Man of La Mancha’s score, with heavy Spanish influences and occasionally operatic heights, doesn’t really sound like anything on Broadway before or since. Despite the 360-year-old source material, it was very much a product of the times, with Albert Marre’s stylish and unconventional staging that incorporated “readers theater” techniques and the sort of “the mad man is actually the sanest one of all” narrative that thrived in that era. (It’s fitting that librettist Dale Wasserman adapted One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Next for the stage a few seasons prior to …La Mancha.) It was a beautifully rendered production where all the elements worked perfectly in sync to express a single vision (even if that vision was not really as profound as they seemed to think it was). It’s nearest modern equivalent is probably Hadestown, which also boasts a “downtown-inspired” staging, a singular score with musical colors not seen elsewhere, and broad idealistic characters from classic literature facing epic challenges.

But whereas Hadestown is an ensemble piece, …La Mancha is a true star turn. Richard Kiley had a well-earned reputation as one of the theater’s most soaring baritones in the 1950s and 1960s, and …La Manchagave him several fantastic songs and room to flex every acting muscle he had. Cervantes/Don Quixote is a gift for an established actor—a love-letter to the act of performance with endless opportunities to explore and refine as he jumps between the dual role. Kiley kept returning to the role into the 1980s. Aside from the shortlived Her First Roman, Kiley didnt appear in non-La Mancha musicals for the rest of his career, focusing on plays and lauded television projects. Just about everyone reading this has heard his voice in at least one movie: Jurassaic Park. Kiley was name-chekced in the original novel as the narrator for the park’s introductory ride, with its creators boasting they “spared no expense” in booking the top talent. This detail carried into the film, and Kiley really recorded that narration.

Recommended Recording: ”The Impossible Dream (The Quest)” Man of La Mancha (1965 Original Broadway Cast)

To be honest, this is the type of bombastic ballad I try to avoid in this project, and for a time I was determined to feature the opening number (“Man of La Mancha (I, Don Quixote)”). But, I realized that this is THE bombastic ballad that everyone other baritone “big sing” wants to be, and excluding it would be malpractice. The song’s heroism and excitement is built into the music, so basically anyone who can hit the notes can perform it powerfully. But Kiley sings it with the gravitas of a Hamlet soliloquy and an intensity you won’t find elsewhere.

Alternate Performances

Man of La Mancha has received ~33 recordings, including Australian, Belgian, Chilean, Czech, Dutch, Essen, Hamburg, Hungarian, Israeli, Japanese, Korean, London, Madrid, Mexican, Norwegian, Paris, Peruvian, Polish, Toronto, and Vienna casts. Not to mention studio recordings featuring artists as varied as Placido Domingo and Jim Nabors! Its movie adaptation is one of the dullest and most disappointing stage-to-screen transfers. “The Impossible Dream (The Quest),” first became a pop hit for Jack Jones, and was subsequently covered by Tom Jones, Elvis, Luther Vandross, The Temptations, and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. It’s appeared on Quantum Leap and The Muppet Show. Aretha Franklin sang it at Rosa Park’s funeral. It’s that kind of song.

• 1968 Diener Recordings - Though Cervantes/Quixote is the undeniable center of …La Mancha, the role of Aldonza/Ducinea is also a star turn. Joan Diener (wife of director Albert Marre), originated the role and appeared in it whenever she could. She is the definition of a dramatic soprano, and she feasted on the role’s overwrought [not derogatory] ballads. She appears on the 1968 London Cast Recording, with Keith Michell as a fine Cervantes/Quixote. It’s a particularly fun recording because it preserves a lot of the book as well, effectively working as a radio play. She also appears in the 1968 French Cast starring, and translated by, Jacques Brel who was indeed alive, well, and living in Paris. Diener was a bit indulgent with the tempos in London, but that’s nothing compared to how slowly she takes it in French, where all of her tracks are fully 60-seconds longer than their Broadway counterparts.

• 2002 Broadway Cast - Brian Stokes Mitchell starred in the most recent Broadway revival, which was the first to jettison Marre’s original staging and concept. (Richard Kiley had led a few revivals of …La Mancha in the 1970s, and a 1990s revival—remounting Marre’s original staging—starred Raul Julia and Sheena Easton, but did not get recorded.) It was reasonably well received and had a decent run, even if it didn’t seem to fully bring the piece into the 21st Century. But it’s a treat to hear Mitchell sing this role, and he’s made “The Impossible Dream (The Quest)” a signature number—especially since he sang it out a balcony during lockdown times.

• Aaron Lazar, Impossible Dream (2024) - I had the pleasure of seeing Aaron Lazar in The Light in the Piazza and A Little Night Music on Broadway and Dear Evan Hanson on Tour. (You may have seen him as the Soldier in the musical that plays on TV in Everything Everywhere All at Once.) In 2024, shortly after receiving an ALS diagnosis, he recorded Impossible Dream, an album full of appearances by Broadway friends to raise money and awareness for the ALS Network. Over 50 of Broadway’s finest voices join Lazar in a beautiful arrangement of the title song. If you want to cry, watch this video of the recording session.

Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

• The Rat Pack - Like most other male singers of the day, both Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. recorded “The Impossible Dream (The Quest).”

• Audra McDonald played Aldonza in a Bucks County Playhouse production of …La Mancha in 1989 (she would have been 18/19 at the time). I found one review, which was not favorable about most aspects of the production but recognized that “Audra McDonald, who is just plain all around terrific as Aldonza, brings off her character with the same style she puts into her songs.”

• Glee - “The Impossible Dream (The Quest)” does not appear on Glee, though it does get called out as an overused audition song by the “Dean of Vocal Performance and Song Interpretation at NYADA,” a very real and normal position for a school to have, played by Whoopi Goldberg.

In the Wings

As you await the release of song no. 47, I have but one small assignment, with the caveat that it is absolutely mandatory. You must watch Linda Eder sing “Man of La Mancha (I, Don Quixote)” from the televised special Broadway: The Leading Ladies at Carnegie Hall. If you start and wonder what I’m so insistent you watch it…skip ahead to 2:12.

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I don’t know if anyone has held a firmer grip on a role than Barbra Streisand held on Fanny Brice, and Streisand is rather singular in that she hasn’t reprised the role since it’s initial Broadway/London runs and the subsequent film. In fact, Streisand has not performed in any stage musicals at all since Funny Girl. The musical about Fanny Brice’s rise to stardom became Bab’s story—a gangly girl with unconventional beauty grows up in Brooklyn certain of her innate star power and overcomes initial rejections to triumph as a distinctive and beloved performer. The musical’s fate was so intwined with Streisand’s that it was seen as impossible to revive for nearly 60 years.

The project began when producer Ray Stark, married to Brice-Arnstein’s daughter, commissioned a biography of Fanny only to stop its publication when he was unhappy with the results. Then he went through 11 screenwriters trying to find a workable script for a film biography before landing on a draft by Isobel Lennart. Somehow Mary Martin got a copy of the screenplay and suggested it become a stage musical (perhaps thinking the path that worked so well for The Sound of Music would succeed here). Jerome Robbins was initially involved, but quit because he didn’t think Lennart could make her screenplay work as a musical, and Stark wouldn’t fire her. Robbins was basically correct about Lennart, though he returned to help the show when it struggled out of town. In the end, the musical never succeeded in telling us much about Fanny Brice beyond the fact that she existed and succeeded, but it had a large part in creating one of the “Greatest Stars” in the history of entertainment.

Recommended Recording: ”Don’t Rain on My Parade” Funny Girl (1964 Original Broadway Cast)

The Funny Girl OBCR captures a raw, unpolished performance, the likes of which were rarely really heard from Streisand again. (She has a legendary reputation as a perfectionist who likes absolute control over her recordings. Complimentary.) I love the octave jumps on the final “is GON-na RAIN on MY” followed by the little riff on “parade,” which becomes a four-syllable word (“paaaah-raaaaa-eeeeeee-dah”).

Alternate Performances

Funny Girl has only received ~5 cast recordings, plus a few “Songs from...” Interpretations, including one by Diana Ross and the Supremes! “Don’t Rain on My Parade” has been covered at least 55 times and is likely to appear on any Broadway-themed setlist.

• 1968 Film - Funny Girl on film is probably much closer to what the material wanted to be all along, had Mary Martin not stuck her nose into things. It’s more of a play-with-music that jettisons most of Styne’s score and interpolates some songs associated with Brice (“Second Hand Rose,” “My Man”). One senses they would have done away with all mimetic signing were it not for the fact that audiences would riot if they cut “Don’t Rain…,” “I’m the Greatest Star,” and “People.” It was the top grossing film of the year, and Streisand won the Oscar and became the entire personality of a few generations of gay men.

• 2016 London Cast - Michael Mayer directed a 2016 London revival, with a revised book by Harvey Fierstein, at the intimate Menier Chocolate Factory. It was a hit in London, meriting a cast recording and a proshot. It doesn’t really make a case for Funny Girl as a “good” musical, but it opened the door for a non-Streisand performance to be well received.

• 2022 Broadway Cast - Various folks have announced or attempted a Broadway Funny Girl revival that would never materialize, so a transfer of Mayer-Fierstein production seemed inevitable. When they announced it would hit the Great White Way with Beanie Feldstein as the star, it seemed like a good idea on paper. Feldstein was winning absolutely delightful in the Hello, Dolly! revival and films like Lady Bird and Booksmart. But from first preview, the internet was buzzing that she just didn’t have the voice for the role. I think there’s room for a version of Funny Girl where Fanny doesn’t have Streisand-level vocals, but the production needs to be wholly conceived around that alternate vision and offer something else to make the mediocre material work. Her understudy, Julie Benko, first went on early in the run and the internet again buzzed that Benko DID have the voice and should take over the role. The reviews were not kind to Feldstein, who unfairly bore the brunt of all of the production’s numerous shortcomings. Then the producers pulled a Hail Mary and brought in Lea Michele to replace Feldstein. Michele, who wanted to play Fanny more than most people want oxygen, had a smashing critical and commercial success with the role, and the production made a cast recording with her replacement cast (having never announced a recording of any kind during Feldstein’s tenure).

Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

• The Rat Pack - Sammy Davis Jr. performed “Don’t Rain…” on a television special.Bobby Darrin isn’t really in the Rat Pack, but he’s certainly aligned stylistically, and he had a hit cover of “Don’t Rain…” that makes a memorable appearance in American Beauty.

• Audra McDonald has not recorded “Don’t Rain…,” but she sings another Funny Girl song in concert, “Cornet Man,” accompanied by an anecdote about singing in it competitions as a high schooler.

• Glee - Lea Michele as Rachel Berry first sang “Don’t Rain…” on season 1, episode 13 (“Sectionals”). It appears again as a go-to audition song for Berry, who, in the world of Glee, stars in the first Broadway revival of Funny Girl. Michele, as herself, sang “Don’t Rain…” at the 2010 Tony Awards.

