By BART GREENBERG**** Perfectly timed to the renewed interest in the man who invented American show business, PT Barnum, thanks to the new movie musical The Greatest Showman, and the success of its soundtrack recording, Harbinger Records releases a privately recorded backers’ audition for the Broadway musical Barnum from 1980. The composer, Cy Coleman, and the lyricist, Michael Stewart, guide the invited audience, and us, through the score and the plotline of the show. They also describe many of the effects and circus tricks they planned for the staging, some of which made it into the final production.
Neither Coleman nor Stewart has an award-winning voice, but both have great charm and humor, even making fun of their own vocal deficiencies at times. And Coleman was a highly respected jazz pianist as well. He gets to show his skills off with dazzling ragtime finger work on “Thank God I’m Old.”
This CD doesn’t replace the original cast recording (available on Columbia Broadway Masterworks), but has many charms of its own both as a time capsule of a different time (a reference to the already cast Glenn Close indicates she was hardly a well-known name yet) and the development of a musical. (There are two songs that didn’t make it into the final production – “Now You See It, Now You Don’t” and “At Least I Tried” and several more rearranged, including “Come Follow the Band” which moved from a curtain-raiser to a second act opener).
Andy Propst, Coleman’s biographer, offers an interesting and entertaining essay on the development of the show and a brief explanation of what a backers’ audition is. Also included in the booklet are some beautiful production photos of the Broadway production. For musical theater fanatics, this is a definitely “must have.”
Purchase the Barnum Backers’ Audition CD here on Amazon
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