Storyline: Dionysos, the god of drama and wine, is concerned over the
state of the world ("The time is the present, the place is Ancient Greece")
so he descends into hadies to bring back a playwright who can make people
recognize the errors of their ways. He intends to bring back George Bernard
Shaw but the eloquence of Shakespeare shakes his resolve. A contest between
the playwrights ensues.The concert
version prepared for the Library of Congress celebration in 2000 has been
recorded and provides a valuable record of the score written for the short
original version. This recording, on the other hand, preserves almost all of
that music and those lyrics (its missing a small portion of "Evoe for the
Dead" which was inserted in the concert version even though it hadn't
actually been used in the original performances at Yale). While Michael Siberry's rendition of Shakespeare's "Fear No More" is no match for Davis
Gaines' version from the concert recording, this recording has the new songs
Sondheim wrote for Lane's expanded version which played the Vivian Beaumont
Theatre at Lincoln Center from July to October (92 performances plus 34
previews) last year.
The new songs are mostly fun additions to the
Sondheim cannon including some of his trademark extensive rhyming displays --
he even spoofs his own passion for rhyme when he has Nathan Lane's character
interrupt his traveling companion's excess: "First I had the grippe, then
trouble with my hip. Now I have blisters on my lip, this trip is giving me
the pip --" "You can stop rhyming right there!" He pays homage to Lerner and
Loewe as well in a tribute to George Bernard Shaw using words echoing My Fair
Lady ("I knew that I could do it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew they'd all
pooh-pooh it. And indeed they did.") A new character added to the play is Herakles (or Hercules) which gives Burke Moses a fun song parodying the
early Greek equivalent of "the clothes make the man" as he advises Lane to
"Dress Big." The catchiest tune in the bunch is a traveling motif titled,
simply enough, "I Love to Travel."
The recording is a high quality product as
you would expect from the relatively new recording label PS Classics which
has released Grammy-nominated Broadway cast recordings of Nine and
Assassins as well as the delightful off-Broadway A Year with Frog and
Toad and some vocal collections of note including Philip Chaffin's
lovely "Where Do I Go From You?" The booklet provides full lyrics with
twenty illustrations capturing the look of the show. It is a very enjoyable
disc preserving much of the charm of the performances of the likes of Lane, Siberry, Moses, Roger Bart and Daniel Davis. Lane is at his high energy
best, throwing in some marvelous touches including a brief tributory
impersonation of the late Jerry Orbach. |