In the Wings

I do apologize that there was more of a wait for this edition than usual. But this past weekend I marched in Pride in the CLE with my chorus, where it literally threatened to rain on our parade, and we were like, “don’t,” and it didn’t. So perhaps the universe wanted me to wait until then to write this. If you want to know more about both the genisis of Funny Girl and every meal Barbra Streisand has ever eaten, check out Babs’s epic memoir. The audio book is 48 hours long and took me like a month to listen to on my commute. For some less informative, but much shorter, bonus material, I suggest this incredibly detailed spoof of the movie’s “Don’t Rain…” performed by RuPaul’s Drag Race alumn Plasma. And just as I mentioned a lucky 1959 audience member could see the original casts of The Sound of Music and Gypsy on the same day, 1964 audiences could have done with same with Funny Girl and Hello, Dolly!. If one waiting until the fall of 1964, they could make it a three-show weekend and catch Zero Mostel in Fiddler…!

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Dolly Levi is a musical comedy dream of a character that practically willed herself into existence…and it only took 130 years. The source material, Thornton Wilder’s 1954 play The Matchmaker, was a revision of his 1938 play (The Merchant of Yonkers), which was in turn based on an 1842 Austrian adaptation of an 1835 British one-act. For The Merchant of Yonkers, Wilder created a minor character not seen in previous versions—Dolly, a matchmaker for the titular shopkeeper. That play flopped, but audiences responded well to Dolly. So when Wilder had the chance to take another pass at Merchant, he made her the center. David Merrick produced The Matchmaker on Broadway, saw more potential in the material, and acquired the musical rights. He got his first choice in librettist, Michael Stewart, but hit a snag when his first choice composer, Bob Merrill, declined. A relatively unknown composer, Jerry Herman, won the assignment after writing four demo songs, including “Hello, Dolly!” Merrick first approached Hal Prince about directing, but Prince—who had directed a successful off-Broadway Matchmaker—didn’t want to retread familiar ground. Besides, he thought the song “Hello, Dolly” didn’t make dramatic sense and wanted to cut it1.

The gig went to Gower Champion, who sensed this was the stuff of musical theater legend. He spent the first two weeks of the initial five week rehearsal period staging “Hello, Dolly!” and its rapid-service lead-in, building the number until it had Dolly leading a parade of waiters into the audience on a passerelle around the orchestra before the waiters leapt over the pit. Once it was set, Champion said, “now I’ve got the level of the show,” meaning he knew the scale, tone, and degree of spectacle they were going for and could stage the rest of the production to reach those heights.

But who could play the woman that lives up to this much hype? Their first choice was Ethel Merman, and Herman started writing the score for her voice. But Merman said no, as did Mary Martin. Carol Channing ended up being everything they didn’t know they needed. Her madcap but precise comic style led to a woman full of surprises who always seemed one step ahead of everyone else. She could reduce an audience to tears of laughter—like when she ate a full chicken dinner as a police raid and trial happened around her—or move them to tears of compassion during her frequent tender addresses to her late husband, Ephram. Channing made the musical Dolly “real,” but the character would continue to live on after her with a string of starry replacements, basically inventing the casting process behind long-running musicals we have today. Merman and Martin even took on the role they first turned down, with Merman closing the Broadway company and Martin opening the London production and touring it internationally.

Recommended Recording: “Hello, Dolly!” Hello, Dolly!(1967 New Broadway Cast)

Pearl Bailey led an all-black replacement cast on Broadway (and on tour). She was already a notable star, and Dolly became a signature role for her, leading to the unprecedented decision to release a replacement cast recording. I love her rendition of the title song, especially all the “hellos” she adds as the waiters sing the refrain. The whole album is a great listening experience, especially if you want that Golden Age energy but just aren’t in the mood for Carol Channing. It’s not readily available on streaming platforms, but is available for purchase digitally.

Alternate Performances

Hello, Dolly! has received ~31 cast recordings, including Argentinian, Berlin, Brazilian, Czech, Danish, French, German, Hungarian, Israeli, Italian, London, Mexican, Munich, Netherlands, Paris, Russian, and Vienna casts. When the production was just beginning its troubled out-of-town tryouts, Louis Armstrong had one of the biggest hits of his career with “Hello, Dolly!,” inspiring the creative team to make that the show’s title instead of Dolly, A Damned Exasperating Woman. (It also led to Jerry Herman winning the Grammy for Song of the Year.) In 1969 Carol Channing and Pearl Bailey led a joint TV special in which they both performed Dolly numbers as well as individual special material.

• Original 1964 Broadway Cast - The Original Broadway Cast recording is one of the all time classic great cast albums with Channing at the peak of her powers. It was certified Gold within months of its release. Channing continued playing Dolly for decades, culminating in a 1994 tour and Broadway revival, which received its own cast recording. I wouldn’t go so far as to claim you can’t detect 30 years of wear and tear on her performance, but it’s an exciting recording with full, lush orchestrations.

• 1969 Film Soundtrack - By all accounts, Hello, Dolly! was an unpleasant movie to make. Barbra Streisand was far too young and had no chemistry with co-star Walter Matthau on or off camera. Director Gene Kelly didn’t have a clear vision of how to make the material work on screen, and choreographer Michael Kidd settled for a “more is more” approach. But it’s sumptuously produced, Streisand sounds great and tries to make the most of the situation, and the movie often works in spite of itself. Pixar did a major solid to its legacy when it featured clips prominently in Wall-E to tremendous emotional effect.

• 2017 Broadway Cast - Bette Midler became the first non-Carol Channing to open a production of Hello, Dolly! on Broadway, making it the hottest show in town 53 years after it’s original debut. Bernadette Peters took over after Midler left (with the New York Times proclaiming she entered for the title number “as if she invented stairs”). But producer Scott Rudin never managed to come up with another replacement, and it closed after Midler made a short return engagement2.

Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

• The Rat Pack - Frank Sinatra recorded “Hello, Dolly!” in 1964, and Sammy Davis Jr. recorded it in 1965. The Dean Martin Show featured a few Dolly songs during its run.

• Audra McDonald was rumored as a replacement Dolly during the 2017 revival (and should absolutely play the role someday, but not for Scott Rudin, the guy who sued her for getting pregnant). While she has not recorded the title song, she sings “Before the Parade Passes By” in concert, including the London Palladium concert that aired on PBS.

In the Wings

As you wait for song no. 45 to drop, you may want to check out Before the Parade Passes By: Gower Champion and the Glorious American Musical by John Anthony Gilvey, which has a great breakdown of Dolly’s creative process and evolution from surefire flop in Detroit to one of Broadway’s all time great successes.

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The idea for The Sound of Music began when director Vincent Donahue, Mary Martin and her producer-husband, Richard Halliday, heard about the real life von Trapp family singers and decided it would be a great vehicle for Martin. They brought on playwrights Russell Crouse and Howard Lindsay to adapt it into a play that would feature existing folk songs. Then they asked Rodgers and Hammerstein to contribute a few additional songs, but R&H thought it should either feature only existing folk songs or a wholly original R&H score. Martin and Co. opted for the latter, and R&H wrote a score to someone else’s libretto for the first time in their partnership. The musical gave Martin the opportunity to use everything in her bag of tricks: she could be playful, coy, sly, and flirtatious while still having some dramatic weight to play. It was the type of star turn that merited her own private costume designer for her looks (that replacement Marias didn’t even get to wear), and would become one of Martin’s last great triumphs.

After Martin left the original Broadway production, the show became the star, and today a production can work equally well with a major headlining star or a complete unknown. Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote their most infectious score, where nearly every song is a ubiquitous classic. The Sound of Music sadly ended up being R&H’s final show—Oscar Hammerstein II died the summer following its opening. Though SOM was less adventurous or envelope-pushing than their earlier, genre-defining works, they couldn’t have picked a more fitting finale to their partnership if they tried. The entire show is a love letter to music itself and its ability to bring people together. Through the 15 years of their collaboration, R&H’s music has become so engrained in the American consciousness that people just assume “Edelweiss” is really a beloved Austrian folk tune and use “Do-Re-Mi” to teach music. “My Favorite Things,” curiously, has taken on a second life as a Christmas carol for reasons I cannot begin to understand or explain.

Recommended Recording: ”My Favorite Things,” The Sound of Music (1959 Original Broadway Cast)

If you aren’t familiar with this recording, the performance may be a bit more matronly than you expect. Mary Martin was in her mid-40s during her run in The Sound of Music—about twenty years older than the part called for (not that audiences cared because her coy charms were so winning). The role of Mother Abbess provided an interesting casting challenge—it’s not necessarily a “star role,” but it needs to be someone with a sense of authority that would intimidate and inspire the star (while also holding down the act 1 closer, “Climb Every Mountain”). Patricia Neway was six years younger than Martin when she originated Mother Abbess, but she had a gravitas that left no doubt as to who ran that convent. Neway was best known for her work in opera, especially creating the role of Magda Sorel in Gian Carlo Menotti’s political allegory The Consul. (Watch Neway sing that opera’s climactic aria “To This We’ve Come,” filmed while she was still in The Sound of Music, and then imagine that level of intensity applied to “raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.”) The result of the pairing is a duet that is thrilling, and surprisingly dark.

Alternate Performances

The Sound of Music has received ~54 cast recordings, not including foreign language versions of the 1965 film or numerous jazz/pop “songs from” disks. A fun album by the Brooklyn Roadfunk Orchestra features imaginative reinterpretations of the score. The UK had a whole reality series about casting a SOMrevival. Ariana Grande quotes “My Favorite Things” in her song “7 rings.”

• 1965 Film - Robert Wise’s film version, starring Julie Andrews, is one of the most popular movies ever made and a cultural milestone. So it stands to reason that most people are familiar with its revised context for “My Favorite Things” as a song for Maria to sing to the scared von Trapp children during a thunderstorm. (The original production used “The Lonely Goatherd” for this purpose; the movie turns “Goatherd” into a puppet show.) The film cut some of the more political numbers and added two new songs with lyrics by Rodgers: “I Have Confidence,” a travel song for Maria to sing on her first journey to the von Trapps, and “Something Good,” a replacement love duet for the Captain and Maria. It’s actually insane that Robert Wise not only directed two of the most successful and impactful movie musicals of all time (Sound of Music and West Side Story ), but did so within 4 years of each other.

• 1981 London Revival - Petula Clark starred in the first major UK revial of SOM. This production began the trend of revising the musical to align with the movie—including using the storm setting for “My Favorite Things.” Clark sounds fantastic belting the hell out of the score. The great light opera star June Bronhill (who played Maria in the original Australian production) played Mother Abbess. The cover art is incredible.

