ON THE RECORD: Jim Dale and Glenn Close in Busker Alley and a ... - Playbill.com

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This week's column discusses the York Theatre's benefit concert recording of Busker Alley, with Jim Dale and Glenn Close, and a premiere recording of two concertos by Vernon Duke.

Oh it's great to have a big deal, ticket-sellin' star, sure, and an expensive proposition too. One of the many related costs is that extra insurance policy you need to take. This helps cover costs when the star is out sick and everybody demands a refund. But you also have the case where the star is unable to return to the show for an extended period, or never. If you are properly covered, you have an abandonment clause that will cover the initial investment. Close the show, get your money back.

The best example of this, perhaps, is a dire and mirthless 1974 musical called Miss Moffat. Bette Davis sold plenty of tickets, and no wonder. But they opened in Philly and it was lousy. I mean, you felt like you were watching two-and-a-half hours of mud. After a week of performances, Ms. Davis wrenched her back and was unable to continue (or at least, her doctors so certified). The insurance man said, in effect: a) you can put on the understudy until Bette is able to return, and we'll cover losses; b) you can replace Bette with someone else — maybe Joan Crawford is available? — and we'll foot the bill for rehearsals, new costumes, and everything else in between; or, c) you can close right now and we'll write a check covering the entire loss.

If you think the show is so good, even without that star, you plunge on and go ahead. Which is more or less what happened when Bob Fosse suffered a heart attack during the rehearsals of Chicago. They put everything in mothballs until he was sufficiently recovered, and then went ahead. With Miss Moffat, the producers were wise to collect the insurance money and pay back the investors. This didn't help the actors, who were banking on a Broadway credit and enough work weeks to qualify for unemployment insurance, but then — that's show business. So the investors of Miss Moffat came out whole, while the investors of some such concurrent show as Mack & Mabel — which was flawed but easily 30 times better — lost it all.

That was the end of Busker Alley until November 2006, when the York Theatre presented it for a one-night fundraiser directed by Tony Walton (who knew quite a bit about the world of buskers from his London days, and who also designed the Tommy Tune tour). The resulting CD reveals a score that is a whole lot more interesting than one might have expected. Credit, to an enormous extent, rests in the hands of Jim Dale; he simply charms his way through the score (13 songs, he has), and makes you want to see him do it in person. That Dale is good is no surprise; he arrived stateside at the Circle in the Square in 1974 playing a zany version of Moliere's Scapin, under the title Scapino, and I confess that I am still laughing from that performance.

Busker Alley might make a stage vehicle for Dale if only it was stronger, but there's the rub. The songs, by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman of "Mary Poppins" fame, are rather charming, and offers the listener an entertaining hour's worth. But the Busker score is full of music hall-type turns, and after a while they do seem to be interchangeable. This was a problem, to an even greater extent, with the Sherman's first Broadway musical, Over Here!: it all sounded the same. (Mind you, I was so unenamored, sitting at the Shubert, that I still have never had the desire to break the wrapper on my Over Here! LP.) Busker has a good deal of lilt to it, but after listening three or four times, few of the songs stand out. The musical arrangements, from Aaron Gandy and Mark York, sound especially good considering they are working with only five pieces. But the Sherman brothers give us too much sameness.

The York seems to have gone all out for this reading of the show, which seems to some extent to have been propelled by the energetic Mr. Walton. Lending a hand to the fundraising effort, Glenn Close — whose career was given a boost when she played Dale's wife in Barnum — contributed her participation. She is present on the CD delivering an opening and closing speech (within the context of the show), and sings the closing ballad (a reprise of "He Had a Way"). Jessica Grové plays the girl — this is the one about the middle-aged veteran who takes the youngster under his wing, only to watch her scale the heights and leave him behind — but without the impact of Dale; in fairness, her material seems considerably weaker. George S. Irving and Anne Rogers serve as a couple of folksy oldtimers, with plenty of relish and a slather of marmite. Mr. Irving is well-known hereabouts; he might even rank number one on our local longest-active list, having first trod the boards on the opening night of Oklahom