The Gay Life (1961 Original Broadway Cast) ( Visit this link)
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The Gay Life (1961 Original Broadway Cast)
Music by Arthur Schwartz
Lyrics by Howard Dietz
Book by Fay and Michael Kanin
Starring Barbara Cook, Walter Chiari, Jules Munshin, with Lu Leonard, Elizabeth Allen, Jeanne Bal, Yvonne Constant and other members of the original Broadway cast.
Angel CD 64763
The Gay Life opened at Broadway's Shubert Theatre on November 17, 1961 and ran 113 performances.
Has it really been forty years since THE GAY LIFE waltzed briefly but beautifully on Broadway? Although I was only fourteen when I saw it the memories of the sumptuously designed show, based on Schnitzler's The Loves Of Anatol, have stayed with me. Thank goodness for my battered copy of the LP cast album! I've always known all the words to all The Gay Life's lustily melodic songs, products of the first rate team of composer Arthur Schwartz and lyricist Howard Dietz.
THE GAY LIFE was plagued by an unsteady, too-frequently revised libretto, and a shockingly bad piece of miss-casting in a leading role, but it boasted more than a handful of wonderful, evocative tunes, several marvelous players, and as its improbable heroine, a character inserted by the musical adaptors into a play in which she did not exist, Barbara Cook, then at the height of her powers as Broadway's perfect ingénue.
Miss Cook, as Liesl, the bashful virgin who tames the bed-hopping playboy Anatol, in the Vienna of Johann Strauss, II, was given two stirring ballads, the gentle "Magic Moment" and the impassioned "Something You Never Had Before", as well as a delicious cancan, a wistful song entitled "You're Not the Type" and one of the most bizarre 11o'clock songs to be found in an American musical. the pugnacious ":I Wouldn't Marry You!", song to the shocked but turned on Anatol moments after Liesl has knocked the philanderer's latest conquest out on the floor.
Anatol, played weakly by one-time Italian heart-throb Walter Chiari, is hard to understand, as Chiari, apparently, barely spoke English Jules Munshin provides some droll moments as Max, Anatol's sidekick and Liesl's brother. The choral singing is particularly good. The waltzy, bountiful score has retained its potency across the passage of four decades. The Gay Life bounds happily back to life whenever this charming and welcome CD is played.
Reviewed by Kenn Harris
Kenn Harris has been reviewing theatre, opera, ballet, and film for more than twenty-five years. His published books include The Ultimate Opera Quiz Book (Penguin, 1997 a biography of opera star Renata Tebaldi (l974) and Opera Recordings A Critical Guide.
For many years he worked in cable television in New York City. Kenn Harris has written criticism for numerous magazines and newspapers, and is currently at work on The Ultimate Broadway Musical Quiz Book
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Added: Mon Apr 04 2005