• 1998 Broadway Revival - Despite its immense and enduring popularity, The Sound of Music has only had one Broadway revival, directed by Susan Shulman, starring Rebecca Luker, and produced by Hallmark. This production also incorporated the movie’s new songs and used the thunderstorm setting for “My Favorite Things.” An 18-year old Laura Benanti was in the ensemble and eventually took over the role of Maria on Broadway and the subsequent tour.

Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

• The Rat Pack - Sammy Davis Jr. recorded Mother Abbess’s anthemic act 1 closer, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” in 1961.

• Audra McDonald starred as Mother Abbess to Carrie Underwood’s Maria in NBC’s The Sound of Music Live!, which kicked off a nearly 10-year trend of live musicals on network television. While the production received a lot of real-time criticism online (particularly for Underwood’s acting), Audra’s performances of “My Favorite Things” and “Climb Every Mountain” were universally praised. (Laura Benanti, returning to SOM to play the captain’s pre-Maria love interest, was also marked safe from the online haters.) “Climb…” inspired genuine tears from Underwood and, if we’re being honest, me. It has since become something of a signature number for McDonald, who includes it on her album Sing Happyand performed it in the the aptly titled My Favorite Things: The Rodgers and Hammerstein 80th Anniversary Concert (where she also sang the evening’s title song).

• Glee - “My Favorite Things” appears in “Extraordinary Merry Christmas” (season 3, episode 9), which takes the form of a television special styled after the Judy Garland Christmas Show. But you can’t blame Glee for turning “My Favorite Things” into a holiday song. Jack Jones was the first to include it on a Christmas album…in 1964!

In the Wings

While you await song no. 44, you may want to imagine the fact that Sound of Music opened the same season as Gypsy, and you could have had a 2-show day watching both legends at their peak. (You may also want to search “Ethel Merman buck a nun.”) If you want some truly fascinating deep dives into SOM, check out these posts by the great Kevin Daly.

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Gypsy started as a collaboration between three of the minds behind West Side Story—Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, and Stephen Sondheim (as both composer and lyricist). The role of Rose was always intended for Ethel Merman, whose brash steamroller of a personality would serve the deluded character well. Merman, however, didn’t want an untested composer, so they called in Jule Styne. It proved an ideal team, with Laurents and Sondheim adding more dimensionality and subtext than musicals were used to seeing, Styne bringing the correct sensibilities for Broadway glitz and vaudeville pastiche, and Robbins expertly bringing these worlds together.

“Roses Turn” is a mental breakdown set to music. It was originally conceived as the sort of “dream ballet” introduced in Oklahoma! that would give Rose the chance to look back at her life following her daughter’s rejection. But Robbins declared one day he didn’t have time to choreograph the ballet, so Sondheim and Styne would have to meet with him after rehearsal to write a song instead. Styne was otherwise occupied that evening, so Sondheim and Robbins built the number in a grimy unused theater, pulling snippets of other songs from the show (including one that would eventually get cut) and crafting them into the ultimate diva showcase, which Merman sold for every performance of Gypsy’s original Broadway run and national tour. It’s funny, angry, delusional, bitter, and ultimately triumphant, culminating with Rose’s name in lights (at least in her own mind).

Recommended Recording: ”Rose’s Turn” Gypsy (1959 Original Broadway Cast)

If you are interested in the American Broadway musical, you need to listen to Ethel Merman sing “Rose’s Turn” at least once in your life. She effortlessly knocks it out of the ballpark, and the orchestra really cooks.

Alternate Performances

Gypsy has received ~16 cast recordings (including South African, Dutch, German, and Mexican casts), plus a few jazz/“songs from” albums. Barbra Streisand spent years trying to direct and star in a movie version until Sondheim made clear he would not release the rights, thinking it just works best as a stage piece. Also, any TV show that has gay characters will inevitably feature at least one Gypsy joke. While as a general rule, I try to limit this section to three additional recommendations, that is simply not possible here, where every recording is essential. So buckle up, stay hydrated, and take lots of breaks. You got this.

• Rosalind Russell/Lisa Kirk(1962) - Rosalind Russel wanted to play Rose, so she secured the film rights and a production team and made a movie. Russell acted the heck out of the part, but she didn’t have the singing chops for Rose, so Lisa Kirk dubbed a lot of the vocals. Kirk expertly mimicked Russell, making for seamless transitions between the two voices, while still falling short of pleasant to listen to. It was a reasonably successful film critically and financially and stayed remarkably faithful to the stage show, incorporating the full overture, recreating Jerome Robbins’ choreography, cutting only one song, and keeping the vast majority of Laurents’s libretto. The original creaters still acted like the movie ran over their dog and railed against it for decades. (Arthur Laurents spent the rest of his life either directing Gypsy or having beef with anyone else’s production.)

• Angela Lansbury (1973) - Arthur Laurents directed Angela Lansbury for the London premier, which then came to the states for a tour and limited Broadway run. This production proved that not only could the show work without Merman, but the role could be a rich feast for an exceptionally talented actor. Lansbury’s bright belt fits the score like it was written for her, and her intensity borders on frightening. It also has one of the all time best theater posters. I love this video of a much older Lansbury watching clips of this performance.

• Tyne Daly (1989) - Laurents brought on an unconventional Rose for his 1989 Broadway Gypsy, TV star Tyne Daly. Those who saw it swear up and down that Daly is the best Rose there’s ever been, if not the greatest performance of any role that ever was. Unfortunately, Daly was sick the weekend they recorded the cast album, and the producers refused to reschedule, so it’s a rough listen. But even then, her “Rose’s Turn” is a fresh and compelling interpretation. Check out this lovely diary she kept during the pre-Broadway tour which highlights how much she respected the material and the process.

• Bette Midler (1993) - This 1993 TV movie is the best way to watch the show at home. Bette Midler sings Rose incredibly well, and the entire production hits the right tone and dramatic beats, well calibrated for smaller screens. It also features pint-sized Lacy Chabert and Elizabeth Moss as young Baby June and Louise.

• Bernadette Peters (2003) - Sam Mendes directed a 2003 revival of Gypsy with Bernadette Peters as Rose. (Peters actually appeared in the 2nd National Tour of Gypsy when she was 13 years old.) This was Mendes’s big follow-up to Cabaret, and expectations were high for a dramatic reinvention. It ended up being a divisive if fairly straightforward revival, but Peters is an all-time great Rose—playful and charming, but no less determined.

• Patti LuPone (2008) - While Arthur Laurents praised Bernadette Peters’s Rose, he otherwise disliked the Mendes production so much that he directed this 2008 revival purely out of spite.1 Despite Laura Benanti’s and Boyd Gaines’s revelatory Louise and Herbie, this production’s legacy is that time Patti stopped in the middle of “Rose’s Turn” to yell at someone for having a camera out. (He was a photographer hired by the production and doing his job.)

• Imelda Staunton (2015) - Imelda Staunton gave a titanic performance as Rose in London’s first major revival since the 1973 production. It addition to a cast recording, this production received a proshot.

• Audra McDonald (2025) - George C. Wolfe directed this most recent revival for Audra McDonald. Without changing a word of text, the production explored how the story changes when Rose is a Black woman in 1920s and 1930s America. Musically, it’s not an intuitive fit for McDonald, who hitherto was more likely to sing “Summertime” than “Some People.” Though it sounds different than the Roses you may be used to, McDonald’s Rose is predictably a master class in deeply felt acting through song. As with the Mendes revival, this production was somewhat divisive, but her Tony performance will go down in the annals of history.

  

Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

• The Rat Pack - Both Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis have covered songs from Gypsy.

• Audra McDonald played Rose in 2025, as previously mentioned. In the years leading up to that, she started singing “Rose’s Turn” in concerts. She sang it in the London Palladium concert that aired on PBS, though “Rose’s Turn” was conspicuously absent from that broadcast. A “Director’s Cut” of that concert, featuring “Rose’s Turn” will start streaming on National Theater at Home beginning April 30th.

• Glee - Kurt sings “Rose’s Turn” in the first season of Glee. Because the internet is a strange place, the recording climbed the Tik Tok Billboard chart (which apparently exists) in 2024 when the “Why did I do it? What did it get me?” section became a meme.

In the Wings

It’s almost preposterous to think you’d want to learn even MORE while you wait for song No. 43 to drop. But you may want to look up one of my favorite bits of theatrical lore. Search “jerome robbins everything’s coming up rose’s what?”

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The idea for The King and I started with Gertrude Lawrence (or at least her manager). She purchased the rights for Margaret Landon’s 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam, thinking it would be a perfect vehicle for her return to Broadway musicals. Rodgers and Hammerstein were initially reluctant to take on the assignment when offered. First, they didn’t think Landon’s episodic novel had a usable dramatic structure (though these fears were assuaged by viewing its 1946 non-musical film adaptation). But mostly, they didn’t want to write a star vehicle. They preferred making stars to writing for established ones, especially those with reputations for “diva” behavior and bad pitch. Obviously, they ultimately gave in and wrote one heck of a part for Ms. Lawrence. The King, meanwhile, was written as more of a supporting role with basically one song, the sing-speaky “A Puzzlement.” But Yul Brynner was such a sensation in the role that it soon became the viewed as an equal or larger role than Anna’s. And if it wasn’t played by Brynner, it didn’t count. Gertrude Lawrence sadly died in 1952, while the original production was still running. Brynner, on the other hand, would go on to play The King for 44 years, including in the 1956 film (winning an Oscar), an odd 1973 television series, two Broadway revivals, and multiple national tours for a total of 4,625 times on stage.

As a song, “Shall We Dance?” is really incomplete without ALL of the elements of a musical—book, score, performance, costumes, scenery, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There are really only vocals for a verse and a couple of refrains, with the orchestra playing the rest. But when you add the dialogue over those musical interludes, it becomes a three-act play, and the culmination of 3 hours of building tension. And THEN when you add a beautiful gown with a massive hoop skirt spinning around a conveniently sparely furnished thrown room, thirty seconds of polka becomes one of musical theater’s most romantic moments.

Recommended Recording: ”Shall We Dance?,” The King and I(1996 Broadway Revival Cast)

The 1996 Broadway revival of The King and I was the first major American production in a post-Yul Brynner world. Director Christopher Renshaw approached the material as a celebration of Thai culture, replacing some of the English dialogue in the court with Thai, adding new procession featuring an elephant (the country’s national symbol), and casting all Asian roles with Asian actors, which had not happened prior to that point. (Yul Brynner was a Russian with an exotic look.) Lou Diamond Philips had the unenviable task of being the first actor not named Yul to open a production of The King and I on Broadway, and he did it with hair! The fact that he was already a movie star definitely helped. The intense and magnificent Donna Murphy played Anna. The production leaned heavily into their chemistry, at least if the Forbidden Broadway parody is to be believed. But this production really did have a lasting impact on The King and I’s legacy and how it’s perceived today. A 2000 London staging of the same production starred Elaine Paige and Jason Scott Lee and also produced a lovely cast recording.

