You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1999 Broadway Revival Cast)
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Free Music Notes for You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1999 Broadway Revival Cast)
Free Music Review: You're A Great Singer, Sally Brown
Hit: 5 Stars
I LOVED THIS CD! I played Sally in a camp production of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" and I was dying to get the CD. After listening to all the songs, I can easily say that it is one of my favorite Broadway soundtracks. Roger Bart was hysterical yet fantastic as Snoopy. Ilana Levine was a very good obnoxious Lucy. I thought Schroeder, Charlie, and Linus were amazing as well. My absolute favorite character is Sally, and I loved Kristin Chenoweth! "My New Philosophy" has always been my favorite song. It is adorable and so funny! I advise anyone to pick up this CD! It will keep you humming to the songs after the CD is over!Free Music Review: Nice little surprise. You won't regret picking it up...
Hit: 5 Stars
To think, I had a chance to see this with the original cast but couldn't convince my friends to join me during our visit to NYC. Upon returning, I purchased this album and have been kicking myself since. This is a great, fun story that's worthy of a revival. The assembled cast is brilliant, with Anthony Rapp at the helm as the forgotten child, Charlie Brown. Rapp's portrayal of the lead character is amazing, with a perfect blend of innocence, insecurity, and vulneribility. BD Wong is also surprisingly good as Linus, but Chenoweth outshines the cast with her presentation of Sally.
No point in explaining it, you just have to listen to it. Pick it up, you won't be disappointed.
Free Music Review: Little Snoopy of Horrors
Hit: 1 Stars
I got this recording out of curiosity, having enjoyed the original album and several productions over the years. And while the cast is talented--despite the overly shrill Lucy--and some of the songs are perfectly fine, on the whole, I can't recommend this version.Why? For one thing, the new songs don't mesh stylistically with the original songs. In and of themselves, they're fine, but both in style and orchestration, they just don't match. If you want to write a new Peanuts musical, fine, but if this one ain't broke, don't fix it. For one thing, "Beethoven Day" doesn't sound at all like a song Schroeder would sing. For another, the new songs are entirely too polished and pop; like the strips, the beauty of the original songs is in their simplicity, the fact that you believe that they're being sung by children. Even in the orchestrations in this version, they take a perfectly good performance of one of the original songs and ruin it by adding a new ending at odds with the sound and tone of the rest of the song. Why do this? To make it seem more contemporary, I suppose. "My New Philosophy" is the only new piece that even remotely sounds in character, and even that is far too polished.
Performance-wise, it's a fine production, with good voices and musicians, but some questionable acting choices. The usually excellent B. D. Wong sounds ridiculous as Linus with a lisp; he sounds frighteningly like Ed Wynn most of the time. (If you know who Ed Wynn is, you know why that's a horrible mental image for Linus.) And as I said before, Ilana Levine as Lucy is entirely too shrill, too over the top, so much so that it's unpleasant to listen to her singing voice. These are character choices, but a better director might have improved or cut them. On the other hand, Kristen Chenowith is wonderful, as is Roger Bart.
As for the sound mix on the album, it varies from too loud to too soft--though again, the orchestrations are largely to blame. Either way, the sudden shifts from a soft to a loud song kept scaring my child, which is not what this show should do. I shouldn't need to sit with my hand on the volume control the whole time.
Overblown, brassy, aggravating. And just when they've done a song right, they blow it. I was surprised at their restraint in "Happiness," and literally as I was about to say that out loud to my wife, it came roaring back with guns blazing, filling the room with a wall of sound and schmaltz. God forbid we present anything with subtlety. This production, while decked out in a beautiful set and costume design right out of Schulz' pen, misses all the simplicity and wonder of Schulz' writing in the effort to make a Big Contemporary Broadway Show. There is no magic in this version, only calculation. It's no wonder this production only ran for a few months, while the original ran for four years.
It's possible to revive and reinvent a show well. "Chicago," "Anything Goes," "Guys and Dolls" and "Cabaret" all come to mind. None were slavish imitations of the originals, but all of them kept the spirit of original source material, and all had long, healthy runs.
If you want a slick, over-produced, polished recording, then by all means, get this version. If you're only used to Broadway scores from 1980 and later and can't conceive of a simple, small scale show, get this version. If you want a recording that sounds like the Peanuts characters despite being played by grown actors, which is no mean feat, go for the original cast.
Free Music Review: A brilliant remake with and incredible cast
Hit: 5 Stars
Having lately joined the pantheon of actors who have played Charlie Brown in this awesome show's history, I was thrilled to have this recording as a reference. Maybe my love for this recording is what primarily turned me off to the original cast recording, but this cast truly seems to get ahold of what Charlie Brown is really about. Childlike innocence, vulnerability, even naivete, but it still says something about society, relationships and life. Anthony Rapp is surprisingly (almost) perfect for Charlie Brown, Ilana Levine is very good as the supercrab herself, Lucy. Stanley Mathis as Schroeder does a great job as well (for the most part), and while I'm not terribly fond of B.D. Wong's interpretation of Linus, this show's brightest stars are definitely Roger Bart as Snoopy (Suppertime is nothing short of fantastic) and Kristen Chenoweth as Sally (My New Philosophy remains spectacular no matter how many times you hear it).The reworkings of the original songs are most excellent, and the new songs are remarkable. For an up-to-date, but still sincere recording, look no further than the New Broadway Cast Recording.
Free Music Review: Better than the original, but still some flaws
Hit: 4 Stars
I couldn't quite get into the original cast when I bought that album so many years ago. This update seems to fix some of the datedness of the original that helped me enjoy the show more. I do regret the loss of Peppermint Patty in the update, however. And I definitely regret the choice B.D. Wong made to lisp his way through every song. Annoying. I'm also not sure why, in the opening number, the short dialogue bits each character says to Charlie Brown are spoken OVER one another, so that you can't make any of them out. They're funny, so why can't they be spoken consecutively so we can enjoy them? Unfortunately, until there's a revival of this revival that correct some of these deficiencies, I don't think we can yet say that the definitive version of this show has been recorded.