No Guys & Dolls Cast Album?

I saw the show this past weekend, enjoyed it, and asked one of the souvenir sellers about the cast album for this revival. "The producers decided not to do one," she said.

How come?

I heard they were making a Cry Baby one instead.

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Great....there you go Golbinau, stirring up the pot. Bwhahaha.

If they haven't decided to it record it by now, I would think the chances of that changing are pretty slim.

And not that I encourage this sort of thing, but if you ask in the right places you can probably get your hands on an alternative to a recording. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

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That's a shame. Craig Bierko and Kate Jennings Grant had the most amazing vocals.

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I wouldn't even begin to approach the word "amazing" in describing either of their vocals. I think "serviceable" is a more apt description, but that's just me.

Between the OCR (one of the best show albums EVER) and the '92 revival, there's absolutely no need for a recording of this revival. The only time it came to life was when Mary Testa joined in Sit Down . . . and that alone, much though I love Mary, is hardly justification for a new recording.

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I don't think anything in this revival (save for maybe Mary Testa and the choreography) can be described as "amazing." Even the good things were simply brought down by the awfulness surrounding it. Having said that, I do think Kate Jennings Grant was wonderful, I don't think she was boring at all, if anything she managed to inject life to misdirected, misacted, and utterly bad scenes. She had so much personality, and her Sarah Brown was quite passionate. It was at the very least an interesting take on the role that worked, sadly the performance couldn't realize its full potential since the direction was so terrible and the rest of the principals weren't up to par. I think she was stronger than say Josefina Scaglione (whose performance also suffered from being in a misdirected production).
Craig Bierko was okay, not great, not wonderful, but he was fun to watch.
Having said that, Lauren Graham's Adelaide should never be recorded for posterity.

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The new orchestrations were wonderful though. It's a shame they won't get to make a recording of it.

While I think Kate Jennings Grant's voice ROCKED and I'm depressed her "If I Were a Bell" won't be recorded, I had a problem with her Sarah Brown. Yes, she had an amazing personality and she was passionate, but she was all of those things since the very start. I didn't see a journey from a conservative, uptight Evangelical to that passionate woman. After she made out with Craig in their first scene together, her proposition to stay in Havana seemed like it was coming. Craig Bierko was all things glorious though. His Sky couldn't have been more perfect.

If you want to talk about boring, bring up the choreography. It seemed too flashy and random. It belonged in "A Chorus Line." It didn't paint me a picture or tell a story the way it was supposed too.

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"I don't think it is necessary to record every Broadway revival, especially when we already have a fairly definitive OCR."

Except that many OCRs from the pre-CD era aren't complete. Songs were dropped to fit onto those 45-minute vinyl records (or in the case of "The Music Man," everything was sped up). Dance music almost never made vinyl OCRs.

But I also like having a recording of the version *I* saw. Now, I realize that's not possible when I see a replacement cast, but that's not the case here.

I enjoy both recordings I have of "Man of La Mancha."

As for this show's performances... I wasn't that impressed with Tituss Burgess in the first act; maybe it was an off performance. His "Sit Down" was fine. I was curious how Lauren Graham would do, and I thought she did well. I thought Craig Bierko was excellent as Sky.

One quibble with the staging: Why put the orchestra onstage in an elaborate set -- and then keep it covered up for nearly the entire show? In other shows I've seen with the orchestra onstage, such as "Wonderful Town," "Chicago," and 1986's "Anything Goes," that wasn't the case.