Bernstein: Wonderful Town

Wonderful Town, Leonard Bernstein's second musical with lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green, was an agreeable adaptation of the engaging play My Sister Eileen that allowed the songwriters an opportunity to satirize the popular music and artistic trends of the 1930s. It was also a star vehicle for Rosalind Russell, who had starred in the nonmusical film version, My Sister Eileen, in 1942. It is not, as the press release accompanying this studio recording claims, a "lost masterpiece, " or, as annotator Miles Krueger writes, "a masterwork" like Bernstein's Candide and West Side Story, which may be why it has been performed and recorded far less frequently. It is a singularly inappropriate work for the overblown orchestral/opera singer treatment frequently applied to theater music since the 1980s, but this version, which finds Simon Rattleconducting the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the London Voices, and principals Kim Criswell, Audra McDonald, and Thomas Hampson, is not as bad as might have been feared. As Ruth, Criswell, of course, is a better singer than Russell, but exactly because Russell wasn't much of a singer, the role is not very demanding vocally. Criswell lacks Russell's command, but she's funny. As Eileen, McDonald, as usual, is a joy, finding new ways to approach the show's big love songs, "A Little Bit In Love" and "It's Love." Hampson, unfortunately, comes off as an opera baritone, which makes "What A Waste" a vocal showcase rather than the stinging account of disappointed hopes it should be. At over 66 minutes, this is one of the longer versions of the show on record, adding the instrumental dance music ‘Conquering New York,' an ‘Entr'acte,' and ‘Quiet Incidental,' which is a dialogue scene with underscoring. But there isn't really much new Bernstein music here; the score famously was written in only four weeks, and that was possible because there really isn't that much of it. Theater music fans will welcome the longer version though, as well as the libretto with stage directions that is included. But classical music fans aren't likely to be convinced that the work is first-class Bernstein. And the best version of the show on record remains the 1958 TV cast album with Russell.