Music Review: Other Lives – The Story Songs of Michael Colby

OTHER LIVES – The Story Songs of Michael Colby – Original Off-Broadway cast album of the production at Urban Stages Theatre, New York (Jay Records CDJAY 1469).

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Michael Colby is an American theatre lyricist and musical playwright who, between 1977 and 2019, wrote a whole slew of musicals, working with composers including James Fradrich, Gerald Jay Markoe, Jacques Urbont, Paul Katz, Steven Silverstein, Ned Paul Ginsburg, Artie Bressler and John C Introcaso. Some of his shows include Charlotte Sweet, Tales of Tinseltown, North Atlantic, Slay It With Music, Mrs McThing, They Chose Me and Ludlow Ladd, among others.

He has been the chief writer for the Drama Desk Award-winning New Amsterdam Theatre Company and also a writer for the New York Festival of Song and Theatre by the Blind. He has worked with headliners Carol Channing, Elaine Stritch, Leslie Uggams and Nell Carter and wrote tributes to Maurice Levine and Stephen Schwartz for Betty Buckley and company. He has written special material for the likes of Linda Lavin, Tony Randall, Andrea McCardle, Dina Merrill, Susan Stroman, Michael Feinstein, Jack Gilford, Kristin Chenoweth, Jane Powell, Julie Wilson, Donna McKechnie and Cicely Tyson, plus many others.

The album of Other Lives grew out of the Covid lockdown when live entertainment seemed to have shut down for good. Colby admits in his liner notes for the CD that he was “saddened by all the up and coming talents whose hopes and plans were stymied as we faced the year-long closing of shows. I was also approached by various artists looking for material to learn in anticipation of when theatre and cabaret would return to normal.”

Determined to do something about the crisis, Colby never stopped working as he set to on a song cycle that would eventually spotlight some great stage veterans as well as exciting newcomers. He wanted to create a body of work that recalled the story songs of traditional Broadway shows of not so long ago, the antithesis of contemporary pop songs that are here today and gone tomorrow, leaving no mark at all. Masters of the art of telling miniature, one-act story songs have included in the past Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart (and Hammerstein too), Bock and Harnick, Lerner and Loewe and Sondheim, of course. They all wrote perfectly intimate songs written just for just the right moment.

The results of Colby’s endeavours were written in anticipation of New York theatre and cabaret coming eventually back to life. The new revue of songs with lyrics by Colby to music by some of his favourite collaborators became Other Lives and it opened during December 2022 at Urban Stages as part of its Winter Rhythms series and was a great success. It was enthusiastically performed by both old hands and newcomers to the business. Encouragingly too, John Yap, the show album producer, thought it was worth capturing on disc a show that had amazingly appeared out of the global crisis that was Covid. Colby thought that “it turned into one of the most exhilarating events of my life”.

There are 21 tracks on the cast album, plus the bonus track ‘Christmas Ev’ry Day’. It is a mixture of songs from the Colby back catalogue and new material written expressly for the purpose of the new show. Many of the numbers look back to the good times  before Covid hit an unsuspecting world while others are full of hope for the future. Several have music by Steven Silverstein including ‘Changing Times’ in which Steven Bogardus reflects fairly soberly on life in general, while one of Silverstein’s other tunes, ‘Since I Fell’ has LaDonna Burns recalling an unrequited love that happened too soon to flourish but with a promise never to fall again. In his ‘Oh, Yo!’ Luke Naphat says never give up on love because the opposite number might one day say yes in the hope that you might feel the same way. ‘Repeating’ has Jane Seaman giving out much the same philosophy for someone you see time and time again, as they might stop and choose you.

Bethe Austin sings ’That’s My Pooch’ (music by Andrea Colby) in praise of the dog beloved by one when she’s not scraping something off her shoe. Peter Millrose’s ‘Frank Riley’, sung by David Edwards, is specifically about a sad guy with no home life to speak off but who comes to flourish in a show where he can live the life of Riley. Also biographical is Ned Paul Ginsburg’s ‘Carl’s Song (Two Moms)’ sung by Joshua Turchin, because Carl was adopted but the mothers in question cannot relate to him or each other, even though Mom’s the word. Stuart Zagnit sings Millrose’s ‘Elevator Man’ about the kind of person nobody remembers even after 40 years in an up and down job like his. It’s all ‘have a good day’ and ’see you later’, automatic responses without having to care.

Showbiz inevitably comes with this territory. Colby sings his own lyrics to Ned Paul Ginsburg’s music for ‘Growing Up at the Algonquin’, a number that I fancy is autobiographical as he recalls times with his grandparents when Oscar Peterson played for them, while also evoking the days of the famous Round Table with Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, James Thurber and company. For ‘That’s a Wrap’, music by Paul Katz, Jane Aldrich plays a movie star making a comeback after a scandal that had her being ignominiously replaced by June Allyson. Was she the hot one or just the not one before the fade-out?

Hope after Covid is the watchword to be expressed when Sean McDermott and Megan Styrna sing Joseph Thalken’s ‘Christmas Ev’ry Day’ – ho! ho! ho! And that’s not all to be savoured here. With another ten tracks on the CD Other Lives is a fine collection of songs guaranteed to cheer up the most pessimistic of listeners and it is just what we needed after the lockdown. Mention should go to musical director Michael Lavine who, according to Colby, “worked tirelessly to make the event happen”. Well, it did happen now that theatre and cabaret are back on track and next to normal. Therefore, the only way to look now is to the future ahead and beyond.

Michael Darvell