Alternate Performances

The King and I has received ~40 cast recordings, including Norwegian, Israeli, Flemish, German, Greek, and Korean casts. Julie Andrews and Ben Kinglsey led a studio recording (using the film’s arrangements). Saruman himself, Christopher Lee, led a complete recording of the score.

• Yul Brynner - Yul Brynner appears on 3 cast recordings. The OBCR is a nice snapshot in time, though it doesn’t really capture what makes Gertrude Lawrence a star. (This brief snippet starts to give me an idea). As is the case with older recordings, the OBCR is heavily truncated and sounds like it was recorded in a tin can. The 1956 film is absolutely gorgeous and preserves Brynner’s performance and Jerome Robbins’ choreography (mostly seen in his wonderful “The Small House of Uncle Thomas” ballet). Deborah Kerr played Anna. Marnie Nixon dubbed the singing, but she and Kerr worked closely together to make it a seemless performance. But the 1977 revival produced what is probably my favorite of all K&I recordings. It would have been my recommended recording, but it is fully out of print—not even uploaded to YouTube! Constance Towers is an excellent Anna, and the two have them have fantastic chemistry. (Check out their performance on a Jerry Lewis MDA telethon in 1977 and the lifetime that passes as he grabs her waist.)

• 1999 Animated Film - The King and I made the exeedingly rare transition from stage to animated feature, from the studio that brought us Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. The music is well executed (Christiane Knoll sings Anna and Martin Vidnovic plays the King), the plot is heavily revised, and the whole thing is fascinating in a train-wreck kind of way. It must be seem to be believed, but you can also live a full productive life without accepting that this movie is real.

• 2015 Broadway Revival Cast - Bartlett Sher, who had triumphed with his revival of South Pacific, helmed the most recent Broadway K&I. It followed the tradition set by the 1996 revival of casting a movie star as the King (Ken Watanabe) and a beloved Broadway leading lady as Anna (Kelli O’Hara). It was well received, though not as enthusiastically as either the ‘96 K&Ior Sher’s South Pacific. The production went to London in 2018 (with O’Hara having the gumption to play a Brit in England!) and recorded a proshot (which is apparently much cheaper to do in the UK than in the US). The taping is not currently streaming anywhere (legally), but hope springs eternal.

Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

• The Rat Pack - According to IMDB, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford sang “Shall We Dance” on a televised special Frank Sinatra’s Welcome Home Party for Elvis Presley. Beyond that, both Frank and Sammy have each recorded several other K&I songs.

• Audra McDonald has definitely performed in concerts that featured other people singing selections from The King and I, but she hasn’t recorded any herself.

In the Wings

With this, our 4th playlist is officially underway. While you wait for No. 42 to drop, I would recommend reading about the real King Mongkut, who led an eventful life. The real Anna Lenowens is also fascinating—largely because she made up most of her personal history! Also, if you’re looking for other versions of the song, note that there is an unrelated Gershwin song called “Shall We Dance” from a movie of the same name. But thatmovie is not to be confused with the 2004 Richard Gere/J Lo movie, which took its title from the K&I song.

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What Makes Something a Star Turn?

We’re looking at shows where a central “star” is essential to the musical’s DNA. Shows where pretty much every element is in service to the star role’s arc or the leading actor’s performance. Shows where your first question upon hearing it’s being produced is, “who’s playing [Star Role]?” But this seemingly narrow selection criteria nevertheless contains a wealth of variations that we will explore:

• roles written for a specific performer

• shows or songs that became forever tied to a performer’s legacy

• roles that turn anyone who plays them into a star

• Roles/songs that comment on the nature of fame itself.

The star turn is practically as old as musical theater itself—George M. Cohan’s hits were as much vehicles for his style of performance as anything else. But by the rise of the mega-musical in the 1980s, the show (or even the producer) became the star, and you’d be hard pressed to find an actor’s name on the poster at all. We’ve come back to the star turn in the sense that casting super famous movie stars is one of the more reliable ways to sell tickets these days. But few people are writing musicals specifically for these movie stars. Oh, Mary! is the best example of the classic sort of star turn out there today (even though it’s a play): every casting announcement is an event, and you can’t wait to see what they bring to the part (and what the role brings out in them).

Previously Mentioned Star Turns

We’ve already covered quite a few “star turns,” (and we’ll hit a few more even after this playlist is complete). Some examples from the vault:

• “Give My Regards to Broadway,” Little Johnny Jones (1904)

• “Anything Goes,” Anything Goes (1934)

• “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” Annie Get Your Gun(1946)

• “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” Gentlemen Prefer Blondes(1949)

• “I Could Have Danced All Night,” My Fair Lady (1956)

• “If I Were a Rich Man,” Fiddler on the Roof (1964)

• “Cabaret,” Cabaret (1966)

• “There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This,” Sweet Charity(1966)

• “Send in the Clowns,” A Little Night Music (1973)

• “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” Dreamgirls (1981)

• “I Am What I Am,” La Cage Aux Folles (1983)

• “Defying Gravity,” Wicked (2003)

In the Wings

We’re going to dive right into our first Star Turn, song No. 41, next week. While you wait, a reminder that you can:

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Our Notable Creatives

• George Abbott

• Lynn Ahrens

• Jerry Bock

• Jason Robert Brown

• Cy Coleman

• Betty Comden

• Russell Crouse

• Micki Grant

• William Finn

• Stephen Flaherty

• Adolph Green

• Sheldon Harnick

• Jerry Herman

• Tom Kitt

• James Lapine

• Howard Lindsay

• Terrance McNally

• Cole Porter

• Joseph Stein

• Shaina Taub

• Jeanine Tesori

• Gwen Verdon

• David Yazbek

• Brian Yorkey

Is It Covered By The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

One of my favorite parts of this process is making these Venn diagrams, even if I’m really sweating about fitting 60 more names on one of them.

In The Wings

It’s crazy to think that it’s been 13 months since I started this newsletter! A special round of applause for the 65 or so of you who have been along for the journey this whole time! But I also want to give a shoutout to more recent followers—thanks for finding me! I also want to express sincere gratitude for anyone who has shared or recommended 100Showtunes (which is ever so easy and fun to do!).

I’ll announce the theme for Playlist IV next week and reveal song No. 41 the following week. Until then, keep marching on.

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It may be premature to dub Shaina Taub a “Notable Creative” being that Suffs marked her Broadway debut as a writer and performer. But she’s only the second woman in history to star in a Broadway musical while also writing music, lyrics, and book. (The first was Micki Grant…in 1971.) In the 10 years leading to Suffs on Broadway, Taub:

• appeared in the original off-Broadway casts of Hadestown, and Natasha Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812).

• wrote scores for, and performed in, adaptations of Twelfth Night and As You Like It for the Public Theater’s PUBLIC WORKS program.

• released 3 solo albums.

• wrote lyrics (to Elton John’s score) for the musical version of The Devil Wears Prada .

• wrote the theme song to Julie’s Greenroom (the Netflix show starring Julie Andrews and a gaggle of Jim Henson puppets).

• wrote songs for the second season of AppleTV’s animated musical series, Central Park.

In a time when many aspiring composers can spend 11 years trying to get a single musical off the ground, Taub seems to be an indefatigable source of ideas. Even more important—she’s proven she can refine those ideas and do the work that takes a show from promising to excellent. Suffs received a mixed response off-Broadway, with critics finding it overstuffed with ideas, characters, and tonal shifts. What opened on Broadway was more focused, thematically clear, and impactful. A writer who can seemingly find musical inspiration in a shopping list while also having the discipline to edit and revise should prove to be unstoppable.

Recommended Recording: ”Keep Marching” Suffs (2024 Original Broadway Cast)

I admit that the cast recording can be a little bit challenging if you haven’t seen the show. The ear worms come through, but there are so many characters and plot threads that it can feel like you’re always playing catch up. But “Keep Marching” works without much context at all—it pretty much sets itself up in the first verse. The earnest and optimistic song is admirably unafraid of being “cringe.” We’re in a narrow window in which this song can be a bit of a discovery for many readers. I’ve already heard it at one Pride event, and I just feel like you’ll soon be hearing it anytime a group of idealistic women+ perform. I can see it eventually becoming like “Seasons of Love” where we spend a few years resenting its ubiquity before embracing it as a classic.

Alternate Performances

So far, there’s only one full recording of Suffs. It’s currently on tour, and if it’s stopping near you, I recommend checking it out.

• Broadway Inspirational Voices Edition - The Broadway Inspirational Voices recorded a version of “Keep Marching” in support of Broadway Votes and Joy to the Polls. It’s a bit rough to try to think optimistically about the 2024 election in hindsight…but I also feel like this could be an evergreen recording to trot out every 4 (or 2) years until it works.

• Pro-Shot - A proshot was recorded with the original Broadway cast, and it will premiere on PBS as part of Great Performances on Friday, May 8. I’m really glad it was preserved in this way (especially since, as I mentioned earlier, there are limits to what you can comprehend based on the recording alone). Let this also serve as a reminder to support your local PBS station.

Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

• Audra McDonald- According to a Shaina Taub bio that appears many places on the internet, Audra McDonald has sung Taub’s music. But damned if I know what or where or when.

• Glee - Alex Newell, who played Unique Adams after placing second on the reality competition series The Glee Project, is a featured soloist on the Broadway Inspirational Voices version of “Keep Marching.”

In the Wings

We’ve now completed our third playlist, Notable Creatives! Next week will be a brief “scene change,” with the next playlist theme to be announced the following week. Until then, I would recommend looking up the “cancel suffs” protest.

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In the late 90s a group of composers started emerging as a next wave of musical theater writers, with challenging commercially risky works typically presented by the growing force of institutional non-profit off-broadway theaters (Playwrights Horizons, Lincoln Center, etc.) These composers usually had three names and were almost exclusively male. Jeanine Tesori (who, like Jason Robert Brown and Tom Kitt, began her career as a music director and arranger), entered the chat with her musical Violet, an intimate off-Broadway chamber piece about a young woman with a scar across her face who takes a bus to meet a faith healer. With Thoroughly Modern Millie, she found the big Broadway hit that continues to elude her contemporaries. Though much of its score came from the 1960s movie it’s based on, Tesori’s original contributions blended seamlessly with, and frequently outshone, the existing material. Her next piece was a return to the the off-Broadway aesthetic with the magical-realism memory play, Caroline, or Change (book and lyrics by Tony Kushner). Her career has continued to dabble in big budget family shows(Shrek the Musical) as well as quirky off-Broadway works and, more recently, opera. Through it all she’s shown incredible versatility, working with a variety of collaborators in a range of musical styles. With Fun Home, Tesori found the perfect blend of her sensibilities. On one hand, it has dark subject matter adapted from an unconventional source, ripe for complex musical scenes. It also delivers a number of satisfying crowd-pleasing songs. (I’ve been sitting behind the same gaggle of tipsy subscribers at my local Broadway touring series for years. They love a jukebox musical or anything bright and shiny and look through their phones during quieter more challenging shows. The big showcase numbers in Fun Homehad them locked in.)

