surprises him by being unruffled. “Is that all?” he replies. “You might have said at least a hundred things.” Then Cyrano goes on to do almost that. “Sir, if I had such a nose, I’d amputate it! When you sup, it must annoy you, dipping in your cup. ‘Tis a rock! A peak! A cape! No, a peninsula! You must love birds, for you’ve given them a roomy perch!” And so it goes, through almost two dozen mock-heroic descriptions.

Now, is this a song, or what? At the risk of being conventional, I wanted a stirring anthem that went A-A-B-A-B-A before modulating into another B and A. Such a song, I’m sure, would get titanic applause and set the table for a great musical to follow. But what wordsmith Anthony Burgess and composer Michael J. Lewis concocted was a patter song, seemingly as much spoken as sung. For me, it got the show off on the wrong foot and I know it made me resist what followed until Roxanne’s gloriously beautiful song “You Have Made Me Love” in the second act. Now I see that there’s a great deal of stirring music and terrific lyrics in the score.

But the failure of the opening song was not the sole reason why I didn’t play Cyrano very often back then. The other reason: It was a two-record set that included all the show’s songs and a good bit (though not all) of the dialogue, too. You’re assuming that I didn’t want to listen to that much of the book, but that wasn’t it at all. You see, putting a record on the turntable and then, less than 30 minutes later, turning it over to hear the other side was enough work for lazy ol’ me. Repeating the process a second time with a second record was just too arduous. Had the powers at A&M records in 1973 just recorded the music from Cyrano and made it a single disc, I know I would have played it more, though I also suspect that I would have set the stylus (the fancy word for “needle”) to begin playing the record after that first disappointing track.

Understand that I’m not just talking about the extra time that it takes to play a second disc. (I do recall my buddy David Wolf telling me that all through his school days, he always got up a half hour early so he could listen to his most recently purchased original cast album — but that when he got the two-record set of She Loves Me, he got up a half hour earlier still to hear every wonderful word and note of it.) No, I’m talking about the extra effort it once took to play a second disc. You see, in the old days, we had to be very careful with records, for they were easily scratched and nicked. Old timers such as I will recall reaching into a record jacket and easing out the record that nestled in a paper sleeve — though Columbia gave us clear plastic sleeves that seemed more lofty but were murderously hard to get records in and out of because of static cling. Then, when we’d finished playing the record and put it back in its paper or clear plastic sleeve, we were supposed to return it to the jacket with the open end of the paper sleeve pointing up so that the record wouldn’t inadvertently fall out of the jacket and onto the floor, for that would result in a wrecked record. I’m telling you, all of this was a lot of work!

At least Cyrano came in a two-jacketed sleeve, which made it a bit easier to get each record out. The original two-record set of Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris was issued in a box. That was even more work, for after you opened the box, you’d find that getting the sleeved records out was much harder than reaching in and pulling them out of the jackets; only those with longer-than-average fingernails had an easy time scooping them out. I thought the songs in Jacques Brel were heaven on earth, but it was an album I rarely played because of the laborious task of getting the records out of the box and onto the turntable. Needless to say, the same was true of The Most Happy Fella, which had the complete show recorded on three discs that came in a box. Whenever I wanted to listen to The Most Happy Fella, which happened pretty often, I chose to play the single-disc highlights album.

And then there was the three-jacketed Two Gentlemen of Verona. It only had two discs, yes; but it had three jackets, each connected to each other. (Think of a triptych.) The jackets on the left and on the right actually held the records, while the middle one was just ornamental, so that a three-jacket panorama of the set could be displayed prominently inside. But this meant that the Two Gents album required far more work than necessary; to get to the second record, you had to open first the one flap and then the next. I was exhausted! (Any talk of Two Gents always brings up the sore subject of Follies, the show it beat for the Tony that season. None of my piddling complaints means for a second that I’m glad Follies didn’t have a complete, two-disc original cast album. That would have been worth the work of two or three jackets, a box, or even a trunk that had to be opened by a 17-number combination.)

So now I have Cyrano on one disc, which means that I can put it on and then needn’t approach my CD player for at least 71 straight minutes. Thank the Lord that the powers-that-be at Decca Broadway were able to fit the recording on one disc because, yes, I have great problems with two-CD sets, too! I hated those monstrous two-disc CD containers of yore — the ones that opened wide and had one CD container on the left, a book in the middle, and another CD in the container on the right. They took up so much room on my shelves and, as Al Carmines says in his wonderful musical Joan, “In the city, the definition of life is doing what you please but in a very little space.”

With the advent of the single jewel box that could accommodate two CDs, I ran out and spent almost $100 on a bunch of those to replace the ungainly two-CD boxes. But here’s the thing: It seems to me that the first generation of single-jewel-box, two-CD holders opened from right to left to get you to the second CD, but later on, some genius decided that left to right would be a better plan. Now, when I take out a two CD-set and try to get to the second disc, I’m inevitably struggling and pulling in the wrong direction — and that’s when I realize how lucky I am that this is my biggest problem at the moment. Lord knows, there could be so many more dire things about which I could be troubled!

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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@theatermania.com]