\n<\/p>\n
The best theatrical songwriting barely requires a theater. Which is a good thing when so many shows close so quickly.<\/p>\n
Of the 16 musicals that opened on Broadway in 2023, only four are still running. That\u2019s live theater, perpetually dying.<\/p>\n
Yet not entirely. Like loved ones who leave behind scrapbooks or tchotchkes, many shows leave souvenirs of themselves in the form of cast albums. And sometimes, shorn of annoying context, they\u2019re better than what was once seen onstage.<\/p>\n
Below, my highly subjective ranking of the nine 2023 musicals that released cast albums. (One more \u2014 \u201cGutenberg! The Musical!\u201d \u2014 is expected, this spring.) And because no year is complete without a bunch of Stephen Sondheim marginalia, I\u2019ve added a few bonus tracks, including a snippet of a surprise, in his honor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
All the recordings are good, and some are sublime, as you can let your ears decide. But close your eyes if possible. Let the theater be inside you.<\/p>\n
The glorious score is largely unchanged. The orchestrations are only slightly tweaked. So what\u2019s the added value of this n<\/em>th recording of the Sondheim masterwork? As you might expect from a cast headed by Josh Groban as the vengeful barber, the answer is the beautiful singing. Groban\u2019s slight stiffness and somewhat meek interpretation, which worked against the role\u2019s terror in the huge stage production<\/a>, are utterly absent on the album, turning numbers like Sweeney\u2019s \u201cEpiphany\u201d into murderous arias as big as any in opera. Under Alex Lacamoire\u2019s musical supervision, the performances \u2014 not just Groban\u2019s but the ensemble\u2019s \u2014 go for the throat, over and over.<\/p>\n Listen to Groban sing \u201cEpiphany\u201d <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n The original cast album of this 1998 musical is rightly a classic. Can a fairly faithful revival recording be one too? Yes, especially when the story of the 1915 Leo Frank lynching<\/a> features principals giving similarly excellent but notably different performances. As Frank, Ben Platt is a vibrating wreck of inchoate anger in Jason Robert Brown\u2019s tight-lipped songs. It\u2019s left to Micaela Diamond, as his wife, Lucille, to express what he can\u2019t, as she does with perfectly contained disdain in \u201cYou Don\u2019t Know This Man,\u201d sung to a reporter looking for dirt. Carolee Carmello\u2019s stentorian version from 1998<\/a> is still definitive, but it turns out that more than one version can be.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This difficult musical from 1981, with its reversed timeline, tangled love triangles and amazing but tricky Sondheim score, has proved especially confusing when recorded. But now that Maria Friedman, in her lucid Broadway production, has found a way to make it pay off onstage<\/a>, the cast album does too. You can hear that best in \u201cNot a Day Goes By,\u201d a song that disguises its complicated dramaturgy with pure beauty. First sung by a wife (Katie Rose Clarke) to the husband (Jonathan Groff) she\u2019s divorcing, it is reprised, years earlier, by the couple at their wedding. But who is that third voice? She\u2019s the heartbroken woman (Lindsay Mendez) left out of the equation. Sometimes the drama isn\u2019t in how a song is sung but by whom.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Of course you can listen to a great rendition of the title tune from this magpie musical based on the 1977 movie. Or you can enjoy some of the other knockout numbers \u2014 \u201cLet\u2019s Hear It for Me,\u201d \u201cBut the World Goes \u2019Round\u201d \u2014 that the songwriters, John Kander and Fred Ebb, called screamers. (All three are solidly sung by Anna Uzele.) But if you want to hear the songs that Kander likes best<\/a>, you\u2019ll go for those that whisper, including a new one, with lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, that\u2019s actually set in the Whispering Gallery at Grand Central Station. Sung in the show by Colton Ryan, it\u2019s called \u201cCan You Hear Me?\u201d Better yet, thanks to the kind of bonus only a cast album allows, listen to the demo, with Miranda singing and Kander at the keyboard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n With more than 30 studio albums, it\u2019s no surprise that Barry Manilow has made another. But this one, written with the lyricist Bruce Sussman for their musical about a six-man German singing group<\/a> in the 1920s, is different. To start with, it\u2019s not just a collection of songs but also a fully theatrical score, filtering elements of jazz, operetta, barbershop and cabaret through Manilow\u2019s prodigious pop sensibility. The numbers \u2014 especially the gorgeous \u201cAnd What Do You See?,\u201d sung by Sierra Boggess as a Jewish man\u2019s gentile fianc\u00e9e \u2014 are tightly tied to the story, their melodies and harmonies often seeming to twist and writhe to accommodate the characters\u2019 hope and horror.