Librettist Lisa Kron’s background made her an ideal candidate for adapting Bechdel’s graphic novel. She co-founded the theater company The Five Lesbian Brothers, in addition to writing two successful innovative autobiographical plays. She had never written a musical before, but luckily for everyone one of Tesori’s secret powers is turning playwrights into lyricists, and Kron rose to the challenge with witty lyrics that organically sit on the music. The libretto is a master class in adaptation finding a dramatic through-line in the fragmented source material and capturing its specific distinctive tone. Many of Fun Home’s major plot points are, at least on paper, as bleak as a musical can get. But it’s surrounded by warmth and humor in a way that feels totally unified. It really shouldn’t work at all, but instead it’s become one of the most produced shows in America. And Kron may not have invented the 3-actresses-as-1-lead structure, but we sure did start seeing it A LOT following Fun Home’s success (see Summer, The Cher Show, and The Notebook to name a few).

Recommended Recording: ”Ring of Keys” Fun Home (2015 Original Broadway Cast)

Sydney Lucas originated the role of Small Alison off-Broadway at the age of 10, and continued with the show for its Broadway run. She gave an uncommonly intelligent performance with both quiet intensity and childish naivety. When I saw her on Broadway, there was a moment where she gave Bruce a chilling knowing glare that is forever etched in my mind. The producers wisely chose to use her complete performance of “Ring of Keys” as their Tony number, and it’s one of the all time greats. For a time, I worried no one else would be able to do the song justice—that it needed a uniquely perceptive kid like Lucas. But by now I’ve seen a number of professional and amateur productions, and the song always works. Because that’s what great writing does—it maps out the journey in words and music, creating a roadmap for whoever performs it.

Alternate Performances

Thus far, Fun Home has only received two cast recordings—and honestly, it’s more like 1.5. Lea Salonga starred in a Philippines production that was not recorded, nor was the original London cast recorded.

• 2013 Off-Broadway Cast - Fun Home was first recorded during its extended off-Broadway run at the Public Theater. This is the 0.5 recording I mentioned. Much of it is reused on its Broadway counterpart, with some bits re-recorded to reflect cast changes (most notably the role of Medium Alison), and some other tweaks to the material. This edition went out of print once the OBCR came out.

Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

• Audra McDonald has not recorded anything from Fun Home (though we the people deserve her take on Helen’s big ballad “Days and Days.”) As far as I can tell, the only Tesori work in Audra’s repertoire is the lullaby “Lay Down Your Head” from Violet, which closes her album How Glory Goes. It’s the aural equivalent of a hug.

In the Wings

We’re almost at the end of Notable Creatives—No. 40 will close out our third playlist. To be honest, I’m not sure when I’m going to get that out—the next couple of weeks are going to be a whirlwind as I prepare to perform in Shoeless: a Musical Tale of Cinderella with the North Coast Men’s Chorus (and featuring Nina West!). Until then, you may want to look up “The Bechdel Test,” an idea that started as a strip in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For, then became an earnest metric that grew in popularity until Bechdel was like “y’all, it really was not that serious.” (I’m paraphrasing, but you’ll figure it out.) Oh, and someone made a Lego music video of this song.

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Next to Normal began as a musical called Feeling Electric. As the original punny title might indicate, the show leaned heavily into satire and criticism of the mental health industry. But as the show evolved and the characters became more fully realized, the now-titled Next to Normal became a show at odds with itself. Was it a sincere portrait of familial strife, or a provocative comedy meant to prompt audiences to say “I can’t believe they said that in a musical!!”? When reviews of the off-Broadway production pointed out this dichotomy unfavorably, the creative team got back to work. For regional tryout that summer, they cut down the jokey satire numbers and thoughtfully delved into the very real consequences of severe mental illness, though still with caustic wit and a driving rock score. The newly cohesive version ran for a year and a half, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, and has become a favorite of regional and community theaters.

Despite what his wholesome looks might suggest, Tom Kitt has become the go-to guy for rock on Broadway. Prior to his first Broadway score (for the shortlived musical version of High Fidelity), he had a career as a music director and arranger. He frequently serves in those capacities on jukebox musicals like American Idiot, Jagged Little Pill, and Hell’s Kitchen. Brian Yorkey built a reputation as a playwright and director with a particular knack for working with and writing for teens. In addition to writing musicals with Tom Kitt and others, Yorkey created the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why.

Recommended Recording: ”Superboy and the Invisible Girl,” Next to Normal (2009 Original Broadway Cast)

This is one of the top cast recordings of the aughts, with career-defining performances for everyone involved. Aaron Tveit and Jennifer Damiano give star-making performances, and I particularly love how their voices sound when they harmonize together on the last verse. This was also the first song I ever heard from Next to Normal, thanks to this Broadway.com video featuring the cast in the recording studio. In Alice Ripley’s brief section (beginning at 1:13), you can get a sense of how wild her performance was. I’ve seen four other Diana’s since, and none of them had the same comedic edge. In 2024, Tom Kitt remastered the recording in honor of its fifteenth anniversary. It rebalances the mix between vocals and musicians, emphasizing the rock sensibility of the score.

Alternate Performances

Next to Normal has received nine cast recordings, including Korean, Argentinian, Italian, Czech, and Dutch casts (though many of them are not readily available in the USA).

• 2013 German Cast - This production starred Pia Douwes, a Dutch musical theater star best known for creating the title role in Elisabeth, a landmark 1992 Austrian musical that is popular just about everywhere except America. She has an impossibly large range and can play just about any role (in just about any language)…and has done so. It’s a treat to hear her on this live cast recording.

• 2021 Riverdale Cast - Riverdale is an absolutely insane show that, on top of doing the most with every storyline, has a musical episode most seasons in which they take songs from a given show and recontextualize them to be about Archie and co. Earlier musical episodes centered around the high school musical, with some songs being seen in rehearsal/performance while others appeared in unrelated story lines. The Next to Normal episode from season 5 takes a different approach (maybe because they’ve graduated high school by this point). Betty’s mom is going through a depressive episode and listens to the Next to Normal recording obsessively, prompting its numbers to appear in everyone’s lives. “Superboy and the Invisible Girl” becomes a solo number for Veronica about feeling unseen in her relationship with Archie. Even though these episodes aren’t accurate presentations of the show, they always seem to tap into the source material’s original tone, so the songs still hit like they should emotionally.

• 2024 London Cast - Despite being popular throughout Europe for 15 years, Next to Normal never played London until a new 2024 production at the intimate Donmar Warehouse. While the original production leaned into the rock and comedic aspects of the show, this production doubled down on the suburbia of it all. Cassie Levy puts herself through it as Diana, while Jack Wolfe takes a quieter, more haunting approach to Gabe. The revival didn’t transfer to Broadway but instead received a proshot that aired on PBS as part of Great Performances. It’s currently steaming on PBS and BroadwayHD.

Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

• Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey have a talent for writing bespoke musicals that highlight the unique talents of its leading lady. See Next to Normal and Alice Ripley, If/Then and Idina Menzel, Freaky Friday and Heidi Blickenstaff. I am simply asking that they do for Audra McDonald what they have done for others.

In the Wings

As you wait for song No. 40 to drop, I recommend checking out this recording of a song called “Costco” from back in Next to Normal’s Feeling Electric days. This is often cited as one of the songs that felt tonally out of place in the off-Broadway production, and it was soon jettisoned forever.

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It’s pretty difficult to write a song that is legitimately funny. Writing a song that one finds funny after listening to it for 20 years is almost unheard of. But that’s David Yazbek for you! How can you not be delighted by a lyric like this?:

I mean

The air is French

That chair is French

This nice sincere sancerre is French

The skies are French

The pies are French

Those guys are French

These fries are French!

David Yazbek made his Broadway debut in 2000 with The Full Monty. He came to the theater with a background writing for The Late Show with David Letterman, jingles, and music for children’s tv. His first theatrical score kept pace with the laughs from the source material while also mining it for emotionally satisfying material. While the follow-up, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels wasn’t as critically successful (and ran about half as long), it proved Monty wasn’t a one-off fluke and established Yazbek as Broadway’s funniest composer. He has proved surprisingly prolific as well with four subsequent eclectic projects including the ambitious-but-flawed Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, the deeply felt The Band’s Visit, Tootsie, and the recent musical about a corpse, Dead Outlaw. He also co-produced Buena Vista Social Cluband was a producer on its cast recording.

Recommended Recording: ”Here I Am,” Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (2005 Original Broadway Cast)

Sherie Rene Scott is a national treasure. Her bright, seemingly indestructible belt is paired with clinical precision and an uncanny deadpan delivery that I find endlessly amusing. Listen to how deftly she handles the lyric with perfect vocal placement. While …Scoundrels marked a reunion for Scott and Norbert Leo Butz, long simmering tensions between them came to a head during the production, and they didn’t really appear onstage together after it until they created a show about their fallout called Twohander which played at 54 Below in 2019 and should be on Broadway (or anywhere) right now.

Alternate Performances

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels has only received one other cast recording—a 2008 Mexican Cast, starring Eugenio Derbez. It apparently was only sold at the theater and isn’t available digitally.

Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

• Audra McDonald, Glee, and David Yazbek all competed against each other at the Grammy’s this past weekend for their contributions in the Best Musical Theater Album category. Audra was nominated for Gypsy, Gleeks Jonathan Groff and Darren Criss were nominated for Just in Time and Maybe Happy Ending respectively, and Yazbek was nominated for Buena Vista Social Club. (Also, Just in Time, a Bobby Darrin jukebox musical, has big Rat Pack energy. I’m just sayin’.) Buena Vista… won..

In the Wings

Before I leave you to fend for yourselves as you await the release of song no. 38, it’s vitally important that you know David Yazbek wrote the theme song to Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?. If you don’t know what that is, stop what you are doing and listen to it right now.

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Parade has enough similarities with Ragtime that I have been hesitant to put them next to each other on this list. They’re both (1) historical dramas exploring tensions between Jewish, affluent white, and Black communities (2) set in the first decades of the 20th century that (3) feature lush scores for large ensembles and (4) were produced by Livent. (The Hal Prince revival of Show Boat is the third infinity stone in the Livent Theatrical Universe of turn-of-the-Century musical dramas). Livent boasted an innovative approach to producing as the first publicly traded theatrical production company. They mounted huge artistically successful award-winning productions and seemed to reap fiscal rewards to match. Unfortunately, their cheery financial outcomes were, in fact “accounting irregularities” (i.e fraud). This creative bookkeeping came to light during Parade’s run, leaving co-producer Lincoln Center with the bill and making Livent founder Garth Darbrinski the first person to serve a lengthy prison sentence for musical theater1.

