Original Cast Recording - Busker Alley - O.C.R.
Product Information
Track List: Busker Alley - O.C.R.
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- Opening - Glenn Close
- Blow Us a Kiss - Glenn Close
- Hula Love Song - Glenn Close
- Never Trust a Lady - Glenn Close
- When Do I Get Mine - Glenn Close
- Strays - Glenn Close
- Mates - Glenn Close
- What To Do With 'Er? - Glenn Close
- He Has a Way - Glenn Close
- Medley: Busker Medley: Moonlight In Brighton/Crazy Happy Tears/A Million Miles From You - Glenn Close
- He Has a Way/She Has a Way - Glenn Close
- Busker Alley - Glenn Close
- When Do I Get Mine? Reprise - Glenn Close
- How Long Have I Loved Libby? - Glenn Close
- Baby Me - Glenn Close
- How Long Have I Loved Libby? Reprise - Glenn Close
- Medley: Ordinary Couple/I'm On the Inside - Glenn Close
- Tin Whistle Tune - Glenn Close
- Mates - Glenn Close
- Medley: The 'New Show' Audition: All Around the Town/Beautiful Girls - Glenn Close
- Where the 'Ell Is 'Ome? - Glenn Close
- Where Are the Faces? - Glenn Close
- Paddle Your Own Canoe - Glenn Close
- Charlie the Busker - Glenn Close
- Epilogue - Glenn Close
- He Had a Way - Glenn Close
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Album Details: Busker Alley - O.C.R.
- Release Date:
- 11/13/2007
- Label:
- Jay Records
- UPC:
- 605288140020
Pro Reviews: Busker Alley - O.C.R.
| EXPERT RATING: From AMG Reviews Musical theater history is replete with lost shows that, for one reason or another, never got to New York. One of these was Busker Alley, until November 13, 2006, when the OffBroadway York Theatre Company put on a onenightonly semistaged concert performance of the score as a benefit; the next day, the cast trooped into a recording studio and made the show's firstever cast album. The history of the work dates back to the late 1960s, when the sibling songwriting team of Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman, best known for the movie musicals Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (both since adapted for the stage) teamed up with librettist A.J. Carothers to write what was initially called Piccadilly, based on the 1938 British film St. Martin's Lane (American title: The Sidewalks of London), starring Charles Laughton and Vivien Leigh, about the MayDecember relationship between a mature London street entertainer and an opportunistic young woman. The show didn't get a staging then, but it came closer in a revised version called Blow Us a Kiss in 1982. Finally, in 1994, Broadway star Tommy Tune became involved in what was now called Busker Alley, and in 1995 he took it on a preBroadway national tour that came to an abrupt end two weeks before the scheduled New York opening when he broke his foot performing at the last stop on the tour. That was it for another 11 years, until Tony Walton, director of the 1990s production, persuaded the York to put it in front of an audience, if only for one night. This time, the cast featured Jim Dale, the Tonywinning veteran of 1980's Barnum, with his Barnum costar Glenn Close brought in as a "special guest star" in what turns out to be almost a cameo as an older version of the female lead (played for most of the show by Jessica Grové) in a framing device at the start and end of the show. For all the turmoil associated with Busker Alley, it comes off as a modest entertainment, even with an excellent cast. Although they are Americans, the Sherman brothers have always had an evident affection for period British settings, and this is another one. One need only recall songs like "Chim Chim Cheree" and "Step in Time" from Mary Poppins to have a sense of what their take on the Cockney style is. (Of course, the influence of My Fair Lady is apparent.) Numerous "H"s are dropped (one song is even called "Where the Ell Is Ome?"), and the tunes are singsongy and simple. The score features many songs that might be called "production" or "source" songs, in the sense that they are just presented as songs the buskers sing on the street, although there are also plot songs in which the characters express their thoughts and feelings. In neither case is the material, while unfailingly pleasant, more than serviceable, even though Dale (who was 71 years old at the time of the recording and relying more on his phrasing than his old vocal power) and the rest of the cast give it an enthusiastic reading. Busker Alley will interest musical theater fans and, with Mary Poppins on Broadway, may even attract a real production, but it is not a major work. - William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide |
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Original Cast Recording Biography
The multitalented actor/singer Jim Dale's career spanned more than half a century, during which he was a standup comic, a radio personality, a pop star, a stage actor in straight plays and musicals, a songwriter, a film and television actor, and a vo...Full Original Cast Recording Biography
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