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BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S (Original Cast Records 2 CD set: OC 2100)
 
- Closed before it got the chance to open on Broadway, Bob Merrill's
adaptation of Truman Capote's famous novel has a generous score that gets
recorded for the first time
 
Book by Abe Burrows. Music and lyrics by Bob Merrill

Studio cast recording cast: Faith Prince, John Schneider, Hal Linden, Sally Kellerman, Patrick Cassidy, Jonathan Freeman, Ron Raines, Carol Woods, Mario X. Soto
Songs: I've Got a Penny; The Wittiest Fellow in Pittsburgh; Breakfast at Tiffany's; So Here We Are Again; Travelin'; Holly Golightly; Calling All Men; Freddy Chant; Lament For Ten Men; The Party People; When Daddy Comes Home; My Nice Ways; The Home For Wayward Girls; You've Never Kissed Her; Lulamae; The Girl You Used To Be; Hot Damn (Bessie's Blues); Who Needs Her?; Sex Dance; Nothing Is New in New York; Good Girls Go To Heaven; Ciao Compare; The Bachelor; The Rose; Quiet Coffee; Stay With Me; Grade A Treatment; Same Mistakes
 
Admirers of Bob Merrill will need no encouragement to hear this recording of one of his hitherto unheard scores. I was a late convert to Merrill, although for years I had enjoyed his score for Carnival, especially glorious in a seriously underrated British cast recording starring Sally Logan in her first and last West End lead. It was later that I came to appreciate the pleasures of such works as New Girl in Town and Take Me Along (with its glorious performance by the English classical actress Eileen Herlie).
 
As for Breakfast at Tiffany's, it was supposed to be a stomping hit, the most heralded show of its year, but it was to fall casualty to a hard-learned fact: making musicals in the wake of a famous film is fraught with difficulties. Especially when the film had a song that went round the world - 'Moon River' - a number, of course, that wasn't in Merrill's score. For his 1966 musical, impresario David Merrick hired two hugely popular television stars - Mary Tyler Moore, mostly remembered as the TV partner of Dick Van Dyke, and beloved Dr Kildare, alias the impossibly handsome Richard Chamberlain.
But the show was already in deep trouble by the time it premiered in Philadelphia. The critics complained, and poor Moore's valiant efforts at playing the elusive heroine were derided. The Boston Globe told its readers that Moore was 'not merely terrible as Holly but atrocious, as miscast as a television celebrity can be in a Broadway musical'.
 
Bravely, Moore stuck at it, with Merrick's backing, as the show trundled, casting off scenes, actors, songs and putting in new numbers, towards an expectant New York. Abe Burrows' script was thrown to the kerb. The esteemed playwright Edward Albee, who had never been near a musical, was brought in to write a new one, and he disastrously ripped the plot apart and stitched it back together. It was all in vain. On the night before it was due to officially open on Broadway, Merrick pulled the plug on it, paying back theatregoers one of the highest advances of the season. Listening to this great blancmange of numbers, and trying to find a way through its plot, one never doubts that the evening ended up an unholy mess.
 
And that was that, except for a handful of the songs being recorded over the years. Now, 35 years on, we have a remarkably full recording of a show for which Merrill wrote almost 30 numbers. This two-disc issue ingeniously works them all in to one sequence, an amalgam of a score, while giving two separate synopses (the Burrows show and the Albee show, both of which had some Merrill songs that didn't appear in the other version). You will need a degree in mathematics to work it all out, but never mind - through the wonders of CD technology you will be able to programme your own personal performance of either version. So, you can either sit through the amalgam, or arrange a performance of either the Philadelphia or the New York show. It's a fascinating experience that the intrepid musical theatre lover will want to explore.
 
And what awaits them? A feast of Merrill songs, a fabulous collection of sometimes stunning numbers that bear the Merrill hallmarks - they are sexy, sassy, worldly-wise, but equally capable of being innocent and absolutely charming. Wonderfully, after the Broadway closing, Merrick stored Ralph Burns' original orchestrations, eventually donating them to the Library of Congress, and they are used here. They are superb, and under Keith Levenson's musical direction the orchestra does Merrill full justice. The playing is marvellous, responding to every nuance of this big-hearted score. It's obvious that not all of Merrill's songs come out of the top drawer, but everything he does here is propelled with a real energy that carries it along. You never lose the feeling that these songs are from someone who has lived life.
 
It's only left to the performers to meet the challenge and convince us of the show's worth. No one will accuse the new Holly Golightly, Faith Prince, of being atrocious. She sounds as if she is playing it on Broadway, and getting ovations for doing it. From her account of the opening number, the captivating 'I've Got a Penny', she captures that particular quality that Holly needs. We hear it again in the plaintive title song, in which Prince combines strength and sweetness, pinning down Merrill's wistfulness. Her leading man, John Schneider, is perfectly cast, excellent in knocking off another of the show's hits, 'Holly Golightly', (Merrill's original title for the musical). It's a number from a smoke-filled room, a room that Merrill seems to have inhabited forever, and Schneider hits it between the eyes.
 
As Doc Golightly, veteran Hal Linden hands in a model performance. It's a joy to hear how he handles the simple but compelling ballad, 'You've Never Kissed Her' (listen to those orchestrations and the broad New York sound) and he navigates the difficult but haunting 'Lalumae' with a trouper's ease. You will want to linger, too, when he duets with Prince in 'The Girl You Used To Be', a song that has definite echoes of 'Close Your Eyes' from Merrill's New Girl in Town.
 
The only refugee from the original cast is Sally Kellerman who recreates the role of Mag Wildwood. Kellerman must have thought she was dreaming, for this recording not only allows her to do the numbers she sang in the 1966 production, but two others that Merrill wrote for her but were not used. Both of them, 'Good Girls Go To Heaven (But Bad Girls Go Everywhere)', and 'Quiet Coffee' are worth walking miles to hear.
As if all this was not enough, the production is exemplary, and the sound is demonstration stuff. If you're not caught up on Bob Merrill, this may be the recording to tip you over; it doesn't matter that it can be uneven. How could you resist a writer who gets one of female characters to admit
'I once got tipsy on mayonnaise
I had such nice ways!'

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