Her First Roman

Her First Roman, a musical based on George Bernard Shaw's play Caesar and Cleopatra, with book, music, and lyrics by folk-pop songwriter Ervin Drake ("It Was a Very Good Year"), opened on Broadway on October 20, 1968, and closed after only 17 performances. The only previous recording of the score (S.P.M. [Society for the Preservation of Musicals] Records CO-7751) was a ridiculously rare LP that was recorded live during the show's tryout in Boston. This studio cast album, recorded 25 years later and featuring the original stars, Richard Kiley and Leslie Uggams, constitutes both a restoration and a revision of the score. Her First Roman was drastically altered prior to its Broadway opening, with much of Drake's music dropped and three new songs contributed by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick. This time, the lost Drake material -- a full six songs -- has been restored, and the Bock-Harnick songs left out. Drake has also rewritten some of the songs. The result is an enjoyable show score, winningly performed by the principals. There may be no lost song standards here, but the story of the Roman emperor and the Egyptian princess is told with humor in catchy tunes. Shows fail for reasons other than their scores; in this case, both the director and choreographer were replaced on the road, and one can speculate that audiences of 1968 may have had trouble with a show about an interracial relationship between a man in his fifties and a 16-year-old girl, or that the echoes of Vietnam in the Roman invasion of Egypt may have been too disturbing. In any case, the show was worth committing to disc in its originally intended form, and it's good that it has been, even a quarter-century after the fact. ~ William Ruhlmann