The Making of Miss Saigon--BBC documentary

I have never seen Miss Saigon, so perhaps it's unfair of me to make any kind of assessment of the show based on this 1988 documentary The Making of Miss Saigon. But that's what I'm going to do.

Filmed over about a year's time, I assume as a publicity-builder for the world premiere of Miss Saigon in London, this documentary offers snippets of various aspects of the timeline in creating the show. The first half deals primarily with the worldwide search for the actress to play Kim. We see bits of auditions in New York, Hollywood, Hawaii, and Manila. There is a cringe factor with some of the auditions, and it's hard for me to judge objectively, but I think when you see Lea Salonga audition, you realize she's the one. With no makeup, Ms. Salonga looks very young when we first meet her. It's interesting that another Filipina was cast as the understudy for Kim. I wished for a little more info about their relationship to one another--all we get is a label that both women were alumnae of Manila's young people's program for musical theater.

Actually, this whole documentary would have benefited from a bit more narrative. Granted when you're in the process of creating a technically complicated, theatrically challenging new meta-musical, the last thing you have time to think about is a behind-the-scenes doc, but a bit of attention could have really helped the flow and tension of this film. There is still a bit of tension created--although it has nothing to do with the casting and all to do with the technology of the show.

We see very little of the final show--some chorus numbers, a song by Jonathan Pryce interspersed with chorus quick-changes. What we do see doesn't make me want to see more. I know there are some powerful ballads and duets in the score, but you wouldn't know it from this doc.

Not a lot of information is given about Jonathan Pryce, and again a little background would have helped. Is his character supposed to be multi-racial? He just kind of looks like his eyes are swollen from bee stings. No attention (not even an identifying label) is given to the actor playing the American soldier who is Kim's husband. See, they don't even say the character's name; is this purposeful?

This could fall under the heading of a cringe-making comment, but does anyone else find Cameron Mackintosh kind of adorable?

Miss Saigon
Music by Claud-Michel Schoneberg
Lyrics by Alain Boublil and Richard Maltby Jr.
Opened in London in 1988
Cast: Lea Salonga, Jonathan Pryce, and a bunch of other unidentified people.

Julie Andrews: A Little Bit of Broadway compliation on Cd

In response to something I recently stated about Julie Andrews, a reader pointed out that as a young singer, Ms. Andrews had a freakishly high voice that she used in her English Music Hall performances. I decided I needed to get over some unwarranted bent I have against Ms. Andrews and give her another chance in my Year. I was glad to come across A Little Bit of Broadway in the bin at the library and to give another listen to some of Ms. Andrews' performances.

This compilation disc was released in 1988 and contains tracks from cast albums that featured Andrews, along with some studio recordings she made in 1961 and 1962. The cast album cuts come from the television production of Cinderella (1957), Camelot (1960), and the London version of My Fair Lady (1959).

I enjoyed listening to some of Andews's most famous recordings along side songs not associated with her career, but deserving of her attention. I particularly liked her renditions of "Baubles, Bangles and Beads" from Kismet, "A Little Bit in Love" from Wonderful Town, and "How are Things in Glocca Morra" from Finian's Rainbow. Even this early in her career (she would have been between 22 and 27 when she recorded these tracks), Ms. Andrews is an accomplished performer, with a malleable voice that can caress a phrase and communicate a lyric very well.

None of her early "freakishly high" soprano singing is on display in this recording, however, and even the final high notes of songs like "I Could Have Danced All Night" and "I Feel Pretty" are only Fs or Gs by my (perhaps faltering) ear. Her real money range, if I can use such a vulgar phrase to describe such a polished singer, is the octave from F1 to F2, not what I would categorize as a soprano range.

Perhaps I'm over-Thinking the case, though. Why don't I just shut up and listen...

Julie Andrews: A Little Bit of Broadway
Compilation released in 1988
From recordings made in 1957-962

Lucky Stiff Off-Broadway Cast album

Weekend at Bernie's meets musical comedy in Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens' Lucky Stiff. No one is quite what or who they seem to be in this show that is not really a Who done it? but rather at They did What?

This is the first appearance of the song-wrting team of Flaherty and Ahrens in my Year, and I will need to make a point of finding other examples of their work, which includes Seussical, Ragtime, and Once on this Island. Lucky Stiff was their first effort together and, according the brief history of the show presented in the CD booklet, it premiered at Playwrights Horizons in 1988. This recording came out in 1994, though, and seems to be a studio recording made with an amalgam of casts, some from the original 1988 version.

The music is uniformly good. My only beef with the score is that perhaps much of it sounds the same. Since it is mostly upbeat, however, that's an easy sin to forgive. Two songs in particularly struck me and deserve some life outside the show: "Speaking French" is a faux-cabaret number which spoofs the language and the people; "Times like This" has particularly hilarious lyrics and is a nice dog alternative for listeners (like me) who are tired of characters singing about their cats.

The cast on this recording includes some notable performers who have continued to have significant musical theater careers, mostly Jason Graae and Judy Blazer. None in the cast seems a dud, though. Judy Blazer and Mr. Graae both appeared previously in my Year (both in a studio recording of Jerome Kern's Sitting Pretty), and they each seem enjoyable, versatile performers.

Lucky Stiff
Music by Stephen Flaherty
Lyrics and book by Lynn Ahrens
Opened in 1988
Studio cast recording made in 1994
Cast: Judy Blazer, Jason Graae, Debbie Shapiro Gravitte, Paul Kandel, Evan Pappas, Mary Testa