TENDERLOIN (DRG 94770)

- It didn't get to London, and it isn't in the first league of American
musicals, but Tenderloin is full of period flavour. We compare the
new 2000 original cast recording with the first Broadway edition of 1960.

Music by Jerry Bock. Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. Book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman, based on the novel by Samuel Hopkins Adams.

Cast: Patrick Wilson (Tommy), David Ogden Stiers (Reverend Brock), Yvette Carson (Gertie), Debbie Gravitte (Nita), Jessica Stone (Margie), Sara Gettelfinger (Liz), Guy Paul (Purdy), Tom Alan Robbins (Joe), Stanley Bojarski (Martin), Melissa Rain Anderson (Jessica), Sarah Uriate Berry (Laura), Bruce MacVittie (Frye), Kevin Conway (Lt Schmidt) etc., with the Coffee Club Orchestra conducted by Rob Fisher.

Overture; Bless This Land; Little Old New York; Dr Brock; Artificial Flowers; What's In It For You?; Reform; Tommy, Tommy; The Picture of Happiness; Dear Friend; The Army of the Just; How the Money Changes Hands; Entr'acte; Good Clean Fun; My Miss Mary; My Gentle Young Johnny; The Trial

'Keep your hands off little old New York' sing the prostitutes of the West Side of Manhattan's Tenderloin district in the 1890s, warning off reformers who want to clean up the streets. But Tenderloin's writers didn't heed the advice.

Following their very substantial success with Fiorello!, the musical biography of the do-gooding New York Mayor Fiorello H. la Guardia, lyricist Sheldon Harnick and composer Jerry Bock again used New York as the setting of their next show. Tenderloin was seen on Broadway in October 1960, but after a critical drubbing was off within six months. London didn't get to see it. It starred the eminent British 'classical' actor Maurice Evans as the Protestant minister the Reverend Dr Brock, whose mission is to put a stop to sex. Here is a star of a musical who is a straight-laced obsessive, considered by the critic Walter Kerr as a man 'who wants to eliminate the production numbers. Tenderloin is the most serious musical comedy I ever saw. It begins with a hymn in a Park Avenue church, and thereafter gets soberer and soberer and soberer.' Another critic, John McClain, thought 'The trouble with the play is that it is very difficult to have so much fun with vice and corruption and then make a monument of the guy who is going to break it all up.'

In an age when the management and the public couldn't wait to get their hands on a cast album, the Broadway cast put down the score in a one-day session, and the pressed record was available in the shops only a matter of hours later. Now, we have a new recording of the show performed by a cast assembled for the production seen as part of the New York Encores! series. They are an attractive bunch, too, led by a personable Dr Brock in David Ogden Stiers, an actor who should be first up if there is ever a musical about Burl Ives, for whom he sounds and looks a dead ringer. His Dr Brock is vigorous without being overbearing, and he relaxes admirably in what is surely one of the show's loveliest songs, 'Dear Friend' (not to be confused with Bock and Harnick's other song of the same name in She Loves Me). For me, this is Tenderloin's most captivating offering, and it has exactly the right momentum here. It's the only point in the show when Tenderloin manages to be completely charming.

As the handsome young scandal sheet journalist Tommy Howatt, Patrick Wilson is winning and fresh, relishing the pathetic (in the best sense) parody of 'Artificial Flowers', in which Bock shows how capable he is of turning out a 'period' parlour room ballad of sickening sentimentality. It vindicates Bock's intention that the score should 'sound true to time and place'. Wilson also gives the punchy 'The Picture of Happiness' much more of a raunchy going-over than his 1960 counterpart, the admirable Ron Husmann. Indeed, Mr Wilson is really one of the best reasons for buying this CD, for he has admirable clarity, attack and enough feeling to walk off with the honours.

The gaggle of females (most of them of ill-repute) that make up most of the rest of the cast are mainly kept to the several production numbers, most enjoyably in 'Little Old New York' and the great first act closer 'How the Money Changes Hands'. Bock and Harnick apparently wrote the latter on the road in just over an hour. It has a suggestion of the brilliance of their 'Little Tin Box' from Fiorello!, and gets a satisfactory work-out here. Even so, I think the 1960 version has a little more punch, and a wonderful spoken ending that for some reason has been dropped for the new recording.

On the side of virtue, Sarah Uriate Berry is the sweet society belle Laura, seizing her moment in the spotlight with 'Tommy, Tommy', a touching little aria that bursts with feeling, but otherwise she has little to do. As Nita, Debbie Gravitte is at the forefront of the girls championing vice in the Tenderloin, revealing her true feelings in a song that seems unexpectedly heart-tugging, the haunting 'My Gentle Young Johnny'. It's a welcome moment, especially as it comes in a second act that is musically weak, and Gravitte pulls it off well. She doesn't surpass the 1960 Nita, the marvellous Eileen Rodgers, whose voice had an emotional intensity that was always at the ready. Gravitte sings it very well, but Rodgers performs it.

But the results are more than satisfactory. The old score is superbly played by the Coffee Club Orchestra under Rob Fisher. You won't hear it handled better, or choral sequences more tightly executed. The sound is first class, clearly eclipsing the 1960 record. The insatiable admirer of Tenderloin will not want to be without Maurice Evans and his company (and, anyway, wasn't Evans rather better than he has ever had credit for?) but Hugh Fordin's production of this new recording shines up the piece like a new pin.

The only cause for regret is that the opportunity to record some of the lost and cut numbers from the show on the new disc has been missed. As it is, beyond a so-so Entr'acte and a few other incidental bits and bobs, there is little more material than on the 1960 disc. The reissue of the 1960 version also had better booklet notes, and some attractive production photographs.

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