What's natural comes hard

In late June (just before Pride…hmm) New York City hosts starry concert versions of two middle-period Stephen Sondheim masterpieces: Follies and A Little Night Music. As a prelude, Chris’s Cache reaches back to early Sondheim for pirates of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Anyone Can Whistle.

Offered are live recordings of Sondheim’s first two solo (as both composer and lyricist) Broadway shows: Forum arrived in 1962, Anyone briefly two years later. After Anyone flopped, it would be six years before he returned to Broadway with Company.

I have, of course, seen the famous Forum movie with Zero Mostel and Buster Keaton(!), but I’ve never attended a live performance of the show. Phil Silvers, who played Lycus in the film, moves to the leading role of Pseudolus for this pre-Broadway touring production recorded in Los Angeles.

Encores! did Anyone in April 2010 with Donna Murphy, Sutton Foster, and Raul Esparza and it was pretty wonderful. It’s a crazy show about crazies with many great things and many problems, but it includes one of Sondheim’s most powerfully moving songs.

A conflict prevented me from going to the recent MasterVoices presentation of Anyone, but a recording of it eventually found its way into my collection.

Sondheim: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Domina: Lizabeth Pritchett
Philia: Pamela Hall
Pseudolus: Phil Silvers
Hysterium: Larry Blyden
Senex: Lew Parker
Hero: John Hansen
Lycus: Carl Ballantine
Erronius: Reginald Owen
Miles Gloriosus: Carl Lindstrom

Conductor: Jack Lee
Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles
October/November 1971
In-house recording

Sondheim: Anyone Can Whistle

Narrator: Joanna Gleason
Cora Hoover Hooper: Vanessa Williams
Faye Apple: Elizabeth Stanley
Bowden Hapgood: Santino Fantana
Comptroller Shub: Douglass Sills
Treasurer Cooley: Eddie Cooper
Police Commissioner Magruder: Michael Mulheren

Conductor: Ted Sperling
MasterVoices
Carnegie Hall
10 March 2022
In-house recording

Anyone can download Forum and Anyone by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

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Photo: Nina Westervelt