The best theatrical songwriting requires hardly any theater. Which is a good thing when so many shows close so quickly.
Of the 16 musicals that opened on Broadway in 2023, only four are still running. This is the living theatre, which is constantly dying.
But not completely. Like loved ones who leave behind scrapbooks or tchotchkes, many shows leave mementos of themselves in the form of cast albums. And sometimes, without annoying context, they are better than what was once seen on stage.
Below, my highly subjective ranking of the nine 2023 musicals that released cast albums. (One more — “Gutenberg! The Musical!” — is due, this spring.) And because no year is complete without a bunch of Stephen Sondheim marginalia, I’ve added a few bonus tracks, including a surprise excerpt, in its honor.
All recordings are good and some are great as you can let your ears decide. But close your eyes if possible. Let the theater be in you.
1. “Sweeney Todd”
The glorious score remains largely unchanged. The orchestrations are slightly modified. So what is the added value of this nthe recording of Sondheim’s masterpiece? As you’d expect from a cast led by Josh Groban as the vengeful barber, the answer is beautiful singing. Groban’s slight stiffness and somewhat bland performance, which worked against the terror of the role in the massive stage production, are entirely absent from the album, turning numbers like Sweeney’s “Epiphany” into killer arias as grand as any in opera. Under the musical direction of Alex Lacamoire, the performances—not just by Groban but by the ensemble—go for the throat, time and time again.
Hear Groban Sing ‘Epiphany’ here.
2. “Parade”
The original cast album of this 1998 musical is rightfully a classic. Can it be a fairly faithful revival recording as well? Yes, especially when the story of the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915 features the principals giving equally excellent but distinctly different performances. As Frank, Ben Platt is a vibrating wreck of unrelenting anger to Jason Robert Brown’s anguished songs. It’s up to Micaela Diamond, as his wife, Lucille, to express what she can’t, as she does with utter disdain in “You Don’t Know This Man,” sung to a dirt-seeking reporter. Stentorian version of Carolee Carmello from 1998 it’s still definitive, but it turns out there can be more than one version.
This difficult 1981 musical, with its inverted timeline, convoluted love triangles and Sondheim’s stunning but difficult score, proved particularly confusing when recorded. But now that Maria Friedman, in her lucid Broadway production, has found a way to render it on stage, so has the cast album. You can hear this best on “Not a Day Goes By,” a song that masks its complex drama with pure beauty. First sung by a wife (Katie Rose Clarke) to her divorcing husband (Jonathan Groff), it is repeated years earlier than the couple at their wedding. But who is this third voice? It’s the heartbroken woman (Lindsay Mendez) who was left out of the equation. Sometimes the drama is not how a song is sung, but by whom.
4. “New York, New York”
Of course, you can listen to a great rendition of the title tune from this musical magpie based on the 1977 film. Or you can enjoy some of the other knockout numbers – “Let’s Hear It for Me,” “But the World Goes ‘Round” – which songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb called screamers. (All three are consistently sung by Anna Uzele.) But if you want to hear the songs Kander likes best, you’ll prefer the whispering ones, including a new one with lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda that’s actually set in The Whispering Gallery at Grand Central Station. Sung on the show by Colton Ryan, it’s called “Can You Hear Me?” Even better, thanks to the kind of bonus that only a cast album allows, listen to the demo, featuring Miranda on vocals and Kander on keyboards.
5. “Harmony”
With more than 30 studio albums under his belt, it’s no surprise that Barry Manilow made another one. But this one, written with lyricist Bruce Sussman for their musical about a six-piece German singing group in the 1920s, is different. For starters, it’s not just a collection of songs but a fully theatrical score, filtering elements of jazz, operetta, barbershop and cabaret through Manilow’s stunning pop sensibility. The numbers – especially the beautiful “And What Do You See?”, sung by Sierra Boggess as a Jewish birthday fiancee – are intimately tied to the story, their melodies and harmonies often seeming to twist and contort to fit the characters hope and horror.
