Music Review: New York, New York – Original Broadway Cast Recording

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Original Broadway Cast (Wine & Peaches Records).

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Time was when stage shows, plays and musicals as well as books were captured on film for a much wider global audience that might not have access to live theatre. Think of any popular book such as Gone With the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, Little Women, The Great Gatsby, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Godfather, The Life of Pi, many of Jane Austen’s or Charles Dickens’ novels etc, and even The Bible, they have all been turned into films and often successful ones too. Of the plays that have been filmed, the number is vast from The Front Page, The Color Purple, Equus, The Browning Version and Pygmalion to A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, Twelve Angry Men, Strange Interlude and Sleuth, and the list goes ever on.

In recent times the pattern has been reversed so that we now have films that have been turned into stage shows, and the majority of them seem to have become musicals. Perhaps Stephen Sondheim started the ball rolling when he adapted Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night into A Little Night Music, and it has to be said it was a great improvement on the original film. Sondheim and Richard Rodgers’ musical Do I Hear a Waltz? was a version of David Lean’s film of Summertime (aka Summer Madness) while Sondheim’s Passion was a musical based on Ettore Scola’s film Passione d’Amore, itself taken from Iginio Tachetti’s 1869 novel Fosca.

We have had stage musicals of Disney’s The Lion King, Frozen and Beauty and the Beast, Alan Parker’s Fame, Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5, Roald Dahl’s Matilda, John Waters’ Hairspray, Pretty Woman, Back to the Future and Mrs Doubtfire plus more Disney in Mary Poppins, among many other adaptations of movies into stage musicals. They haven’t always worked well but the recent revelation was how good Brokeback Mountain has been as a ‘musical’ show.

One of the latest Broadway productions has been New York, New York, although it is only loosely based on the 1977 film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro. The film contained a collection of classic standard songs from the days of the Great American Songbook plus numbers by John Kander and Fred Ebb including the title song which became something of an iconic hit for both Minnelli and Frank Sinatra.

In a way the stage show is a tribute to New York itself. As in the film it concerns a singer and a musician who happen to meet in the Big Apple just after the Second World War. The city is being rebuilt after the war with the hope that life will get better and that people can once again realise their dreams in the hope that they will come true. For the heroes of the show their music comes first, then the money they can make from it and then finally perhaps the love they might find along the way. There’s even a song here that says just that.

Hero Jimmy Doyle (Colton Ryan) is a hard-nut New York pianist and drinker, while heroine Francine Evans (Anna Uzele) is a black singer just arrived in the city and burning to get ahead. Jesse Webb (John Clay III) is a Black trumpeter a little confused by post-war society, while Mateo Diaz (Angel Sigala) is a Cuban percussionist coming to terms with his sexuality. And with Alex Mann (Oliver Prose), a Polish Jewish refugee violin player who escaped Nazi Germany, we have a consortium of troubled lives ranging from alcoholism through innocent ambition, sexual disorientation and racism. They will find it difficult if they wish to make music together, merely because of the times they are living in.

The book has been written by longtime Kander and Ebb collaborator David Thompson with Sharon Washington, and the music and lyrics are by John Kander and Fred Ebb using songs from their back catalogue and with additional lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda of Hamilton fame. The show proffers a wide range of moods covered in song from romantic and comtemplative ballads to upbeat dance numbers that should appeal to anybody. Like New York itself there is something here for everyone.

The show opens with an overture called ‘Morning in New York’ followed by duets for Jimmy and Francine in ‘Cheering For Me Now’ and ‘A Major Chord’ as they explain what it’s like to be in New York and how to survive. Francine’s ‘Better Than Before’ is a plea for hope as she gets to know the city. The songs are classic Kander and Ebb material, perhaps looking back to the days of Cabaret as they knew only too well how to write a hit song. The range covers every mood from ballad to rip-roaring dance numbers.

Mateo the Cuban percussionist has a particularly foot-tapping upbeat Rumba number in ‘Gold’ that is followed by a nostalgic tap dance by the company in ‘Wine and Peaches’. There is quiet contemplation in the songs ‘A Simple Thing Like That’ and ‘Can You Hear Me?’ while joy and hope come in the shape of ‘Happy Endings’ which is coupled with ‘Let’s Hear It For Me’. The finale to Act I, ‘Marry Me’, sung by Jimmy and Francine, looks forward to better times. But will there be a happy ending on the horizon?

Throughout the piece there are orchestral interludes summing up what New York City looks and sounds like at various times of the year, as expressed in ‘New York in Summer’, ‘New York in the Rain’, ‘New York in the Snow’ and ‘New York at Night’. And there’s even a ‘New York Concerto’. Putting the spotlight on the Big Apple recalls other great musicals such as Bernstein’s On the Town and Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls. As in those particular shows, the songs in New York, New York are instantly likeable and memorable too. This is truly a showbiz score of great renown and credibility. How often these days can you say that?

We have to wait, however, for the most memorable numbers which emerge towards the end of Act II, that were originally made famous by Minnelli. ‘But the World Goes ’Round’ covers all moods philosophically from regret to the acceptance of any situation. And finally we get to hear the title song which has been hinted at throughout the show, the powerhouse number that is ‘New York, New York’ and it is well worth waiting for.

Sung by an excellent ensemble cast, New York, New York couldn’t ask for a better company. The recording evokes the excitement of the show itself and we can only hope, like most of the show’s would-be successful musicians, that New York, New York might some day tour the world as it would give a lot of pleasure to a lot of audiences. Like they said about the Big Apple itself, it’s so good they named it twice!

Michael Darvell