Lunch Time Musicals: Archy & Mehitabel and Sadie Thomspon - The Musical

Rating:
Summary: I love it!
Review: Archie and Mehitabel alone is worth twice the price. It' s not eddie bracken or eartha kitt or carol channing, but it is still a great kick in the pants. And I tend to hate musical comedy.

Rating:
Summary: I love it!
Review: Archie and Mehitabel alone is worth twice the price. It' s not eddie bracken or eartha kitt or carol channing, but it is still a great kick in the pants. And I tend to hate musical comedy.

Rating:
Summary: I liked this when I was eight.
Review: I liked this musical in the late 1950s, when I listened to a recording on vinyl. All I remembered, until listing to the above recording this year (2003), was Archy's song about jumping out the window and floating upwards, and about the cat fighting with Archy. The vinyl recording was first sold in 1954, where one of the two authors of the tale was Mel Brooks (THE Mel Brooks, no less). A third production, called Shinbone Alley, is available from Amazon.com in video format. It is animated with people singing. The production being reviewed is from the year 2001. The voices and singing are excellent. Each voice has a distinguished timbre or quality. The words are easy to understand. The music consists of a piano only. The music is a real composition, not merely something to maintain orientation of the singers. The sound balance is fine. This is not an amateur production. The recording is live, before an audience, an, from time to time there is applause or laughter, but these sounds do not in any way detract from the production. Listening to the current production brought back several pleasant memories, e.g., of the songs and fragments of story line, which, somehow had been stored in my mind, laying dormant, for some 40 years. If the original 1954 recording was reissued, I would buy it too. It might have featured a small orchestra, e.g., clarinets and other instruments, but I am not certain.