MY MARCELLO – Studio Cast (Broadway Records – BR-DIG20321)
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Based on the film Roseanna’s Grave by Saul Turteltaub, My Marcello is a new musical with music by Rosabella Gregory, lyrics by Dina Gregory and book by Corey Brunish. The musical is set in a small southern Italian town which is suffering from a scarcity of burial plots so Marcello decides to make it his mission to keep the townsfolk alive as long as possible so that his dying wife will be able to be buried next to her daughter. Simple? No! Add gangsters, falling church bells, evil landowners, bodies hidden amongst frozen peas and an exceedingly romantic couple, and you have the recipe for a magic musical.
This delightful musical has some amazing artists for its concept album: two-time Tony Award winner Santino Fontana, two-time Tony Award nominated Laura Osnes, two-time Tony Award nominated Terrence Mann, Grammy winning and Tony Award nominated Elizabeth Stanley, Tony Award nominated Derek Klena, Drama Desk Award nominated Raymond Jaramillo McLeod and Drama Desk Award winner and Tony Award nominated Robert Cuccioli. Add to that an ensemble who appear to be having the time of their life and you have one very delightful production.
Luckily the album comes with an insert booklet that has a synopsis of the storyline and the lyrics to the songs, this adds to the fun as the beautiful score is driven by the narrative and you need to keep up. Some of the songs are incredibly witty, for example ‘Rest in Peas’, a song about keeping a body in the freezer, which I had to listen to a couple of times as it cracked me up so much.
All in all, I really enjoyed this album and I have actually listened to it a couple of times. Every time something new hits me and that, to me, makes the whole thing much more interesting. I do hope it gets staged sometime and we can follow the shenanigans and mayhem on stage.
Nick Wakeham
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