Two episodic, song-filled, leaving-home journeys this time, previously seen on the screen but first told in books—inspired by the imaginative real life of Frank Abagnale, Jr., and the imagination of L. Frank Baum. First, a manhunt from city to city with the catchy Catch Me If You Can score. Then, it's yet another voyage to the Emerald City, currently on stage in London, with the classic 1939 movie score augmented with a few new songs by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
2011 ORIGINAL BROADWAY CAST
Ghostlight/ Sh-K-Boom Records

Checks that bounce and bouncy musical numbers, a central character who adopts multiple identities, and new songs that sometimes adopt old styles are what it's all about in a big, bustling Broadway brouhaha. The Catch Me If You Can can-do spirit and spirited score burst from the new cast album. Based on the true life of con artist Frank Abagnale, Jr., previously told in his own book and a hit (non-musical) movie of the same name, its score is often as audacious and brash as the young fellow and his nerve.

Aaron Tveit (Next to Normal) makes a splash as the daring young man. He's dynamic and dazzling, and sweet when his character's guard or mood is down. He and the ever-at-the-ready hard-working, hard-selling ensemble have no energy shortage on the big numbers. Likewise, Norbert Leo Butz as the detective hot on his trail (or sometimes lukewarm on his trail) heats things up with his big manic mantra "Don't Break the Rules." Tony-winner Butz is no one-trick pony galloping through this number he did on the Tony Awards: he evokes some sympathy for the hunter and the hunted, injects subtle, sarcastic and broad humor, and is even wistful wondering about "The Man Behind the Clues."

Try as I do to be enamored of the songs that are big production numbers and second halves of songs where the singing just gets bigger, I am underwhelmed by being overwhelmed; it can become trying when everyone seems to be trying so hard. Too many bolts of lightning strike more than twice in the same place, with the point being made very early in a long song with the characters not going from one point to a new point of realization or plot point. The cast members are game and on their game, with glib and fast-paced hammering-home of the attitude-y assertiveness. Some listeners may find these "bigger is better, don't stop til you're over the top" presentations exciting and grand fun. And, yes, I "get it"—the characters are driven, frantic, edgy and emboldened, and the music wants to reflect that, complete with some slam-bang work by the driving band, conducted by John McDaniel. For me, it's the more laidback and sly numbers that stand out, and there's plenty of charm in those pieces to tickle the fancy.

Tom Wopat as Frank, Sr., has just the right kind of laidback confidence, self-aware humor, and life-weary rumpledness to close the sale easily on all his numbers without seeming to be selling. After impressing first with some somewhat hard-nosed advice in the CD's second song, "The Pinstripes Are All That They See," he so shines in the male-bonding duets that follow that we are doubly grateful for the album-ending bonus track of a cut song that was intended to be his solo, "Fifty Checks." Sung with savvy knowhow and an understanding of the addictive power of everything money, this song is a cut above some of the button-pushing selections. It feels here like it could be one more worthy character motivation and sympathy factor for audiences: "'cause very one of them unlocks/ Your own personal Fort Knox ...Fifty chances/ Fifty choices/ Buy little gifts/ Like big Rolls Royces." The father-and-son duet of a fable about an enterprising bug making coffee and a mouse who learns to make "Butter Outta Cream" is a standout, one of the vaudeville-style pastiche pluses and is the cream of the crop here. Filled with adorable writing and ingratiatingly performed, it's a sweet moment in context and a standout as a stand-alone number (the sensational Marilyn Maye has already tucked the tickler into her nightclub act).

The women aren't as well served here, used in the ensemble as generically chipper, cheesy, or lusty groups of stewardesses and nurses, with also limited characterizations apparent on CD for the lead's mother (Rachel de Benedet being mostly about an accent and chilly aloofness) and possible mother-in-law briefly heard in a group number. Late-in-the-plot love interest Kerry Butler can sound strident in her one solo, "Fly, Fly Away," seeming oversung /stretching thinner material when heard out of context on disc. In familiar perky mode, she brightens things in a couple of other places, though Aaron Tveit gets the lion's share of their cute "Seven Wonders."

There are some swell, smart examples of songwriting craftsmanship throughout. In this score by composer Marc Shaiman, collaborating with Scott Wittman on the lyrics, there are scrumptious patches of pastiche appropriate for the era in which the action takes place (the 1960s), which they proved they know and love with their smash Hairspray. Present are strong musical echoes of Sinatra with a Nelson Riddle arrangement zing, a jaunty Cy Coleman-esque flair, and a cornucopia of cornball cheeriness even making TV host Mitch Miller a character to present "(Our) Family Tree" for our (anti-)hero and his prospective new kin. Bits of Terence McNally's book set up songs, with some dialogue within numbers, and it's all included in a booklet, along with the lyrics, numerous color photos of the show, a plot synopsis, credits, and even a brief note from the reformed Frank, Jr., all these years later.

The bottom line is that the songs cry out to entertain you, and do, by force or fancy. It can be a soft sell, as in the old-school duo moments, or hard-sell as in "The Jet Set." That song sums it up, offering to entice with the spice of "new music and mystery" as a way to "lose the old music and history." But don't buy into that con game: the traditions of old music and history inform everything here. May Catch catch fire with this recording and find its own home in the hearts of musical theatre fans.

