Michael Kownacky

The delightful stage output of Marvin Hamlisch is the subject of this week’s Dress Circle (6/17  7:00 p.m.)  as we look at songs from familiar shows like “A Chorus Line” (with songs from the Italian and Japanese original cast recordings), “They’re Playing Our Song” and “The Good-bye Girl” (both Broadway and West End casts), and “The Sweet Smell of Success.”  

This week’s Dress Circle (6/10) will begin at 8:00 because of the length of the opera.  Join us as we take a trip to the West End as we look at five “Recent and Current London Musicals.”   We’ll be sampling songs from “Calendar Girls,” a moving musical based on the charming film of the same name and starring some British favorites such as Claire Moore and Joanna Riding.  A revival of “42nd Street” is currently appearing at Drury Lane, and the original cast included Sheena Easton as Dorothy Brock.  

June may not be bustin’ out all over, but it is certainly wet, and as we enter the month of June, this week’s Dress Circle (6/3 7:00 p.m.) will take a look at some of the shows that have opened this month.  The “summer” months are notoriously lean for Broadway openings, and June is the month of the Tony Awards, so shows generally don’t open then since they would have to be remembered for an entire year before voting occurs.  In any case, we will hear songs from musicals including “Godspell,” “I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road,” “Seventeen,” the 1993 revival of “Chicago,”

An “all-star” version of Stephen Sondheim’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” to welcome the upcoming Princeton Festival production will air on this week’s Dress Circle (5/27 7:00 p.m.).   We’ll be playing a large percentage of this delightful score using the original Broadway cast, original London cast, the 1996 Broadway revival, and the film if time permits.  

Among the many definitions of a “moment,” the first is “a minute portion or point of time: instant,” and on this week’s Dress Circle (5/20 7:00 p.m.), we’ll be looking at a series of “Moment Moments.”  We were surprised by how important moments are in musicals, and we had many shows from which to choose songs.

Listeners are in store for an hour of wonderful singing on this week’s “Dress Circle”  (5/13  7:00 p.m.) when Dinah Shore is featured singing songs from Broadway and Hollywood including songs from her film outing with Alan Jones and Robert Merrill entitled “Aaron Slick from Punkin Crick." 

There may be May flowers and all that, but this week’s Dress Circle (5/6 7:00 p.m.) has very little to do with them because we’re focusing on the shows that opened in or on their way to New York.   Our list includes “The Baker’s Wife,” a Stephen Schwartz show that closed on its way to Broadway, the legendary “Fantasticks,” and “The Most Happy Fella,” Frank Loesser’s monumental romantic musical.  We’re also including “Passion,” Stephen Sondheim’s chamber opera about a different kind of love, and Lena Horne’s one-woman show that wowed audiences for over 300 performances.   

A fringe benefit of the CD era is the theme for this week’s Dress Circle (4/29 7:00 p.m.).  The standard LP could hold about 44 minutes of music, so when CDs arrived that could hold 80 minutes, record labels were in a quandary:  Should they just ignore the remaining time or try to fill it with something?   We’re very happy that they filled it with something that those of us who love musicals are thrilled to have:  Bonus tracks – alternate takes, cut songs, songs left off of the LP because of time constraints, demo recordings, and interviews with stars and creators.  

With all of the negative news flying about, most of us need a “happy place” to which we can escape to hide from the madness.  This week’s Dress Circle (4/22  7:00 p.m.) will offer up some happy places that are found in a variety of musicals.   Join us as we head to “Never Never Land” with Peter Pan, “My Own Little Corner” with Cinderella, and “Loveland” from “Follies.”   

Two words that are dear to the hearts of many people are Walt Disney, and on this week’s Dress Circle (4/15  7:00 p.m.) we’ll hear some of the music associated with Disney films but not by the originators in a show called Everybody Does Disney.  For instance, from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” we’ll hear “Heigh-Ho,” but it will be performed by The Shanghai Quartet.  “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” from “Cinderella” gets an “Andrews Sisters” treatment by Michelle Nicastro.  Louis Armstrong will stop by to perform “The Bear Necessities” from “The Jungle Book.  

If you’re a fan of musicals written expressly for television, we’ll have four more for you on this week’s Dress Circle (4/8 7:00 p.m.).  Our first seems be on its way to a Broadway production, but it had its start on the cult-favorite television series “Smash.”  The musical is titled “Bombshell” by Marc Shaiman and Scott M. Riesett.  

There will be no fooling on this week’s Dress Circle (4/1 7:00 p.m.) when we once again take a look at some of the shows that opened this month.  A few of those “shows of April” are “Beauty and the Beast,” the current smash “Anastasia,” “Carousel,” “Hallelujah, Baby!”, “The Secret Garden,” and “She Loves Me” along with several more.  Join us for another diverse evening of great music from Broadway.  As always, thank you for being a part of our musical family.  

This weekend, many people will be celebrating Palm Sunday, and The Dress Circle will join in the celebration with an all-star production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber / Tim Rice musical “Jesus Christ Superstar” (3/25  7:00 p.m.)  Beginning as a concept album in 1970, the first authorized concert version of the material was seen in Pittsburgh, PA in July of 1971 with the world premier staged presentation arriving on Broadway in October of 1971.  It would have its West End Premiere in 1972.  

The 3/18

 (7:00 p.m.) Dress Circle will feature recordings produced by The York Theatre Company which, for over 48 years, has been dedicated to the production of New Musicals, and through their Musicals in Mufti Series, concert performances of forgotten shows.  Ted Otten and Michael Kownacky have found and will be sampling four recordings of shows presented by The York Theatre Company on this week’s program.  

John Barrowman is best known to American television audiences for his appearances on “Dr. Who” and “Torchwood,” but this week’s Dress Circle (3/11 7:00 p.m.) is dedicated to his wonderful performances in musicals, mostly in London’s West End.  You’ll hear him perform songs from his starring roles in “Matador,” “Anything Goes,” “The Fix,” and “Hair” along with “Grease,” “Sunset Boulevard,” and the totally forgotten musical, “Jean Seberg.”  If you only know Barrowman from his television appearances, this week’s program is sure to be a pleasant surprise.

We’ll be “crossing over” on this week’s Dress Circle (2/25  7:00 p.m.).  Well, the singers will be crossing over as some of opera’s greatest sing favorites from the world of Broadway.  Those singers include Eileen Farrell, Robert Merrill, Rise Stevens, Dorothy Kirsten, Thomas Hampson, Kiri Te Kanawa, Jerry Hadley, Frederica von Stade, and more.  We’ve scheduled songs by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, and the Gershwins from shows like “South Pacific,” “Music in the Air,” “The Most Happy Fella,” “Allegro,” and “The New Moon.”