The Chicago Trip with Music from PS Classics

Well, the trip to Chicago was exceptionally enjoyable all the way around – even managed to make it there before O'Hare essentially closed down on Friday.

That night caught Hephaestus at Lookingglass Theater's very handsome home in the Water Tower on North Michigan Avenue. Will be posting a full ATW review of this show later today. On Saturday night, it was Talking Pictures at the Goodman Theater. You'll find my TheaterMania review as well as the two from the Chicago dailies here:

http://www.americantheaterweb.com/news/pressbook2.asp?id=5818101

Now, on the flights back and forth (don't ask about the return flight or you'll get a screed on rudeness), I did listen to a handful of CDs. I concentrated on releases from PS Classics which has been so prolific in the past few months. Among their releases late in 2007 – Victoria Clark's lovely "15 Seconds of Grace" and Andrea Burns' exceptional "A Deeper Shade of Red." I have reviewed both of these for the next issue of The Sondheim Review - so I'll leave the commenting on them to a minimum here. Basically, if you don't have these yet, you're going to want them.

Late last year, PS Classics also shipped Xanadu - The Original Cast Recording and Take Flight. As the latter deals with aviation and the former contains music that takes me back to high school days, they seemed like the ideal options for the jaunt to Chicago, and neither disappointed me.

Obviously, Xanadu the stage version of the cult-hit, but commercial flop, 1980 movie of the same name, has proven to be quite the success on Broadway this season. The unlikely story of a muse who comes to earth to inspire an artist – who ends up wanting to build a roller disco – features a score from Jeff Lynne and John Farrah. Hits from the movie include "Magic", "Suddenly" and "All Over the World," and they're all here, plus some others from Lynne and Farrah (a.k.a. Electric Light Orchestra). For some, like this writer, these tunes were part of growing up, and there's something pleasant about revisiting them, particularly when performed by such Broadway talents as Kerry Butler (Clio, the muse) and Cheyenne Jackson (the artist).

Both of these performers – along with Mary Testa, Jackie Hoffman, and Tony Roberts – deliver the pop/disco score with panache in the theater, and their performances sound great on the disc. Butler – who's morphed from Belle to Bat Boy's love interest to Penny in Hairspray and Audrey in "Little Shop" – is particularly appealing, channeling her inner Olivia Newton-John and bringing some decided Broadway flair to the songs. Jackson, who imbues the artist with a deft level of cluelessness, retains that quality in the small amounts of dialogue that are included on the disc and his smooth vocal stylings, as always are a pleasure. Testa and Hoffman shine particularly when they imbue "Evil Woman" with a healthy dose of comedy. Roberts shines in the more traditional "Whenever You're Away From Me."

As with all of the company's releases, Xanadu has been packaged beautifully. The CD is accompanied by a full-color booklet that is awash with pictures from the show. Who knows? The disc might even inspire you to pull out your rollerskates and take a spin.

Now, the musical Take Flight is something in an entirely different vein. It's a new musical fantasia of sorts about aviation from the songwriting team of Richard Maltby, Jr. (lyrics) and David Shire (music) and bookwriter John Weidman. In it, the stories of Orville and Wilbur Wright, Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart all converge with German aviator and inventor Otto Lilienthal acting as the audience's guide.

What you'll find on this disc – which is the premiere recording of the show and features the original London cast from the Menier Chocolate Factory production – is 18 tracks of probably the most complex music that the team of Maltby and Shire have ever devised. In "Flight" they play not only with the grandly varied sounds of American popular music in the first decades of the twentieth century and embellish the melodies so that it often sounds as if the songs are soaring off into the distance themselves. At other times, they work in what I've come to think of as Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park" pointillist mode – providing characters with quick staccato melody lines that – if you listen real hard – can sometimes sound like the sputtering of early aircraft. In other words, this is a show that bears more resemblance to another musical for which Weidman provided the book - Assassins - than many of Maltby and Shire's previous collaborations – things like Baby and Big.

The British company – led by Sam Kenyon and Elliot Levey as the Wright Brothers, Michael Jibson as Lindy and Sally Ann Triplett as Earhart – handles the music with flair, delivering the lyrics with almost always perfect American accents.

I'll admit that I was only listening to the disc while on the plane and that was foolish. It's rather important to have the booklet that accompanies the disc handy during your first and second go-rounds with "Flight" – Matt Wolf's liner notes and the stage directions that are interspersed with lyrics and dialogue – are rather handy to get a sense of some of what's going on in the musical – which I imagine is going to garner a large number of fans based on this release.

Andy