6. “Camelot”
Lerner and Loewe’s 1960 musical about the magical land where “the rain may never fall until the sun goes down” already has a great cast album. And Lincoln Center Theater’s forced and solemn 2023 revival didn’t seem likely to produce a version that overshadowed it. But the recording is superb, highlighting the pure sonic beauty of the 30-piece orchestra and the vocal prowess of Guenevere (Phillipa Soo) and Lancelot (Jordan Donica). Especially in Donica’s trio – “C’est Moi” near the beginning, “I Loved You Once in Silence” near the end and, in between, a rousing “If Ever I Would Leave You” – she proves what a great voice she can be great actor.
7. How to Dance in Ohio
No one goes to musicals for their morals, and shows that are too forcefully didactic may lack narrative interest. That sometimes happened with her, in which autistic performers played autistic characters working on their life skills at a Columbus mental health center. While a wonderful breakthrough in many ways, the show was too often built on familiar storytelling tropes – yet the story-stripped cast album shines. The songs, by Jacob Yandura (music) and Rebekah Greer Melocik (lyrics), often take unconventional approaches, as evidenced by the opening number, “Today Is.” Its busy, anxious but optimistic accompaniment, reminiscent of piano exercises, underscores the busy, anxious but optimistic lives of the characters as they prepare for the challenges and opportunities of their day.
A show needs a showstopper. Or at least a common one does. But because I didn’t expect to find one in this musical built on a steady stream of middle-of-the-road corny puns, I was thrilled when it suddenly appeared, unconventionally, in the middle of Act One. Until then, the songs, from the country music team of Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, were gentle and to the point. But then Alex Newell, as Lulu, a hustling whiskey distiller, went ahead with a feminist barnstorm declaring that she, her business and her body were “independently owned.” The fog of genius immediately dissipated in a hail of clever rhymes, true showmanship and the lush belt of a diva.
When the star of your show is a car — even if it’s a great one — you can run into problems with the songs. That’s how I felt about the Broadway version of the 1985 film: It didn’t need to be a musical at all. But if its score, by Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard, couldn’t do much for the DeLorean DMCs – or even for the human protagonists, Doc Brown and Marty McFly – the cast album shows amazing skill in characterizing the secondary characters. “My Myopia,” sung by Marty’s father as a teenager, gives us chilling insight into his later failures. And “Gotta Start Somewhere,” a big gospel rave, fills the contours of an otherwise barely-there character with ambition—while letting the irrepressible Jelani Remy, who sings it, realize her own.
Plus: Never enough Sondheim
Broadway doesn’t have an exclusive on Sondheim’s new albums. From London comes a live two-disc recording of “Old Friends,” a concert celebration of greatest hits sung by Bernadette Peters, Judi Dench, Michael Ball and other familiar faces. It’s a hearty meal, and with 41 courses, a huge one, heavy on the honey. (Watch a video of Ball singing “Loving You,” from “Passion,” here.)
“Sondheim in the City,” Melissa Errico’s homage to Sondheim’s urbanity, feels like a tour of the New York home with emotion and sadness. In songs like the frenetic “Another Hundred People,” the exuberant “What More Do I Need?” and the dry, despondent “It Wasn’t Meant to Happen,” Errico, one of Sondheim’s most earnest yet light-hearted interpreters, recalls both the urban and cabaret styles at their best. (He will sing the program at 54 Down in May.) In the pristine recording you can almost hear the martini glasses clinking — and shattering.
And if you didn’t get to see Sondheim’s latest musical, “Here We Are,” Off Broadway at the Shed, or if you did and want to hold onto it, like I do, the cast album is scheduled for release in May. . The producers promise “a full re-enactment of the show and the score”, which means the songs (of which I must admit there aren’t many) will be interspersed with playwright David Ives’ dialogue scenes, some of which are stand-alone like a song The samples I’ve heard—an instrumental score and a snippet of “The Bishop’s Song,” performed by David Hyde Pierce—are enough to leave me (as well as the show’s characters) hungry for more.