Reviewed by Jameson Baker
In the introductory album liner notes to the Original Cast Album of "Big" (Universal Records, UD-53009), by Jonathan Schwartz -- the noted jazz-and-theatre radio personality, writer and singer, best known for his show on WQEW radio in New York -- there are some telling phrases. "Big", as most of you know, is based on the film, a fantasy in which a twelve-year old boy, at the height of his puberty-intense angst, wishes that he were no longer a kid, that he were, in fact, "big." And wakes up to find his wish has been granted, leaving him to face the world as a child in a man's body.
Schwartz describes the film as one that "italicizes the consequences of such a transformation," immediately adding that "the show does the same job in a different way. While it lacks the scope of the film [italics mine], it enjoys its access to music and dance and the paraphernalia of the theater...The songs, as in any really good musical, emerge from the story itself. They are neither serendipitous nor opportunistic. They are of character and of plot, so that the show proceeds as a drama of theater rather than a variety program on television...it is a crafted score, unslothful, and on several occasions (both words and music) terrifically funny."
I don't think I'm just imagining the subtext of damage control. Granted, I am quoting selectively, but not out of context. In these notes, Schwartz takes time to reminisce about his boyhood relationship with his father (who represented to young Jonathan what it meant to be "big"), but his comments about the show proper remain generic. Also defensive. Reassuring the listener that the score--by lyricist Richard Maltby, Jr. and composer David Shire--emerges from the tale. Perhaps to a novice that's a ringing endorsement, but to those of us who live for the next musical we'll see or hear, that's Musical Theatre 101. You're supposed to write songs that emerge from libretto, that's the game. If you date it back to "Oklahoma!" (you can arguably go back much further) it's been the game, with ever more sophistication, for over half a century. As for the score being "crafted" and "unslothful," despite the show's "lack[ing] the scope of the film"...wow.
Wow for any number of reasons. Wow because you don't write notes like this save as a pre-emptive response to a previous reaction. The score has been nailed for not emerging from the story--or, when it does, for not emerging viscerally, but rather from some omniscient point of view held by the authors. And though it is not a lazy score, it has odd, bewildering, noteworthy lapses in craftsmanship--it has been knocked for those too.
Wow especially because liner notes like Schwartz' don't get into a CD booklet without the complicity and approval of the authors in question. They're in on the subtext too. Rather than present the score without apology, they've asked a third-party pundit to sanctify it--to say, in effect, don't listen to the croakers...listen to me...
Shakespeare called it "protesting too much" and, sure enough, the album itself belies the assurances. For the score, likewise, keeps protesting too much.
As in the show proper, the score comes at you with a high, hot energy that seems almost consistently at odds with the tone of the source material. It's not a stiff or a cold album, but neither does it seem particularly genuine. As the show labors too hard to tell a small story, so the album seems to labor at imitating a big, Broadway sound--likewise keeping the intimacy of the story at bay much of the time.
As with any album of a flawed score by tremendously gifted writers (and, say what one will about this particular Maltby-Shire opus, they are about as gifted as theatre writers come these days), there are numbers that do better on the CD player than in the theatre...that reveal hidden treasures...a turn of phrase here, a melodic construction there...and Douglas Besterman's snacky orchestrations are thrown into a relief they can't enjoy from the pit under the stage. And, as produced by Phil Ramone, the album of "Big" is a perfectly pleasant listen. It's not offensive, angry-making or unattractive. And it features some fine performances by Daniel Jenkins, Crista Moore, Jon Cypher and Barbara Walsh.
But if, as Schwartz' notes promise (also defensively), it is a score "that will grow inside yourself as time goes by", that'll be because "pleasant" can be soothing. And you'll get used to it. Not because it truly works on its own terms.
Conversely, take the case of "The Fields of Ambrosia" (First Night Records, Cast CD 58). (The four-selection advance CD was reviewed by David Spencer in these cyberspace pages some months ago, but this is the full, 75 minute London Cast recording.) "Fields..." is a musical by Joel Higgins (book and lyrics) and Martin Silvestri (music), based on the screenplay for "The Traveling Executioner" by Gerry Bateson. This show's London production took a horrible and immediately infamous critical drubbing, not unlike what greeted "Carrie" over here. The difference is...this was no "Carrie".