THE WIZARD OF OZ
2011 LONDON PALLADIUM CAST
Decca Broadway/ Really Useful Records

We've been down this road before: the one paved with bricks as yellow as its sunshiney spirits. The Wizard of Oz with the Harold Arlen/ E.Y. Harburg score for the classic film has been brought to the stage and spawned cast recordings, slavishly faithful or full of liberties, cuts and additions. Even a man with straw for brains could predict that nothing will ever replace or best the original soundtrack with the giant talents of that cast, although the years have given us some worthy star turns with Nathan Lane hamming it up as the Lion, Bobby McFerrin's tour de force as most of the characters, even the Muppets.

Let's dive first into the changes and additions for the show, which began performances in April at the London Palladium, directed by Jeremy Sams. Except for some grandness suitable for the title character's bravado, Andrew Lloyd Webber steers clear of the melodrama and sweeping hugeness he often brings to the table. It's bright, brisk, smaller-sized, family-friendly musical comedy stuff. Although Tim Rice's lyrics don't often dip into the well of playful language that Harburg characterized the story with, his work is strong and likeable. Their songs don't, as some might fear, overwhelm the originals or stick out like sore thumbs; they don't fit like gloves either, not aiming to be clones or awkwardly "written in the style of." The Wicked Witch gets a delicious rant and romp called "Red Shoes Blues" (complaining about Dorothy, she rails, "She's prissy, she's clueless/ And I want her shoeless," also rhyming "footwear" with "put where"). Hannah Waddingham screeches and pouts entertainingly and engagingly in the role, sinking her teeth into it to good effect. In more honeyed tones, The Good Witch is sung tenderly by Emily Tierney, with a perhaps inevitable song about the moral of the story called "Already Home" wherein she instructs that "Home is a place in your heart/ Ev'ry journey leads you back to where you start." The message may be a hallmark of the story, but it sounds a bit too much like a Hallmark card with this repeated kind of would-be reality sentimentality. Dorothy gets a new opening number called "Nobody Understands Me," which is self-explanatory, with spoken and sung dialogue by the others on the farm ignoring her. (Auntie Em sings the putting-off line, "Not now. We're having a crisis.")

Michael Crawford plays the dual role of the Wizard and Professor Marvel, and he's a great asset to the production. As Marvel, he gets the best and best-fitting new number, "The Wonders of the World," singing of his invention of "this extravagant appliance/ Mainly magic, slightly science" and getting interrupted by that tornado we're expecting: "Maybe time for one more wonder/ Very strange, it looks like thunder ..." We also see him putting on airs as "the great and powerful" elusive head of state, ordering the procurement of that broom of you-know-who and asking the intruders just who they are. Introducing themselves, the Lion's line is a latter-day joke, "And I, sir, am proud to be a friend of Dorothy." Occasionally, the new and old songs intermingle briefly. The famous, oft-reprised line "We're off to see the Wizard" is sung post-meeting as "We went to see the Wizard" and the Wicked Witch's Winkies' marching mantra is borrowed by the farm hands in the beginning, and the little theme for that witch and the nefarious Miss Gulch (played by the same actress in the film and here) gets a handful of words set to it: "That nasty little mongrel, that whiny little schoolgirl ..." The "If I Only Had a  ..." song is done briefly late in the show as a trio with cute lyrics, " If We Only Had a Plan." There is a reprise of "Over the Rainbow," but completists and historians who know the movie know that it's a reprise originally written for the film ("Someday I'll wake and  ...").

The movie songs are treated with respect, sung with affection, the musical accompaniment strongly saluting the original, familiar settings without copying things note for note. As far as the singing and characterization of these well-known favorites, there's far more heart than ham. That is to say, it's all played rather straightforwardly, without the eccentric, personality-plus and humor-filled interpretations brought to the material by the originals and many others over the decades. It makes things kind of surprisingly plain and even bland at times, but there is the evident happiness factor radiating and it's all efficient and professionally done.

Danielle Hope, cast as Dorothy through a TV show competition, though not distinctive or notably vulnerable, sings warmly and with some spunk. Let's face it: those are big ruby slippers she has to fill, and she does so with grace, not coming off as coy or trying too hard to play younger on the disc. Her trio of traveling companions, who are, as today's overly sensitive, politically correct types might have it, challenged intellectually, emotionally, or in self-confidence, are pleasant but hardly distinctive. Some of the Munchkins are played by children, so their voices sound innocent and cheery. (There are 10 children listed in the cast.)

Strings are prominent in some numbers. The orchestrations are by David Cullen, and Graham Hurman is the musical director. There are tracks that are instrumentals or instrumental with dialogue and a few sound effects, including "The Twister" and a brief overture, with entries to the forest, etc. Although the thick, color photo-filled booklet takes the space to scrupulously give other credits, the composer's introductory comments, all the lyrics, snippets of dialogue heard on CD, detailed stage directions ("The stage fills with farm hands running to and fro with hurricane lamps. More and more detritus is being blown about ..." begins the longest description: 26 sentences!), nowhere are we told how many or who or what instruments are in the orchestra.

This is a fun and likeable new addition to the Oz musical landscape. To echo the gratitude so well expressed by one of the Munchkins, "We thank you very sweetly for doing it so neatly."

- Rob Lester

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