Customer Reviews

Promenade (1969 Original Off-Broadway Cast)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

One of the most interesting and exciting scores that was penned by the Reverend Al Carmines with book and lyrics by Maria Irenes Fornes for the off-broadway stage in 1965. However this score remains relevant to the 21st Century human condition. Musical lovers a must have.

I have enjoyed this show for years and this new CD pressing is one to have if you like music with an edge. The cast is outstanding. It features Ty McConnell and Gilbert Price as Prisoner 105 and 106. They have escaped from "Prison" for a better life only to encounter Margot Albert, Carrie Wilson, Alice Playten, Marc Allen III, Glenn Kezer, Michael Davis, Edmund Gaynes, Florence Tarlow, Art Ostrin, George S. Irving and Shannon Bolin. Who sing and live their lifes, needless to say 105 and 106 return to "Prison" after viewing what life is really about. Songs include Unrequited Love, Isn't That Clear?, Four, Chicken Is He, A Flower, The Moment Has Passed, The Clothes Make the Man, The Cigarette Song, Two Little Angels, The Passing of Time, Capricious and Fickle, Crown Me, A Poor Man, Little Fool, Listen, I Feel, I Saw a Man, and All is Well in the City.

PROMENADE was a strange - but ultimately profitable - collaboration between the Reverend Al Carmines and Maria Irene Fornes. It opened at the off-Broadway Promenade Theatre in 1969 and ran well into the following year, to glowing reviews.

The plot follows two prisoners on the run from jail, and their encounters with several strange characters. From time to time, the action onstage is interrupted by a bedraggled old lady, looking for her baby...

The amazing cast includes Alice Playten (OLIVER!), Shannon Bolin (DAMN YANKEES), Florence Tarlow, Michael Davis, Anthony Falgo, Margot Albert and Gilbert Price.

Though the liner notes depict several pictures of Madeline Kahn (one of the original cast-members and later star of ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY), she had left the show before the cast album was recorded. Alice Playten stops the show with her bravura rendition of "Capricious and Fickle", while Florence Tarlow is a comical cutup in her song "Chicken is He".

A great cast album, now sadly out-of-print.

For some reason I feel the need to contribute my opinion about this 1969 musical "comedy", which I initially heard on LP 40 years ago now. Yes, it is a strange show, with strange songs. However, strangeness is not necessarily a drawback; and for those of us with open ears, it can be most welcome. It is impossible for me to say which song from this show will be most impressionable to any given listener, as they are all so completely different from each other. But for me, the standouts are "I Saw a Man", with its bluntly forthright verse ("I have to live with my own life, whether you like it or not"); and still what I consider to be one of the greatest theatre songs ever written and performed, "Capricious and Fickle". It is really tragic that the recordings of this show, whether on LP or CD, are so rare now and so expensive. An overlooked treasure.

This is one of the funniest musicals every written. Intelligent, witty, whimsy. Poignant and absurd, it definitely makes a statement about the human condition.

I saw Promenade in real-time, after Kahn had left, and immediately bought the album, and JUST found the CD version. As you can imagine I know every nuance of every song as performed on the album, including their presentation order, which differs on the CD and drives someone like me a little crazy. That said, the music is glorious, the lyrics timeless and beyond emotional, the performances extraordinary. You need to sit down and listen to it, until you memorize it. Go for it.