I still regret missing the Encores! production of "Pipe Dream" a couple of years back. As imperfect as it is, I don't think I'll be able to see a professional production of it anytime soon."
They didn't make a studio recording of the Encores! production, but they recorded the sound from one of the live shows and released it as an album. Laura Osnes, Will Chase, Leslie Uggams.
Listening to the score for the first time was rather like finding a trunk in the attic with all these forgotten songs in it. Which, if any, deserved to be labeled a "standard." How could there be four or five songs emerging from South Pacific and The King and I worthy of being standards, but not one from the seven month "flop" Pipe Dream? Ben Brantley's review referred to the major love song, "All at Once You Love Her" as a "gorgeous song" that had him "swooning with pleasure." I did hear a recording of the song by Perry Como, once, on the Sinatra channel of Sirius XM. But how could a "gorgeous" love song by R&H be so completely ignored?
Truthfully, I didn't love the song as much as Ben. But I honestly thought that the song "Sweet Thursday," sung by Uggams and played with gusto by the orchestra in the Overture, had to be near the top of the list for songs with an infectious melody. Write new lyrics or use it as just an instrumental theme and it could not miss.
Although many critics like to blame the failure of the show on the prudery of R&H in not embracing the facts that Suzie was a genuine whore, albeit a short-lived one, and that the house run by Fauna was not a bed and breakfast, I tend to agree with Ben's other criticism: that too much time and too many songs were allotted to the lovable bums of Cannery Row, at the expense of more time spent with the principals.
They got it right in South Pacific, with just enough of the Seabees.
