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THE MOST HAPPY FELLA (CDTER3 1260)
Not so much a musical, more a …

We assess the splendid new recording of Frank Loesser's classic Broadway show, the fullest yet. How does it match up to its predecessors? And how has this remarkable old score held up over the years?
 
Cast: Louis Quilico (Tony), Emily Loesser (Rosabella), Karen Ziemba (Cleo), Richard Muenz (Joey), Nancy Shade (Marie), Don Stephenson (Herman), William Burden (The Doctor), Michael Gruber (Clem), Guy Stroman (Jake), George Dvorsky (Al), Stephen Davis (Pasquale), Alfred Boe (Guiseppe), Joseph Shovelton (Ciccio), George Lee Andrews (Postman), Walter Charles (Cashier), Jo Sullivan (Sullivan), with the National Symphony Orchestra directed by John Owen Edwards.
 
Complete performance with full dialogue. Also bonus tracks: House and Garden; Tony and Marie duet/ Nobody's Gonna Love You Like I Love You; Eyes Like A Stranger; Is It Fair?/ Warm All Over; Old People Gotta Sit Dere An' Die; I'll Buy Everybody A Beer; Wanting To Be Wanted
 
 
Books on the American musical will tell you that Frank Loesser's musical-come-opera, The Most Happy Fella, was a great hit on the White Way when it was first seen in 1956. The British production at the Coliseum (with an imported but generally unstarry cast) was notably less successful in 1960. There was a general agreement that this was an important - certainly a dignified - work, something rather out of the ordinary, with a score that aimed higher than the usual run of musical plays. Long before dialogue became rare in British musicals, Loesser wrote a piece that was almost completely sung-through. As if to prove its quality, the show was rewarded with a full recording by its original New York cast, filling three long-playing records. That recording has long been a classic of the gramophone, but now That's Entertainment has lovingly prepared a new recording (it takes up three CDs) containing not only every note of the original score, but a generous helping of numbers written for the show but cut before it took its final form.
 
This has clearly been a mammoth task, and John Yap is to be congratulated on a very considerable achievement, as are his strong cast. In quality of sound, this sometimes electrifying performance clearly leads the way above its rivals, and in the breadth of its content it is unrivalled. In fact, some of its chief pleasures are to be found where they are least expected.
 
Things begin wonderfully well with John Owen Edwards gripping the score in the opening bars as if his life depended on it, and the National Symphony Orchestra give him everything at their disposal, responding to every nuance of Loesser's score and Don Walker's superlative original Broadway orchestrations The sparkling playing does not weaken throughout the entire recording, even when the show's longueurs - and it has considerable longueurs, when you really feel the show is being padded out - test one's patience. The constantly interrupting Italian barbershop numbers are exciting in their way (listen to their storming opening number, 'Abbondanza') but they do go on a bit, and don't really promote the plot (a plot that, it has to be said, is pretty slight, unlikely, and not very politically correct).
 
It is good to have Emily Loesser, the daughter of the composer and of Loesser's wife, the actress Jo Sullivan (who played the original Rosabella) here playing the nice, suppliant little waitress who becomes a mail order bride for an ageing, illiterate, and none too attractive farmer from Napa Valley, Tony Esposito, who sees her in a Frisco restaurant. Emily Loesser manages to suggest Rosabella's vulnerability and easy charm in a thoroughly convincing performance that immediately wins our interest and sympathy. She underpins her integrity with an opening scene that culminates in a perfectly lovely account of 'Somebody Somewhere'. Without her presence, this set would be very much the poorer.
 
As her waitress friend Cleo, the show's female comedy lead, Karen Ziemba can't really disguise the fact that she doesn't have much of a part. Cleo's best number comes at the very top of the show ('Ooh, My Feet'), after which she takes a very back seat in the proceedings. Ziemba is good, but the role doesn't really allow her to take wing, and even she can't really make much of one of the most protracted of the dialogue sequences, her 'pasting' sequence with the farmhand Herman. Has anyone ever made this scene funny? But Ziemba does come to life in the long first scene opposite Loesser, bringing a gritty warmth with her. I've always thought it a pity that Loesser didn't extend Cleo's participation in one of the show's most joyful numbers, 'Happy To Make Your Acquaintance', a song that somehow gets buried in the overladen arrangement.
 
It is Herman who (quite early in the first act) gets the show's one real 'hit' number, 'Standing On The Corner', clearly the stand out, although Loesser doesn't attempt to reprise it. Herman's is a more substantial role than Cleo's. He gets the lion's share of two minor but attractive items, 'I Like Everybody' and the last minute 'I Made A Fist'. Together, they also have one of the biggest of the production numbers, the riotous 'Big D', but this is a number that seems to me to sit awkwardly in the show's framework. It's well enough done here, without really coming off. It seems like more padding. Don Stephenson's Herman is certainly friendly, but his sometimes over-accentuated Texas whine becomes a little irritating. It doesn't make you want to rush back to his tracks, and the potentially thrilling 'I Made A Fist' is strangely anti-climactic.
 
Much more successful are the other secondary leads. As the virile charge-hand Joey who impregnates Rosabella on her wedding night, Richard Muenz manages a well-rounded characterisation when Loesser has only sketched it in. The truth is that after his first act aria, 'Joey, Joey', Muenz all but vanishes from the scene and from the score, with almost nothing worthwhile left to sing. Nevertheless, he makes the most of things, delivering a very fine version of one of Loesser's most moving songs, and this is a point at which everything comes together to create a little gem of theatrical effectiveness. Such a feeling is not always present at crucial moments of this recording. It can sound boxed-in by its sound when it needs to be open-aired.
 
Also on the margins is Tony's unhappy and embittered sister Marie, played by Nancy Shade. The role originally had a central place in the show but was drastically cut back by the producers who were determined to slice the show's length. From her very first entrance, Shade makes this woman real, bringing depth to her minor character. Shade would remain only a minor player in this new issue if it were not for the generous bonus tracks in which Marie's cut material is prominently featured. These give an invaluable insight into Loesser's intentions, and alone make this set indispensable to the student of musical theatre. By the end of the three discs one knows that Shade's contribution is one of the best here. The bonus tracks have other delights in store, not least a touching (if relatively weak) little ballad for Rosabella, 'House and Garden' and - most touchingly of all, ending the recording, the composer's widow (and mother of Emily) Jo Sullivan - the first Rosabella - singing Loesser's first version of 'Wanting To Be Wanted'. It's a great moment, and we can clearly hear how drastically Loesser altered his first conception of this important aria.
 
Central to it all, of course, is the most happy fella himself. He is played here by the late distinguished opera singer Louis Quilico in a role that he frequently played on stage. Quilico sometimes rises magnificently to the challenges of Loesser's demanding score, notably in the two great arias, 'Rosabella' and 'Mamma, Mamma', ardently delivered. If his performance here and there sounds not quite finished and in some ways underpowered, it nevertheless yields much pleasure, even if it doesn't eclipse the original Broadway Tony of Robert Weede.
 
The reservations about some facets of this new set shouldn't deter anyone from investing in it. The moments of sheer loveliness are many, and one can only marvel at Loesser's brilliant writing and the width of his vision. This show is still one of the glories of the American theatre. Quite rightly, Don Walker's name is prominently listed below that of the composer whose work he orchestrated, for he constructs sounds for the orchestra that will enchant any listener. The new set easily disqualifies the one-LP British cast recording, with its over-operatic Rosabella and a cast that doesn't really get a chance to prove itself in the constricted circumstances, and - perhaps an over-riding factor to some - the sound is first-class.

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