Felonies aside, Parade symbolized a passing of the torch to a new generation of theater makers. On one hand, you have the legendary Harold Prince, who conceived of and directed the piece. Playwright Alfred Uhry, best known for the quaint play and movie Driving Miss Daisy, wrote the book. These established creators joined forces with newcomer Jason Robert Brown. Brown had been building a reputation as a conductor and arranger, but his only stage composition was the off-Broadway song cycle Songs for a New World, which had a limited run in 1995. But its score, full of big sings and compelling stories, made an impression, especially on Harold Prince, whose daughter Daisy directed revue. In choosing Brown for Parade, Prince seemed to anoint Brown as the Next Sondheim—what else would you call a young composer-lyricist working with Harold Prince on a new musical that tackles challenging and unconventional themes? Brown’s score quickly became a favorite of theater fans who also devoured Songs…, and his folllow-up to Parade, the doomed-marriage two-hander The Last Five Years. These scores dominated cabaret acts and terrorized audition accompanists for years. Brown’s career since then has been an eclectic mix of “commercial” comedies, like 13 (Ariana Grande’s Broadway debut), and more serious fare, like The Bridges of Madison County. His latest work is about another famous murder in Georgia, a musical version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil written with performance artist and playwright Taylor Mac. It announced a 2025 Broadway run that has yet to materialize, but it could potentially happen at any point when a suitable theater becomes available. Or never. At the very least they continue to pay for a URL and web-hosting.

Recommended Recording: “The Old Red Hills of Home,” Parade(1998 Original Broadway Cast)

Simply put, this recording is a cultural landmark, and, sadly, Broadway has seen few scores and recordings at this scale and grandeur since.

Alternate Performances

Parade has received 3 cast recordings (including the Original Broadway Cast).

• 2007 Original London Cast - Rob Ashford directed an entirely new production for Parade’s London premiere. The 2-disk cast recording captures a good amount of revision to the book and score. The production, at the small Donmar Warehouse, took more of a reduced “chamber approach” to the score, with reduced orchestrations. It’s a good supplement to the OBCR.

• 2023 Broadway Cast - By the time Parade saw its first Broadway revival in 2023, the show had amassed enough fans to make the production a sell-out hit. This production started as a Gala concert for New York City Center (like the current hit Ragtime revival). Jason Robert Brown was now the established, accomplished author watching a new crop of creators, like director Michael Arden, breathe new life into the show. Ben Platt defies the haters and sounds great, though Micaela Diamond’s Lucille is the big standout for me.

Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

• Audra McDonald included a rendition of “You Don’t Know This Man”—in which Frank’s wife, Lucillle, defends her husband—on her first solo disk, Way Back to Paradise. The album, which was released a year before Parade opened, is comprised of songs by emerging writers, many of whom had three names: Jason Robert Brown, Michael John LaChiusa, Ricky Ian Gordon, Adam Guettel (grandson of Richard Rodgers), and Jenny Giering.

In the Wings

While you wait for song No. 37 to drop, you can explore an alarming amount of resources about the real life basis of Parade at leofrank.org. If you’re more interested in the other true crime associated with this musical, there’s Show Stopper: The Theatrical Life of Garth Darbinski, which is currently streaming for free on Tubi. If you don’t want to read about crimes at all, there’s this blog post by Jason Robert Brown, following the opening of the London production, that explains the some of the show’s revisions.

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Ragtime is one of those musicals that is deeply beloved by fans of the art form2, even if it has never really penetrated the popular consciousness. The original Broadway production is one of the great triumphs of the decade with a peerless cast elevating an already glorious score. The extravagant production, which required merging two shuttered theaters into one new expansive house, was also its undoing. Critics were blinded by its largess, prompting baseless accusations that is was style over substance3. It ran for two years, but ultimately failed to attract crowds sufficient to sustain a production of that magnitude4. The show continues to loom large in the heart of theater aficionados, thanks to the exemplary work of Terrence McNally, Stephen Flaherty, and Lynn Ahrens. McNally’s book is a masterclass in adaptation, neatly fitting a sprawling novel with three distinct story arcs into a cohesive and impactful narrative. And Flaherty and Ahrens’ score is one of Broadway’s finest, capturing all of the flavors of 1900s America with a contemporary flair. It rarely gets better than this.

Recommended Recording: ”Wheels of a Dream,” Ragtime (1998 Original Broadway Cast)

Ragtime’s original cast recording is one of the most essential theater albums of the 90s. Ken Mandelbaum’s 1998 review for playbill.com puts it best: “I won’t even begin to single out for praise individual numbers, as there are too many superb ones; suffice it to say that this is a major score, one of the finest of recent years.…It’s likewise unnecessary to discuss the leads separately, as they are all glorious, and offer deeply felt performances.” The leads on this particular track are the peerless Audra McDonald and Brian Stokes Mitchell.

I truly think we would be a better country if everyone saw Ragtime every couple of years. I’ve seen four different productions in my life, and it feels urgent and relevant in a different way each time. Listening to the new recording this past week, the Coalhouse/Sarah story felt unbearably pertinent. But I have to believe we are better than what is happening right now.

Alternate Performances

The Original Broadway Cast recording of Ragtime is the only complete commercial recording for the score. The original London production—an entirely new staging with a notable cast—criminally didn’t get recorded at all.

• The Original Cast Again (and Again) - In 1996, a single-disk “Songs from Ragtime” album came out following the Toronto try-out. It features a different Emma Goldman than its Broadway counterpart, and a couple of the numbers would get notable revisions before NYC. It’s an interesting peek at a musical in development. In 2023, much of the Original Broadway Cast reunited for concert to benefit the Actor’s Fund. It was originally scheduled for 2020, but was delayed due to Covid-19. Marin Mazzie, the original Mother, passed away in 2018, so Kelli O’Hara played the role for the concert. The evening was filmed and has been announced for both cinematic and television releases, only for both to be cancelled shortly after news broke.

• 2010 Broadway Cast - A Kennedy Center (RIP) revival, smartly staged by Marcia Milgrom Dodge, transferred to Broadway in 2010. Its minimal production may have been more cost effective, but it failed to attract significant audiences. It’s preserved with a one-disk “Songs from Ragtime” recording.

• 2025 Broadway Revival Cast - New York City Center presented a concert version of Ragtime for their 2024 gala. Lincoln Center then transferred that production to Broadway, where it has, for the first time, been playing like a hit, extending past its limited run at least until July 2026. Its cast recording came out last week. While the recording features a number of baffling cuts—enough that I wouldn’t even consider it a complete recording, though it has more than either of the “Songs from…” disks—it captures the fine performances, particularly Joshua Henry’s Coalhouse. Nichelle Lewis—the underappreciated star of the recent The Wiz revival—meets the unenviable challenge of tackling one of Audra McDonald’s signature roles and making it her own. The production makes a very…strong choice with the final note of the final “Wheels of a Dream” reprise. Not having seen the whole production, I can’t really comment on the correctness of that choice, but at least they committed to it.

Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

• Audra McDonald - Ragtime marked the first time Audra created a role in a musical on Broadway, and it firmly established her as one of the top performers of her generation. Her little hum after Coalhouse sings “they’ll take to him like cats to cream” has lived rent free in my mind for 28 years. “Your Daddy’s Son,” Sarah’s lullaby in which she explains why she buried her baby, is Audra at the height of her powers. I also love this performance of the opening number on The Rosie O’Donnell Show in which Audra out-sings the entire company on the last note.

• Glee - At age 11, Lea Michele created the role of The Little Girl (the daughter of Tateh, the center of the immigrant storyline) in the original Broadway production of Ragtime. She has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance at the top ofthis performance of “Our Children” on Rosie.

In the Wings

As you wait for song No. 36, there’s lot of Ragtime stuff to look into. Playbill ran this oral history of Ragtime’s genesisaround the time of the reunion concert. Among many highlights, in includes Audra McDonald describing hearing “Wheels of a Dream” for the first time. Joshua Henry and Nichelle Lewis have been singing “Wheels of a Dream” for anyone who’ll have them. There’s also this performance of the song from a “Ragtime Fan Film” that I really enjoy.

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In 1979 a wholly original composer-lyricist, William Finn, wrote and directed a one-act musical called In Trousers about a married man, Marvin, who realizes he is gay. While it showcased Finn’s raw talent, it’s loose structure revealed room for improvement as a dramatist. In 1981, Finn collaborated with director and playwright James Lapine on a sequel, March of the Falsettos, launching a decades-long collaboration between the two. Nine years later1, Finn and Lapine completed the “Marvin Trilogy” withFalsettoland, in which the characters confront the AIDS crises. This was the most successful installment yet, getting a commercial off-Broadway run. Hartford Stage was the first to present these latter-two shows as a single evening, directed by Graciela Daniele. The enthusiastic response to Hartford’s production led to a Broadway pairing of the one-acts calledFalsettos, directed by Lapine and featuring most of the original off-Broadway cast. This somewhat jumbled path to Broadway was perhaps fitting for the work of Finn, whose thru-sung shows don’t typically follow narrative conventions. While the “book” of Falsettos doesn’t feature much dialogue, Lapine’s contribution provided an organization and structure that clarified the narrative and heightened its emotional impact while allowing Finn to be Finn.

In the summer of 2006 I was a stage management intern for Barrington Stage Company’s new Musical Theater Lab series, and Bill Finn was the series’ artistic director. He was gruff, opinionated, and unpredictable, but also very kind. And once I got acclimated to his rather chaotic modes of communication, I could appreciate how much of a genius he really was, and how clearly he could see the moments he wanted. Pretty much every conversation started with me thinking “what is happening” and ended with me realizing “oh, yeah, that’s good.” As a longtime teacher at the NYU Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program, Finn championed new voices and urged them to defy convention and put themselves and their craziest ideas on the page, writers like Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop) and Will Aronson (Maybe Happy Ending). I expect Finn’s influence will continue to manifest in the years to come.

Recommended Recording: “Days Like This,” Falsettoland (1990 Original Off-Broadway Cast)

March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland each received cast recordings following their respective off-Broadway openings. When Falsettos opened on Broadway, the powers that be decided not to make a new recording but rather re-issue the previous two recordings as a set, despite the fact that these recordings didn’t reflect rewrites and cast changes made for Broadway. But they’re both classic recordings that perfectly capture the spirited performers expertly navigating the quirky score.

