Search - Original Cast Recording :: Mame (Eco-Friendly Packaging)

Angela is Mame!

Byron Kolln | the corner where Broadway meets Hollywood | 05/04/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In 1964, Angela Lansbury took her first big, bold step into the world of Broadway musical theatre, with the role of corrupt mayoress Cora Hoover Hooper in Sondheim's nine-performance flop "Anyone Can Whistle". Such an experience might have scared a lesser actress off the boards forever - but when Jerry Herman's MAME burst onto the stage two years later, so did Angela Lansbury...and a bonafide Broadway legend was born!



Much has been written about MAME, needless to say it's a benchmark work in musical theatre. Angela Lansbury's performance has never quite been equalled, although there were several fine successers during the original run (Celeste Holm, Jane Morgan, Ann Miller and Janis Paige among them). You need only play some of the songs to realise how much Mame became Lansbury - or vice versa. She won the first of her many Tony Awards for the performance.



Surrounding Lansbury in the supporting cast is the divine Bea Arthur (who netted the show another Tony Award playing the boozy, bitchy barb Vera Charles - "Bosom Buddies" anyone?!); Jane Connell is frumpy nanny Agnes Gooch, who opens a new window and ends up with much more than she bargained for in the process; and Jerry Lanning plays the adult Patrick (you won't hear a more affecting, emotional reprise of "My Best Girl").



This is an identical reissue of the earlier 1999 Broadway Masterworks pressing (including those joyous Jerry Herman/Alice Borden demo recordings) but in a new cardboard eco-pack sleeve."