Here is a sampling of its liner notes (uncredited):
"The colloquial yarn, set in the deep American south of 1918, about a compassionate com-man turned state `traveling executioner' who falls in love with his first-ever female client seems to have excited the passions of critics on both sides of the Atlantic, though in strikingly different ways.
"The premiere production at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey was enthusiastically hailed by the majority of American reviewers... [a sampling of representative quotes goes here]...Many of the British critics, however, vilified the production at the Aldwych Theatre in London's West End...[and an unflinching sampling of representative quotes goes here.]
"Amazed by the English vitriol, the American critic Peter Filichia, who attended the London opening, wrote...`Though I am, a theater critic, I am ashamed that British theatre critics are so simple. And so mean. I'm flabbergasted that they couldn't respond to one of the most fascinating, fully three-dimensional characters I've ever encountered in the [literally] thousands of musicals I've seen.'
"...The Fields of Ambrosia at the Aldwych closed on February 10, 1996, after running only 23 performances. What happened here? Was it, to paraphrase an adage `two sets of critics separated by a common language'?...Take a listen--see for yourself."
Wow again. But this time for an entirely different set of reasons. With a candor that is, in my experience, unique to liner notes--with the exception of those intended for re-releases of cult albums, written with historical perspective, at least twenty years after the fact--the packaging for "The Fields of Ambrosia" faces its brickbats head on.
Likewise, the score itself is honest and uncompromising. In many ways it is not so "crafted" as the Maltby-Shire "Big". There are distracting misaccents (distracting because Higgins and Silvestri are dexterous enough not to have faltered so); and the passages of seemingly "Les Miz"-influenced recitative (put through a country music filter), in this mostly through-sung score, are often too musically speedy, too verbally "fat" (that is, crammed) for the ear to absorb comfortably on first listening. And there are moments in which the delicate balance between light and dark eludes the authors (who err--when they do err--on the side of exaggerated humor where a little touch of noir might do more good).
But overall, you listen to "The Fields of Ambrosia" completely taken by the suspenseful and bizarre narrative. Because however Higgins and Silvestri may have faltered in the odd detail, they have done the main thing overwhelmingly right: they've gotten into the guts of the story. Unlike "Big", which superimposes inappropriate song styles upon its fragile story, "The Fields of Ambrosia"'s rough-and-tumble approach is achieved from the inside out. A good deal of this may have to do with the fact that Higgins, himself a wonderful actor (who, not incidentally, plays the lead on this album as he did in the show), has a visceral instinct for where the dramatically exploitable moments lie. Certainly, he doesn't seem to have missed anything, or to have targeted the wrong subject matter in his songs. (I am the first one to be anal about the principles of the craft--but if you're singing about the wrong things, not all the craftsmanship in the world will save you. Whereas if you sing about the important issues with high style and insight, you can skate on imperfect craftsmanship--as do Schmidt and Jones in "The Fantasticks" and Sherman Edwards in "1776".) In fact, in some ways, "The Fields of Ambrosia" puts me in mind of "1776": for all its perverse trappings, for all the prominence of its hero's electric chair, it embraces and celebrates Americana, and at that, the cruder, more violent personality of America. Though the abusiveness of the British critics is both inexplicable and inexcusable, one can, perhaps, understand their inability to connect, to comprehend the show's incompatibility with their sense of reserve.
Higgins' lady-love is played by the luminescent Christine Andreas; as for the British supporting cast...there's not a detectable English accent among them. The illusion of deep south is complete.
Judging from the album, I won't go as far as to say that this particular incarnation of "The Fields of Ambrosia" was great--but clearly, the potential for greatness is in it. With luck, some enterprising and imaginative producer (and/or director) will hear the album and be inspired to coax it the rest of the way. Unlike the con-man/executioner's "clients," this show is too good, too unique, too daring, too bold, to let die.