Falsettos has many songs that are more popular than “Days Like This.” But I chose this song because:

1. It’s my favorite—the opening bars of the accompaniment are so fun and bouncy!

2. It features people singing different musical lines separately, and then singing them on top of each other, which will ALWAYS work for me.

3. It features the entire cast, and each character is vividly rendered within a few bars (aside from Dr. Charlotte, who doesn’t get much to do in this song).

4. It’s a great example of Finn’s rhymes that are as preposterous as they are revealing (ex: “Go ahead be good and pissed. / ‘How can I help?,’ says the wiry psychiatrist,” or “I am up to my ass / in a Kosher morass,” to name a few .)

Alternate Performances

Falsettos had only received 3 cat recordings. Individual songs tend to get recording more often (“What More Can I Say” is a particularly popular choice.)

• Justice for Barbara Walsh - Though a Hartford production inspired what became Falsettos, the Broadway bow functioned more as a transfer of the off-Broadway productions. Michael Rupert, Stephen Bogardus, and Chip Zien continued in the roles they created off-Broadway in both shows (Marvin, Whizzer, and Mendel respectively2). Alison Fraser played Trina in both In Trousers and March of the Falsettos, while Faith Prince played the role in Falsettoland. When it came time to cast the role for Broadway, the team decided not to choose between Fraser and Prince and instead went with option C, the Hartford Trina (Barbara Walsh). But Walsh never got to record her performance! You can at least see her perform “I’m Breaking Down” on a talk show. (The song first appeared in In Trousers before being worked into the Broadway Falsettos) The original Broadway cast also added Carolee Carmello as Cordelia, which is another thing we deserve to have on record.

• 2003 LATW Cast - LA Theaterworks recorded a 10th Anniversary edition of Falsettos, recording its full Broadway version for the first time. Michael Rupert, Stephen Bogardus, and Chip Zien reprised their roles, but the women and Jason were recast. Unlike most (if not all) other LATW productions, this disappeared into the ether after it’s first presentation…at least as much as anything can disappear when the internet exists. It’s an uneven performance and audio capture that mostly highlights the difference between recording a staged reading and a true studio recording. But still, it was the only accurate recording of Falsettos for thirteen years and maybe should have been more available.

• 2016 Broadway Cast - 24 years after it first opened on Broadway, Falsettos finally got an honest-to-god English-language cast recording of the revised show. Lapine again directed the production, which was filmed and screened in movie theaters, aired as part of Live from Lincoln Center, and now streams on BroadwayHD. It’s honestly still a little jarring for me to hear someone besides Rupert/Bogardus/Zien in these roles, but it’s an excellent, long overdue recording.

Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

• Audra McDonald introduces the proshot of Falsettos as the host of Live from Lincoln Center.

In the Wings

Happy new year! I can’t believe we are officially more than 1/3 of the way through this project. As you patiently await the release of song No. 35, I recommend checking out the album Infinite Joy: The Songs of William Finn, a retrospective concert of Finn’s work (up to 2001) with an all star cast. Finn himself takes a mic a few times, to give you a sense of his one-of-a-kind personality.

As I mentioned in the previous profile, I’ve started adding voiceover narrations. Now there is a podcast feed for these narrations that can you add to the platform of your choice. You can search “100 Showtunes: The Podcast” on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. An RSS feed link is at the bottom of this email. The newsletter is still the main focus of this project, but the audio edition may fit into your day a little easier!

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La Cage Aux Folles was almost a musical called The Queen of Basin Street with a New Orleans setting, a book by Jay Preston Allen, a score by Maury Yeston, choreography by Tommy Tune, and direction by Mike Nichols. New producers came on board and insisted on a new creative team, bringing in Harvey Fierstein, the hottest playwright in town, and Jerry Herman. (Nichols went on to direct a different Americanized adaptation for film—The Birdcage.) Herman and Fierstein must have seemed like an odd pairing at first—Fierstein defied the odds when his edgy downtown play became a long-running Broadway hit, while Herman was wholesome, possibly even old-fashioned, and hadn’t had major success in over a decade. (A revival of his last hit, Mame, was bombing spectacularly on Broadway when La Cage… opened.) But the partnership resulted in a musical that was both unabashedly queer and a good old-fashioned American crowd-pleaser. The act one closer, “I Am What I Am,” still resonates deeply today and has basically become the Gay National Anthem. Herman’s biggest hits were about larger-than-life personalities who defy convention and help others lead more authentic lives—so perhaps he had been writing about drag queens the whole time.

Recommended Recording: ”I Am What I Am,” La Cage Aux Folles (1985 Australian Cast)

Australian actor Jon Ewing delivers a powerful rendition of “I Am What I Am.” The orchestra is straight up fire—I don’t know what they did, but it’s somehow more epic than any other rendition I’ve heard.

Alternate Performances

La Cage… has received ~12 cast recordings, including Berlin, Italian, Columbian, Mexican, and Japanese casts (but not French). New York City Encores! has added it to their 2026 season, featuring Billy Porter, Wayne Brady, and an all-Black cast.

• 1983 Original Broadway Cast - George Hearn starred as Albin. He was most know for stern, authoritative stuff without a hint of camp on him (unless you count dating Dixie Carter for a few years). But he sounds like he’s having a blast on the upbeat numbers, and his gravitas and rich baritone anchors a thrilling rendition of “I Am What I Am.” Powers that be still thought a man in drag was too much for the Tony telecast, so Hearn sang “I Am…” in a tux with no wig or makeup.

• Gloria Gaynor recorded a disco version of “I Am What I Am” shortly after the show opened, and it became an international hit. Based on her current politics, it doesn’t seem like she ever really listened to the words.

• 2010 Broadway Cast - This production of La Cage… came over from London. On paper it seemed completely unnecessary—La Cage…had just been revived on Broadway in 2005–but in that short time, our perception and relationship to drag changed significantly, in no small part due to RuPaul’s Drag Race, which began in 2009. The production reflected a sleeker, sexier approach to drag than the more camp aesthetic of the 80s. Douglas Hodge came over from London, reprising his precise and hilarious Albin. (Kelsey Grammer played Georges and, like Gloria Gaynor, apparently managed not to internalize anything he heard, said, or sang in that production.) Harvey Fierstein took over the role of Albin for the last few months of the run. Jeffrey Tambor was supposed to play Georges at that time, but he struggled and was gone within two weeks.

Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

• The Rat Pack - Sammy Davis Jr. keeps giving me reasons to like him. He sang “I Am What I Am” on a television special, prefecing it by telling everyone to walk-not-run to see La Cage…. What a guy!

• Audra McDonald has been singing “I Am What I Am” for several years. It opens her 2018 album Sing Happyand her 2024 special Audra McDonald at the London Palladium.

• Glee has somehow not performed “I Am What I Am.” Make it make sense.

In the Wings

You may have noticed a “Listen to this post” widget on top of this page and wondered what that was about. I’ve sneakily started recording voiceovers of me reading the posts. I had been reading them aloud to myself to help with editing, and figured I might as well press record. (Turns out, it’s a lot harder than that, and voice over actors deserve a lot of credit.) I might get out No. 34 before the end of the year, or I might blink and wake up in January. Until then, I recommend the documentary, Words and Music by Jerry Herman which is available on youtubeand does a wonderful job of putting his career in context. And I know I said way back during my ground rulesthat I wouldn’t allow myself to discuss the Tony Awards, or I’d never stop, but the 1984 showdown between La Cage… and Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George is legendary, especially Herman’s acceptance speech, which many felt was an explicit rebuke of Sondheim. There’s like 40 years of discussion you can read up on if you’re so inclined.

1

Pardon my French, but why the FUCK is this 1978 French plot device so relevant in 2025 America?

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Stephen Schwartz had three smash hits in New York under his belt when he conceived of Working. Unlike these other hits, Schwartz would maintain full control over this production, serving as director and co-librettist, in addition to some songwriting duties. But Schwartz did not compose the entire score himself, instead bringing on a number of collaborators with different styles and backgrounds to flesh out the diverse cast of characters that appear in Studs Terkel’s book. Trailblazing composer and actress Micki Grant wrote some of Working’s most memorable songs, including the moving first-act finale, “If I Could’ve Been”. With 1972’s Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope, Grant made history as the first woman to write book, music, and lyrics for—and star in—a Broadway musical (a feat that wouldn’t be replicated for over 50 years). …Cope ran for over two years, and its cast recording won a Grammy, making Grant, the first female composer AND the first black composer to be so honored. A follow-up, Your Arm’s Too Short to Box with God, ran for over a year. And yet Grant is best known today for her (stellar) contributions to Working, a 24-performance flop instead of her hits. The cast recordings of …Cope and …Box with God never made the transition to CD or digital formats, and those topical revues have proven difficult to revive. Fortunately, Working continues to generate interest and productions, introducing Grant’s work to new generations.

Recommended Recording: ”If I Could’ve Been,” Working: a new musical (1978 Original Broadway Cast)

Lynne Thigpen—whom gumshoes of a certain age will recognize as the Chief from Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?—leads off as the primary soloist, supported by a killer vocal arrangement for the ensemble. It’s a perfect track.

Alternate Performances

Working has received five cast recordings, all of which reflect a slightly different version of the show.

• 1982 TV Cast - Working was adapted for an episode of PBS’s American Playhouse. It’s a new production, rather than a taping of the original staging, featuring Studs Terkel as himself “interviewing” the various subjects. It’s a very literal presentation that even further separates the different characters from each other instead of creating an ensemble. But Thigpen gets to sing “If I Could’ve Been.” Other performers include James Taylor (singing his own trucker song), Rita Moreno, and Patti LaBelle.

• 2000 LATW Cast - L.A. TheaterWorks is a company that presents audio versions of great plays. In 2000 they recorded Working, one of their few musicals. Scott Schwartz (Stephen’s son) directs this recording that features the all of the monologues and scenes, in addition to the songs. The recording also captures a few revisions, like a new song for a grocery store cashier, that were at one time part of the standard licensed edition. The show would get one further renovation, making this edition of the show somewhat obsolete. But it’s a great performance, and Working translates well to a radio-type presentation. And Bat Boy fans will be pleased to know Kaitlin Hopkins sings “Millwork.”

• 2017 London Cast - Director Gordon Greenberg began working on a revised Working in 2008. Schwartz aided in the fresh look, which got two new songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, a few regional productions, and a 2012 off-Broadway presentation with the fantastic Prospect Musicals. This edition of the show, which is now the standard licenses version—got recorded following a limited run in London.

Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

Neither The Rat Pack, nor Audra McDonald, nor Glee covered “If I Could’ve Been,” which is a missed opportunity for all (especially me).

