That is really interesting about One Touch of Venus. I am a Kurt Weill freak, early and late. Until the Jay recording came out I only knew the score from the Decca Cast album and the Ben Bagley cuts. I have always found it a bit hard to really imagine how songs work with in a show from Bagley's albums, although no doubt they were immensely important in their time, but the arrangements were all over the place, far from true to the original intent and the performances wildly variable. Once I heard the Jay recording I went............HUH??????? I find it the most disjointed piece Weill ever wrote, two different musicals at once, one for the romantic leads, and another for the secondary couple and all their hangers on. And how and why "in New Jersey" and "Dr. Crippen" belong in the same musical as "I'm a Stranger Here Myself," "Speak Low" and the better known songs I have no idea. Granted the book is by two legends, S. J. Perleman and Ogden Nash, neither one a minor talent, so perhaps the book, corny as you describe it, but of its period holds all this together, but I can't grasp it from the recording.
Thanks, as always for your insight. |
