Original Cast or Broadway Revival?

I prefer the Lupone cast recording, hands down.

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I like all three but I prefer the version that has "Heaven Hop" on it from the 1962 Off-Broadway cast.

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An EXCELLENT recording is the 2003 National Theatre Cast (National Theatre, UK). John Barrowman features and he is divine. It is a very well-produced album too.

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LuPone or Paige. The Barrowman recording is ok, but the accents are a bit whonky at times.

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I think I have more recordings of this show than any other...eight to be exact. Recently the Prism label put out the closest thing to an original cast recording. It features recordings made in 1935 featuring the original cast from the London production and also as bonus tracks includes recordings from 1934 by Merman and a couple by the composer himself. Then there's the first one I ever bought of the 1962 off-Broadway cast. A studio recording was made with Mary Martin in 1950 but is the most incomplete. The most complete is an EMI studio cast from 1989 featuring Kim Criswell under the direction of the astute John McGlinn. Then there's the Patti Lupone Broadway revival cast, the London cast of the same production with Elaine Paige, followed by the Australian cast with Geraldine Turner and most recently the 2003 National Theater cast. Of all my fav is the off Broadway one because I love Eileen Rodgers' voice however you'd probably do best with the Lupone version since it has more of a full Broadway orchestrated sound.

Get the Lupone one. I absolutely hated the NT staging. I thought John Barrowman was extremely plastic (he's had more plastic surgery than Cher!) and I thought Sally Ann Triplett was like a 3rd rate Rachel York.

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definitely the Lupone revival

The 1987 Patti Lupone version. It has Howard McGillin singing an absolutely GORGEOUS rendition of "Easy to Love".

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I can tell you one NOT to get: the 1956 movie soundtrack with Bing Crosby, Mitzi Gaynor and Donald O'Connor (on Decca).
The movie dropped the plot kept only 5 songs, adding "It's Delovely" from RED HOT AND BLUE and 3 new (and forgettable) songs by Van Heusen and Cahn. The performances are not bad but the sound quality on this recording is very poor and many performances are not even from the actual film.

You can also skip the Mary Martin album (on DRG), originally a 10-inch LP covering 6 songs plus and Overture and Finale in very untheatrical arrangements.

The original 1934 version has only been recorded once by a studio cast (on EMI) in 1989. The cast headed by Kim Criswell, Cris Groenendaal, Jack Gilford and Frederica Von Stade is uneven, but the orchestra and chorus are smashing and ONLY on this disc do you get songs like "Where are the Men?", "What a Joy t be Young" and "Kate the Great." The songs are presented in the order heard on opening night in 1934. The show is not performed this way any longer, but this disc gives a good idea of what it would have been like if cast albums were made back then.

Of the revised versions I prefer the London cast with Elaine Paige (First Night) over Patti LuPone's somewhat sloppily sung Lincoln Center theatre version (RCA.) The 1962 cast headed by Eileen Rogers and Hal Lindon (Epic) is lively but the skimpy orchstrations make it less than enjoyable. However this revision includes other Porter songs not used in 1934 or 1987, and this is the version most often staged by community theatre groups.

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