Theater News

For the Present(s)

New CDs by Susan Egan and Andrea Marcovicci, deluxe DVD editions of the classic Rodgers & Hammerstein musical films, and other recent releases would make great gifts for the holidays.

Well, I haven’t yet gotten my hands on Bette Midler’s Cool Yule CD, but a few other holiday-themed recordings that have crossed my desk are sure to please TheaterMania readers.

Broadway’s Susan Egan, best known for having originated the role of Belle in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, has a dandy new CD of holiday music titled Winter Tracks. It offers standards such as “Silent Night,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” plus newer entries like Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens’ “All Those Christmas Clichés” and the Stephen Schwartz-Alan Menken ballad “Cold Enough to Snow,” the latter presented in a country-tinged arrangement. Also included are the Hanukah song “We Are Lights” and Cyndi Lauper’s “New Year’s Baby.” (As of this writing, Egan is extremely pregnant.) One of the most delightful selections is “The Turkey and the Stuffing,” written by Christopher McGovern, the album’s musical director and co-producer. Egan sings in a pretty, youthful soprano that’s perfect for this type of music, while McGovern’s arrangements and orchestrations are creative but not aggressively avant-garde or fussy.

Andrea Marcovicci, who is celebrating her 20th anniversary season at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel, has released her first-ever Christmas album: My Christmas Song for You. It mixes tried-and-true favorites with less familiar but welcome entries such as the CD’s title song (Hoagy Carmichael, Furniss Peterson, and Paul Francis Webster), “The Gift” (Brad Ellis/Adryan Russ), and “Christmas Lullaby” (Cy Coleman/Peggy Lee) into “All Through the Night” (Nick Reynolds). Beloved for her ability to interpret lyrics with a wonderful combination of sincere emotion and high-level intelligence, Marcovicci is well supported here by musical director/pianist Shelly Markham and an A-list band. Though the break between the singer’s lower and upper vocal registers has widened over the past several years, and though she continues to have pitch problems, canny engineering does much to downplay these issues on the recording.

If you’re one of those Grinches who, like me, find the film White Christmas insufferable despite its popularity, you probably won’t like the stage musical based on the property either. But fans of the flick may well enjoy Ghostlight’s cast album of the show, which has become a holiday-time hit in many regional markets. The CD features the title tune (of course) and a generous helping of other Irving Berlin perennials, some from the movie and some added for the stage production. Brian d’Arcy James, Jeffry Denman, Anastasia Barzee, Meredith Patterson, and the veteran star Karen Morrow head the talented cast. The best thing about the recording is that you can enjoy their performances, Larry Blank’s orchestrations, and Bruce Pomahac’s vocal and dance arrangements without being subjected to David Ives and Paul Blake’s book, although you will miss Randy Skinner’s terrific choreography.

The eighth volume of Broadway’s Greatest Gifts: Carols for a Cure, a popular series of recordings benefiting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, features cast members from two dozen current shows in holiday classics, novelty songs, and special material. The first of the two CDs in the set offers “Nice” songs and is highlighted by the cast of Wicked in “The First Noel,” folks from Rent singing “Angels We Have Heard on High” on a theme by Jonathan Larson, and Raúl Esparza, Barbara Walsh, and the company of Company in a stirring, jazzy arrangement of “Auld Lang Syne” by Matt Castle. Among the best of the deliciously “Naughty” numbers on the second disc are “The Holi-daze” (sung by the guys and gals from Avenue Q) and “December’s Other, Less Famous Holidays” (featuring the cast of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee). Off-Broadway is represented by the Altar Boyz boys in Joseph’s Dilemma (don’t ask!) and the [title of show] cast in a “[holiday story]” written and narrated by one of their number, Susan Blackwell. If laughter is the best gift of all, then these tracks really deliver.

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Also perfect for holiday gifts are new DVD editions of some beloved family films. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, South Pacific, and The King and I have long been mainstays of the home video market, and these movies have now been remastered and reissued by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment in DVD sets filled with bonus features; they join the new editions of R&H’s Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music, and State Fair (the 1945 and 1962 versions) that came out earlier this year. Each film is available separately as a two-disc set, or you can purchase them all together as a 12-disc package. (Note that South Pacific is presented in both the general release and the longer “road show” versions, the latter containing footage that hasn’t been seen in decades)

Full disclosure: Along with film historian Richard Barrios, I offer running audio commentary on the King and I feature disc. The other films variously have commentary by stars Shirley Jones (Oklahoma!, Carousel) and Pat Boone (the ’62 State Fair), Rodgers and Hammerstein organization president Ted Chapin, film/music historian Nick Redman, Forbidden Broadway-meister Gerard Alessandrini, et al. Other bonus features include well-done documentaries on the making of the movies, “vintage stage excerpts” as seen on television, and the pilot episodes for TV series based on State Fair and The King and I. (In the latter, titled Anna and the King, Yul Brynner recreated his career-defining stage and film role opposite Samantha Eggar as Mrs. Anna.)

While adding these items to your virtual or actual shopping cart, don’t neglect to pick up the first-ever DVD edition of another Rodgers and Hammerstein musical: Flower Drum Song, from Universal. This is the most underrated of all the R&H flicks, and though it is somewhat overproduced — two dream ballets! — its pleasures are many. They include definitive performances by Miyoshi Umeki and Juanita Hall, recreating their Broadway roles, and Jack Soo, who played nightclub entertainer Frankie Wing on stage but graduated to the part of Sammy Fong for the movie. Nancy Kwan, who plays Linda Low with a little help from singing double B.J. Baker, offers running commentary in conversation with Nick Redman. And, yes, that’s the voice of a young Marilyn Horne singing the gorgeously sad ballad “Love, Look Away” for dancer Reiko Sato.

A stage musical based on Disney’s beloved animated feature The Little Mermaid will premiere in Denver next June (click here for more info), and that production will almost certainly end up on Broadway sometime thereafter. So it’s fun to watch the film again and wonder how the heck they’re going to put it on stage, with all those mermaids, fish, sharks, crabs, and whatnot. Jodi Benson, who was rather charmless in Broadway’s Crazy for You, gives a winning, sincere, sweetly sung performance as the voice of Ariel, and the veteran Pat Carroll is a campy hoot as the sea-witch Ursula. The two-disc set boasts a new digital transfer of the film and 5.1 “Disney Enhanced Home Theater Surround Sound” that is far superior to the “enhanced” soundtrack mix you’ll find on Disney’s latest edition of Mary Poppins. Extras include deleted scenes, a making-of documentary, and a “virtual ride” based on a Disney theme park attraction that was almost built. Enjoy!