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The 1960 Lerner and Loewe musical about the magical land where \u201cthe rain may never fall till after sundown\u201d has a great cast album already. And the forced and formal 2023 Lincoln Center Theater revival<\/a> did not seem likely to produce a version that eclipsed it. But the recording is lovely, highlighting the pure sonic beauty of the 30-piece orchestra and the vocal prowess of its Guenevere (Phillipa Soo) and Lancelot (Jordan Donica). Especially in Donica\u2019s trio of showpieces \u2014 \u201cC\u2019est Moi\u201d near the beginning, \u201cI Loved You Once in Silence\u201d near the end and, in between, a ravishing \u201cIf Ever I Would Leave You\u201d \u2014 he demonstrates that a great voice can be a great actor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n No one goes to musicals for their morals, and shows that are too assertively instructive can lack narrative interest. That was sometimes the case with this one, in which autistic performers played autistic characters working on their life skills at a Columbus mental health center. Though a wonderful breakthrough in many ways<\/a>, the show too often hewed to familiar storytelling tropes \u2014 yet the cast album, stripped of story, shines. The songs, by Jacob Yandura (music) and Rebekah Greer Melocik (lyrics), often take unconventional approaches, as is evident right from the opening number, \u201cToday Is.\u201d Its busy, anxious but upbeat accompaniment, reminiscent of piano exercises, underlines the busy, anxious but upbeat lives of the characters preparing for their day\u2019s challenges and opportunities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A show needs a showstopper. Or at least an audience does. But because I didn\u2019t expect to find one in this musical built on a steady stream of middling corn puns<\/a>, I was blown away when it suddenly appeared, unconventionally, in the middle of Act One. Until then, the songs, by the country music team of Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, were genial and apt. But then Alex Newell, as Lulu, a whiskey distiller with a side hustle in sass, stepped forward with a feminist barnburner declaring that she, her business and her body were \u201cIndependently Owned.\u201d The fog of geniality instantly dispersed in a hail of clever rhymes, real show music and a diva\u2019s bountiful belt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n When the star of your show is a car \u2014 even if it\u2019s a great one \u2014 you may run into trouble with the songs. That\u2019s how I felt about the Broadway version of the 1985 movie<\/a>: It didn\u2019t need to be a musical at all. But if its score, by Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard, couldn\u2019t do much for the DeLorean DMC \u2014 or even the human leads, Doc Brown and Marty McFly \u2014 the cast album demonstrates surprising skill in characterizing the secondary characters. \u201cMy Myopia,\u201d sung by Marty\u2019s father as a teenager, gives us creepy insight into his later failures. And \u201cGotta Start Somewhere,\u201d a big gospel rave, fills in the outlines of an otherwise barely-there character with ambition \u2014 at the same time letting the irrepressible Jelani Remy, who sings it, realize his.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Broadway has no exclusive on new Sondheim albums. From London comes a live two-disc recording of \u201cOld Friends,\u201d a concert celebration featuring greatest hits sung by Bernadette Peters, Judi Dench, Michael Ball and other familiars. It\u2019s a rich meal, and with 41 courses, a huge one, heavy on the honey. (Watch a video of Ball singing \u201cLoving You,\u201d from \u201cPassion,\u201d <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>)<\/p>\n \u201cSondheim in the City,\u201d Melissa Errico\u2019s tribute to Sondheim\u2019s urbanity, feels like a New York house tour of thrill and heartbreak. In songs like the jangly \u201cAnother Hundred People,\u201d the exuberant \u201cWhat More Do I Need?\u201d and the dry, disappointed \u201cIt Wasn\u2019t Meant to Happen,\u201d Errico, one of Sondheim\u2019s deepest-hearted yet lightest-touch interpreters, evokes both the city and cabaret style at its best. (She\u2019ll be singing the program at 54 Below in May<\/a>.) On the pristine recording you can almost hear the martini glasses clink \u2014 and shatter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n2. \u2018Parade\u2019<\/h2>\n
4. \u2018New York, New York\u2019<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
5. \u2018Harmony\u2019<\/h2>\n
6. \u2018Camelot\u2019<\/h2>\n
7. \u2018How to Dance in Ohio\u2019<\/h2>\n
Plus: Never Enough Sondheim<\/h2>\n