In the Wings

I’ll get song No. 33 and maybe even No. 34 out before 2026, but as Lorenz Hart would write, who knows where or when?Until then, I recommend looking into Mary Rodgers (daughter of Richard Rodgers), Craig Carnelia, and Susan Birkenhead, three other under-appreciated writers who made great contributions to Working. (James Taylor also wrote great stuff for the show, but I think he’s been adequately lauded.)

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Bob Fosse began as a Hollywood dancer who shifted to Broadway choreography beginning with 1954’s The Pajama Game. By 1966, he had married Gwen Verdon and successfully transitioned to being a fully fledged Director-Choreographer. But neither he nor Verdon were able to match their 1950s successes in the first half of the 60s. With Sweet Charity, Fosse became a true Broadway auteur, with the entire production, from writing to staging to design, a product of his specific vision. At the center of this vision was Verdon—she was the ideal interpreter of Fosse’s movement, and Charity was the ultimate showcase of her talents. She rarely leaves the stage, and almost every scene is an opportunity for her to ingratiate herself to the audience, either because she’s leading a showstopping routine, revealing her vulnerability in a bittersweet solo, or reacting comically to the events around her.

For the Charity writing team, Fosse turned to America’s most commercially successful playwright, Neil Simon, and composer Cy Coleman, both of whom worked with Fosse on the modestly successful 1962 musical Little Me. Coleman had previously collaborated, somewhat unhappily, with lyricist Carolyn Leigh, and opted to forge a new partnership with Dorothy Fields (who, incidentally, had written lyrics and contributed to the book for Broadway’s most recent Fosse/Verdon joint, 1959’s Redhead). Fields’ witty, sophisticated lyrics proved a perfect match for Coleman’s urbane music that could be jazzy and sultry or celebratory in classic Broadway style. The partnership sadly only produced one more Broadway musical before Field’s death. But Charitylaunched Coleman into the upper echelon of Broadway composers, and he became one of the few Golden Age writers to find continued success in the 80s and 90s.

Recommended Recording: ”There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This,” Sweet Charity (1966 Original Broadway Cast)

There are at least two songs from …Charity that are much more familiar than this number. But there is a method to my madness. (1) I wanted something that, at least musically, gave a sense of the extent of dance in the show. (2) I wanted to highlight Coleman’s musical range and Fields’ lyrical dexterity. (3) I needed to showcase Gwen Verdon. Even though Charity gets relatively little to sing in this number—just a brief final refrain before the dance break—you can sense the depth of humanity in her voice. Helen Gallagher (Nickie) and Thelma Oliver (Helene) get to have a lot of fun with their respective verses, and the latter’s reading of “check your pants” will stay with you forever. These comedic verses exemplify Fields’ wit and ability to write for distinct characters. And the driving, rhythmic score captures their excitement and frustration, while also tying together a memorable chorus, character-driven solos, and a particularly satisfying dance break.

Alternate Performances

Sweet Charity has received ~15 cast recordings, including Dutch, French, German, and Italian casts and a 1994 studio recording of the complete score. Sutton Foster led a 2016 Off-Broadway revival that did not get recorded. Debbie Allen led an acclaimed 1986 revival that was Fosse’s last Broadway production. Its recording is finally available on streaming services.

• 1967 Original London Cast - Juliet Prowse led the London Sweet Charity and eventually played the role to great success in Las Vegas as well. She’s perhaps a better—or at least more traditionally pleasing—vocalist than Verdon, if not as distinctive, and the recording captures the spirit of the material and the era So if the warble in Verdon’s voice is a bit much for you, this is worth seeking out.

• 1969 Film - Although Fosse had a career in Hollywood before he ever came to Broadway, Sweet Charity marked his debut as a film director. The movie did not simply restage the theatrical production. While much of the choreography remains, the piece is clearly reconceived for film, with stylish montages and sequences that walk the line between literal and surreal. Shirley MacLaine starred, with Verdon on set to coach her through the role. It was not well received at the time, but it’s a rather spectacular debut and “There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This” is the best synthesis of Fosse’s visions as a stage and film director. It’s worth all 6 minutes and 18 seconds. (Having Chita Rivera and Paula Kelly—who appeared in the London production—as Nickie and Helene is a tremendous added bonus.)

• 2005 Broadway Revival - The late 1990s saw a massive resurgence of interest in Fosse, following hit revivals of Cabaret, and Chicago, and the retrospective revue, Fosse. So a revival of Charity was perhaps inevitable. After years of rumored casting—Jenna Elfman and Marisa Tomei were each at one point attached—a pre-Broadway tour launched starring TV’s Christina Applegate, directed by Chicago’s Walter Bobbie, and choreographed by Wayne Cilento (an original cast member of A Chorus Line who choreographed Wicked and hasn’t really needed to work since). When Applegate broke her foot on the pre-Broadway tour, the production almost died on the road until Applegate put her own money into the show to keep it afloat. It opened with a whimper—neither Bobbie nor Cilento had a vision that could match Fosse’s concept—but Applegate is really quite endearing on the cast recording.

Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

• Rat Pack - Sammy Davis Jr. appears in the movie version of Sweet Charity as Big Daddy, the leader of a counter-culture “church” that Charity and her beau, Oscar, visit in act 2 (because Oscar belongs to a “church of the month club”). The scene is very much of its time, and quite silly (in ways that are both intentional and unintentional). But the song that grows out of it, “The Rhythm of Life” is an absolute banger. Davis Jr. has also recorded other two other …Charity songs, “I’m a Brass Band” and “If My Friends Could See Me Now.”

• Glee- “Big Spender,” Sweet Charity’s most enduring hit, appears on two episodes of Glee. In season 1, episode 19 (“Dream On”) an unnamed character sings it at a Les Miserables audition. In season 3, episode 1 (“The Purple Piano Project”), Sugar Motta, the untalented daughter of the local piano magnate, uses it for her (unsuccessful) audition to join New Directions.

In the Wings

I didn’t intend for last week to be an off week, but here we are. I should be on track to drop song no. 32 next week. But we’re also into The Holiday Madness, so we’re just gonna have to see. Until then, here’s a fun video that showcases various different endings Sweet Charity has had through the years (including some really nice scene work from Christina Applegate). Also, this 2017 Seth Rudetsky column has a fun anecdote about Chita Rivera filming “…Better Than This” for the movie. (The anecdote starts halfway down the page.)

Catch up with all the songs to date!

“If I Were a Rich Man” is one of the most instantly recognizable solos in Broadway history. If a show or movie needs a quick establishing shot showing that someone was in a musical, there’s a good chance you’ll see them in dressed like a Russian peasant at the turn of the 20th century with his arms raised singing about how he’d “bidi-bidi bum.” It also encapsulates what made Fiddler…, at one time, Broadway’s longest running musical2. Fiddler…was a labor of love for the writers—Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, and Joseph Stein—and director/choreographer Jerome Robbins. They spent years developing it in a time when shows could go from conception to opening night in a matter of months. They had major concerns about the universal appeal of the somewhat niche subject matter. Robbins would ask what the show was about, not what happens but what its centered around thematically. They realized it was about the conflict between honoring and evolving tradition in a rapidly changing world. Fiddler…became an early version of the “concept musical,” in the sense that every scene and song explored a different faced of the theme. However, they explore these themes through seemingly traditional, linear narrative. In “…Rich Man” Tevye imagines an “old world” version of success, centered on forgotten luxuries (like stairs) and religious devotion. Everyone in the audience feels the sentiment of wanting to be wealthy, even if the examples Tevye mentions are not directly relatable. Bock and Harnick’s score filtered traditional folk styles through a modern Broadway sensibility, with witty lyrics that nonetheless felt appropriate for the characters. Joseph Stein’s book finds a central driving action in a collection of short stories. Although neither Bock, Harnick, Stein, nor Robbins reached this level of success again—but few other musicals are this well written and have experienced the same continued popular appeal.

Recommended Recording: ”If I Were a Rich Man,” Fiddler on the Roof (1964 Original Broadway Cast)

This is about as definitive as a performance gets by one of theater’s most distinctive comics. The creative team utilmately took issue with Zero Mostel’s tendency to go off script, but he tows the line on this recording. His squaking geese alone are worth the price of admission.

Alternate Performances

Fiddler… has received ~59 cast recordings, plus many “___ Sings/Plays Songs from…” albums. The song “If I Were a Rich Man” had an exepected second life when Louchie Lou & Michie One adapted and interpolated the song into the 1993 reggae song “Rich Girl,” later remade by Gwen Stefani in 2004.

• 1971 Film - Norman Jewison’s screen adaption was the last successful hoorah of the Road Show musicals, and opened while the musical was still running on Broadway. Topol, who opened Fiddler in London, stars as Tevye. (The creators didn’t want Mostel because of his mugging and character-breaking during the original run). It’s a good movie full of beautiful location shots and period costumes with a talented cast. It’s also incredibly serious and long, and the realistic settings are basically what Boris Aronson’s Broadway set wanted to avoid. John Williams (yes, that John Williams, the Jaws and Star Wars guy) won his first Oscar for adapting and conducting the score.

• A Shoggoth on the Roof (2003) - There are ~59 cast recordings of Fiddler…, but only one is a full fledged parody about H.P. Lovecraft Lore. 2003’s A Shoggoth on the Roof is that cast recording. “If I Were a Rich Man” becomes “If I Were a Deep One.”

• 2018 Off-Broadway Cast - Fiddler has seen many Broadwaay revivals, including three recreations of the original production and two largely new stagings that were met with mixed reviews. A 2018 revival performed in Yiddish (with English supertitles), however, proved so successful in it’s original limited National Yddish Theatre Fokslbiene run that it went on to an extended commercial run and a return engagement. Steven Skybell stars as Tevye. “If I Were a Rich Man” translates to “Ven Ikh Bin a Rotshild.”

Is it Covered by The Rat Pack, Audra McDonald, or Glee?

• The Rat Pack - Sammy Davis Jr. did a great performance of “If I Were a Rich Man” on a 1969 variety show. A 1977 special, Frank Sinatra and Friends includes opera star Robert Merrill singing “…Rich Man” which then segues into Sinatra, Merrill, and Dean Martin singing “The Oldest Established” from Guys and Dolls.

• Audra McDonald has not recorded anything from Fiddler… that I can find, but she is no stranger to Bock and Harnick, recording songs from Fiorello!, She Loves Me, and The Apple Tree.

In the Wings

Song No. 31 will drop next week. But before we go, I need you to watch this video of Josh Groban playing Tevye in high school musical—it’s seriously amazing. If you want some fun lore, I suggest looking up “Fiddler on the Roof Joseph Stein It’s So Japanese.” If books is more your speed, I recommend Barbara Isenberg’s Tradition! The Highly Improbable, Ultimately Triumphant Broadway-to-Hollywood Story of Fiddler on the Roof, the World’s Most Beloved Musical

Catch up with all the songs to date!