I saw Williams on Broadway, and she was wonderful in the theatre. She radiated stage presence and her voice was very well-suited to the music. At the time it was definitely viewed as stunt casting--she had never done much, if any, acting then--but you could definitely tell she was talented and had a future on stage. I was pretty young then, so I didn't really know who Howard McGillin and Brian Mitchell (he wasn't using the "Stokes" at that point in his billing) were. It took me a couple years, after I'd seen them in other shows, to realize that I saw them!
I have both cast recordings but haven't listened to either in a while. I remember the Williams cast recording was a bit more expanded, with extra material and lots of dialogue. Having not seen Chita/Carver on stage I can only judge them by the cast recording, and I'd say that I love the eerie, otherwordly quality that they brought to their roles, even if Williams and McGillin are arguably better vocalists.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
