Theater News

Sweet and Sour

DRG issues a superfluous cast album of the current Broadway production of Sweet Charity.

One could argue that every Broadway musical revival (or revisal) should get a cast album if only for archival purposes, especially since TV telecasts and home video versions of such shows are still extremely rare. But the truth is that many recordings in this category can be considered rather a waste of time and money in that they are markedly inferior to previous recordings of the same score; therefore, they are of value only to completist collectors and, perhaps, to people who are devotees of particular artists.

Such is the case with DRG’s new album of the current Broadway revisal of the Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields-Neil Simon musical Sweet Charity. Though there’s much to please audiences in the production, its virtues are not primarily musical. For that reason, it might be said that the recording does a disservice to the show. (If you’ve heard the cast albums of Chicago with Ann Reinking or Gypsy with Tyne Daly, you know what I mean.)

Star Christina Applegate is a delight in Charity as experienced live, with a winning stage persona, excellent comic timing, and impressive dancing ability despite her having famously sustained a broken foot during the show’s pre-Broadway run. She also scores points for being so cute and sexy and because she’s more age-appropriate for the role than some of her famous predecessors. But Applegate’s singing is not her strong suit; her voice is rather thin and monochromatic, and there are some pitch problems. So she comes across much less effectively on the recording than in the show, even though DRG’s engineers have done their best to make her sound as good as possible. (On a promo CD of a few tracks from the album, Applegate flats badly during the vocal glissando at the end of “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” but the problem has been magically remedied for the final release version. Can you say “Pro Tools?”)

Another liability of the recording is the fact that a smallish orchestra under conductor Don York plays Don Sebesky’s scaled-down revisions of Ralph Burns’ fabulous original orchestrations. Sebesky has done a skillful job of reducing that which should not have had to be reduced, but the result is still disappointing as compared to the 1966 Broadway cast album of Sweet Charity. On that peerless recording, what sounds like a large brass section hammers home the vamp of “Big Spender” in a thrillingly live acoustic at the start of the overture and is then joined by the remainder of the orchestra in an exciting build; on the new recording, two trumpets play the same passage with no reverb, to little effect.

Further disappointments: (1) the album preserves a universally despised new arrangement of the “Rhythm of Life” number, complete with Rhett George’s all-wrong solo vocal as Daddy Johann Sebastian Brubeck; (2) there are annoying cuts in the overture and in “You Should See Yourself,” as compared to a more intelligent cut in “Charity’s Soliloquy”; (3) “Big Spender” is performed in a slightly higher key than the original, which makes it less darkly alluring; and (4) Ernie Sabella really doesn’t have the goods to sing “I Love to Cry at Weddings” properly at this stage of his career. It should also be noted that the dance section of “If My Friends Could See Me Now” is not to be found on the recording.

On the plus side, Denis O’Hare sounds warm and charming as Oscar Lindquist, his singing voice having improved markedly over the past few years. Paul Schoeffler delivers Vittorio Vidal’s swooningly romantic “Too Many Tomorrows” with rich tone and a convincing Italian accent. The album includes “A Good Impression,” a pleasant song that was written by Coleman and Fields for an unproduced musical about the life of Eleanor Roosevelt and was slipped into the Sweet Charity revisal for no compelling reason. The CD’s nifty bonus tracks feature Coleman’s 1963 demo recordings of songs intended for Charity (among them the ultimately excised “Gimme a Rain Check”), a live performance of “Big Spender” by Coleman and Fields, and Applegate singing a recently rediscovered verse to “Where Am I Going?”

The packaging of the album is excellent and the fold-out booklet contains 12 beautiful, full-color photos, but Will Friedwald’s generally fine notes on the show and the recording contain a few minor errors (e.g., O’Hare’s first name is misspelled “Dennis”) along with a real whopper. “Wisely,” Friedwald writes, “the producers of this Sweet Charity utilized the revised ending that Peter Stone provided for the film.” This is a grievous bit of false information in that the ending expressly written for this production by Neil Simon has been justly criticized because it’s wildly inconsistent with Charity’s behavior throughout the rest of the show. How strange and unfortunate that Friedwald went out of his way to give “credit” where it wasn’t due; people need to know that the late Peter Stone is NOT responsible for the final scene of Sweet Charity as it is now being performed on Broadway.

Bottom line: Those who want a memento of Christina Applegate’s performance in this show may be inclined to purchase the cast album, but they might be better off with a copy of the souvenir program. Others are advised to opt for the Columbia/Sony original cast recording with Gwen Verdon, John McMartin, Helen Gallagher, et al. There’s nothing better than that.

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Sweet Charity

Closed: December 31, 2005