Star-driven concept albums that herald the arrival of a future show are no longer a novelty. (Quiz: Which was the first show to be so represented? One huge hint: Andrew Lloyd Webber had nothing to do with it. Answer below.) But even within the parameters of what has become a genre unto itself, "Music From The Life" has to get some kind of points for uniqueness.
It's one thing for a rock composer's foray into theatre to be anti-theatrical in presentation (much of Randy Newman's "Faust", for example). But it's truly perverse when such a presentation is the purposeful intent of a composer with significant theatrical pedigree: in this case, Cy Coleman. (The lyrics are by Ira Gassman.)
"The Life", say its liner notes, "is a Broadway musical about life on 42nd Street in the late '70s." The selections are sung here by the likes of Lesley Gore, Jennifer Holliday, Jack Jones, Billy Preston, Lou Rawls, Bobby Short, Billy Stritch, Joe Williams--and others. The liner notes go on to describe how the songs, originally written for characters in one setting, have been given entirely different musical treatments to accommodate the performer-personas of the record artists. Thus, "in the show, Easy Money is sung by a 17-year old prostitute ecstatic to discover how easy it all is. The vaudeville arrangement and female back-up singers for George Burns [in his last recording] give the lyrics an entirely different context entirely appropriate for George's way with a song." And: "Use What You Got was originally intended to be sung nostalgically by an ex-performer who runs a neighborhood bar in Times Square. For this recording, Liza Minelli claims it as her own in a bravura performance."
Etcetera.
As a little recorded all-star variety show, the album has a certain retro hipness, if you listen with the ear of a big-band, cool jazz aficionado. That idiom is very much where Mr. Coleman lives and there are few living, who work in the theatre, who can deliver the sound and feel of it with Coleman's heartfelt authenticity. And the star performances are great fun, each performing artist giving it his or her singular imprimatur with gusto.
As theatre, it heralds disaster. Its attitudes are retro without the hip. Often cliché-ridden:
I wanna piece of the action
I wanna slice of the pie
I wanna get on the fast track
And kiss all of this goodbye
Frequently condescending toward its characters:
I'm the kind of gambler
Whose luck is guaranteed
Thanks to my partner
Mister Greed
He supplies the suckers
As many as I need
My silent partner
Mr. Greed
(This one for a drug addict):
It's my body and my body
Is nobody's business but my own
Listen to me people
'Cause I wanna let it be known
It's my body and my body's
Nobody's business but my own.
And, for a show that purports to use street-life locution, forced and fake:
What a lovely day to be outta jail
You won't see me frown
When the sun's oughtta sight
'Cause I'm getting down
With my baby tonight
For that matter, even the music is inappropriate to '70s street-life. In the setting, that kind of jazz was already a twenty year-old anachronism.
Thus, "Songs from The Life" keeps slamming back and forth from the sublime (as a novelty) to the ridiculous (as a theatre piece). You admire a jazz riff or a singer's delivery while your jaw drops at the actual content. And you wonder, who's "life" is it, anyway?
(Answer to the quiz: The first pre-production concept album to be commercially released was "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown", music and lyrics for ten songs by Clark Gesner, produced for records by Herb Galewitz on the King Leo imprint of MGM Records in 1966. The late Musical director-orchestrator Jay Blackton led a 17-piece orchestra and a cast of four: Orson Bean as Charlie Brown [who missed his chance to play the role off-Broadway by taking a job in the ill-fated "Illya Darling" on Broadway], Barbara Minkus as Lucy, the late Bill Hinnant as Snoopy [playing the role he would subsequently play in the show and on the live-action, Hallmark Hall of Fame TV adaptation]--and Clark Gesner himself as Linus. Sidebar: I met Gesner at a Dramatists Guild function once--a charming, self-effacing man--and eventually said to him: "I don't know if I should tell you this, but of all the recordings of your show, my favorite one is the Orson Bean." Gesner literally scanned the room as if afraid of being overheard, leaned in to me, gripped my arm and whispered, conspiratorially, "Mine too...")