Time was, spoken word recordings, save for comedy albums and historical novelties, were a specialized commodity, not the kind of thing that sold awfully well. Several labels–Caedmon and Columbia especially–doggedly persisted in adding to the catalog of plays on record…but they were never consumer favorites. You diehards out there old enough to remember: when you got your boxed sets of "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" or "Luv" or "The Great White Hope"–did you actually pay full price? Or did you snatch them up from a remainder bin, years after their release? Or just borrow them from the library? After all, how many times can you actually listen to a play–even over the course of years? Or maybe the question is–
–how many times can you listen to them on vinyl? Even once was a real commitment. You had to plonk your butt down in front of the stereo (if it was a stereo), listen, and more than that, if you weren’t of a mind to let the automatic turntable drop the records off an automatic needlenose spindle onto each other {{shiver}}–the sides were paired to encourage such stacking, a three-record set backing sides 1 with 6, 2 with 5, 3 with 4–you had to manually switch platters at intervals that varied from 15 to 30 minutes, depending on how long a given side was.
But as Cole Porter wrote, times have changed. The market for Spoken Word recordings has boomed, owing to the total portability of sound recordings that can be listened to easily and on the move. Books on tape, audio dramas recorded especially for CD, are big business. All it took was removing the chore from the listening experience. And adding the fact that they can be listened to virtually anywhere, with no loss in fidelity.
In some ways, listening on the move may be the best way to hear spoken word recordings–in the margins of time spent in commute–because that’s a great time to absorb complex ideas…and little could be more involved–or involving–than the new Broadway Cast recording of Michael Frayn’s "Copenhagen" (Plays on Disc/Fynsworth Alley 012-520-001-2, the label’s the inaugural release)…which also has the distinction of hoping to revive the genre, being the first Broadway recording of a straight play since Tom Stoppard’s "The Real Thing" was released on vinyl 25 years ago.
"Copenhagen" has even more in common with the ubiquitous books on tape than most plays, because it contains no "action," no sound effects for ambience, no evocation of theatrical atmosphere. It is strictly a dialectic–a posthumous one.
The characters are three: (1) German scientist Niels Bohr (Philip Bosco), who developed quantum mechanics from quantum theory, having to do with the "observable" particles of the atom. Bohr, half Jewish, left his country as the Nazis were coming to power, for Denmark. (2) Werner Heisenberg (Michael Cumpsty), protégé of Bohr a German scientist who, in his twenties, revolutionized quantum thinking with "the uncertainty principle," stating that the position and the momentum of a particle cannot be precisely known at the same time. (Because the activity exists on a subatomic level, he claimed that the very introduction of the tools used for observation changed the data. Bohr would later offer "The Copenhagen Interpretation", linking the two theories by relating them through Schrödinger’s wave equation–a mathematical formula allowing the particles of matter to be treated as a wave formation.) (3) Bohr’s wife, Margrethe (Blair Brown).
The happening–a real historical one–is the visit in 1941 that Heisenberg, then head of the Nazi A-bomb project, paid to Bohr in Denmark.
In real-life, no one knows what happened at that meeting, and Heisenberg’s motives and ethics have been debated hotly since. (Was he seeking more information for weaponry? For the more civilian cause of power generation via particle accelerator? Did he not develop the bomb for the Nazis because he couldn’t? Or because he wouldn’t?)
In Michael Frayn’s play, this encounter is played and replayed, with Margarethe as observer and theoretician, as some effort is made to come to the truth of the matter. The philosophical behaviors of the players begin to relate uncannily to their scientific philosophies (what "particle" could be more uncertain than Heisenberg himself), and various possible interpretations of the meeting are debated and discussed.
Fittingly, producer Bruce Kimmel has taken a no-frills approach. In the panning spectrum, Bohr is forever left, Heisenberg forever right and Margrethe dead center. No reverb, no apparent sweetening. The performances, words and ideas carry everything. And because the venue for the play is so intimate, because the play is wholly a debate, because your relationship with it is one-on-one, this provides one of those rare occasions in which a recording of a play actually surpasses the experience of watching it. The three superb performances excel in clarity–the most important ingredient in any presentation of "Copenhagen"–and more than that, when the play becomes a tad too dense to completely register upon first listening, you can, with a button-push, go back and listen to a tricky passage again.
Not only does the 2-CD recording of "Copenhagen" weather listening to more than once…it seems to have been destined for it.
