CD Review: Unknown Soldier – Original Cast Recording

UNKNOWN SOLDIER – Original Cast Recording (Ghostlight Records – digital album)

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Written by Michael Friedman and Daniel Goldstein and produced on stage two and a half years after Friedman’s untimely death from AIDS at the age of 41, this is a beautiful piece of theatre written from the heart.

The story is set in three different time periods. It starts in 1973 with a young Ellen in her grandmother’s house. She finds an old newspaper clipping with a photo of a young woman along with a soldier having a picnic. She asks her grandmother who they are, but she just walks away without answering.

Thirty years later and the grandmother has died, and a grown-up Ellen comes back to the house to clear it out. She comes across the clipping again and this time she digs deeper and contacts the archivist at Cornell University for his help in identifying the people in the picture.

We now go back to 1918 where a young version of her grandmother meets a soldier in Grand Central Terminal. He is being sent overseas the next day so thy get married that day. Within a short period of time, she receives notification that he has been killed in the war – or has he? Shortly afterwards, a soldier is found wandering aimlessly around Grand Central Terminal – he has amnesia and doesn’t even remember his name, but Lucy (the grandmother) visits him in the sanatorium as she believes he is her husband.

That’s the main crux of the story and it is a bit confusing but that is the book’s problem not the composer’s. The music is in turn romantic, amusing, distressing, tragic but always beautifully focused.

The cast is excellent and includes: Kerstin Anderson, James Crichton, Zoe Glick, Emilie Kouatchou, Erik Lochtefeld, Jay McKenzie, Jessica Naimy, Lucy Anderson, Margo Seibert, Thom Sesma, Perry Sherman and the wonderful Estelle Parson.

I can only remark on the album and that I have done but I think the storyline is confusing and the book by Daniel Goldstein may need a little revision for the on-stage presentation.

Nick Wakeham