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Last season saw the off-Broadway premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s "Saturday Night"–the musical that would have been his professional debut before "West Side Story" had its producer not died…and had Sondheim not thought better of going back to it subsequently. It would have been his debut as a composer-lyricist, too–and indeed, there is, inherent in this early score, much more of the signature Sondheim indicia than his actual debut as a composer, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum", contains.
The cast album that preserves the Second Stage production (Nonesuch 79609-2) is not, interestingly, the show’s first recording–that one was on the First Night/BMG labels, and it preserved a British university production. This new one is wholly professional, and features new orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick.
The professionalism helps, and the orchestrations (though for a small group) are a tasty treat…but "Saturday Night" remains a score best appreciated by Sondheim completists and theatre historians fascinated with tracking the development of a grounbreaking voice. Taken on its own terms, strictly as entertainment, "Saturday Night" has its pleasures, to be sure, but on aggregate is a mild affair and–to borrow the maestro’s own description–a little too much of a "baby picture" in which to invest much more than your curiosity. No mistake, it’s curiosity well rewarded…but that sated, I rather doubt it will inspire too many repeat listenings.
You may well, however, find the potential for repeated listenings aplenty in the original cast album of "The Full Monty" (RCA Victor/BMG 09026-63739-2). David Yazbeck’s funny, pop-jazzy, mischievously profane score for the tale of out-of-work steel workers training to become male strippers for one incredible night, is engaging and different for being old-fashioned yet in a sly, contemporary way. Not all the songs are A-plus material, but when they are (like the opening number "Scrap") they’re not only terrific, they’re unique. And the lesser numbers–always at least good–are so well-placed and functional that they carry their weight and the energy through to the next high point.
Typical of more and more albums these days, though, "The Full Monty" eschews reverb–going for a flat, no-frills, in-the-room-with-you sound. This may be a trend of the times, and perhaps my ears are old-fashioned in this regard, but I miss the theatricality of reverb–even slight sweetening seems to add depth and body to performances and the listening experience (also a theatrical ambiance), and I wish I better understood the philosophy that rejects the tradition.
No such concerns about the album of "A Class Act", which, like the show that is its namesake, celebrates the life and heretofore unperformed songs of composer-lyricist Edward Kleban (known previously as "only" the lyricist of "A Chorus Line"). A traditionally produced album (by Jay David Saks on the RCA Victor/BMG label, 09026-63757-2), one that revels in the notion of craftsmanship, as did Kleban himself–a fellow who, by the way, produced numerous cast albums for Columbia Records prior to "A Chorus Line"–it lives up to its title. A very classy, tasteful, agreeably emotional affair, it’s about as nice a tribute to a neglected musical dramatist as one could wish.
The cast featured is the one that opened the show off-Broadway at The Manhattan Theatre Club (four of the original eight could not go with the show to Broadway), and that’s the version of the show preserved. In terms of performers, there’s no loss–the off-Broadway crew are every bit as engaging as the current Broadway cast. But there is a song missing–"Don’t Do It Again"–that was added to the show as a consequence of continual refining up until the Broadway opening.
The songs are sharp, savvy, attractive, catchy, thought-provoking, sometimes profound…and a little heartbreaking. Oh for the career that might have been…
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And two quick-takes to conclude: not much to say here: they are what they are.
First is the 2000 Off-Broadway Cast Recording of "Godspell" (Fynsworth Alley 302-062-107-2). A new millennium sensibility has been added to the show’s signature youthfulness, and a more updated pop sensibility has been–sparingly and tastefully–added to the show’s musical rhetoric…but this parable-driven ensemble revue about the teachings and death of Jesus Christ is not appreciably transformed–but a swell cast and expert production values make this as worthwhile a recording of the Stephen Schwartz score as any first-class rendering.
Also recently released is the soundtrack of the PBS special "My Favorite Broadway: The Love Songs" (Hybrid HY20020). The perk is a roster of Broadway topliners–including Julie Andrews, Michael Crawford, Nathan Lane, Marin Mazzie, Bebe Neuwirth, Chita Rivera and others as notable–singing an equally impressive roster of love-themed standards (and a few that aren’t but might’ve been). The drawback, if you want to call it that, is the recording is essentially an unremarkable variety-show anthology, the stars doing their thing, with varying effectiveness, to a lot of surprisingly dated-sounding easy-listening arrangements and orchestrations: They evoke the kind of variety-show arrangements guys like Elliott Lawrence were writing in the ’70s. Nothing wrong with that, but it does keep the sound of this special from sounding…well…special. But it’s nobody’s disgrace either. If that’s any inducement…