Do Re Mi was an ideal selection for City Center Encores!, a New York series that does concert versions of forgotten Broadway musicals. The show, about a small-time criminal's adventures in the music business, ran for 400 performances from 1960 to1962, but has not been revived onstage since. Its modest failure is usually put down to the book and direction of Garson Kanin, since principals Phil Silvers and
Nancy Walker were accomplished comics and the score by Jule Styne,
Betty Comden, and Adolph Green produced the standard "Make Someone Happy." Though the 1961 original Broadway cast album was a reasonable reproduction of that score, it was a good idea to preserve the City Center concert version, the first recording of the score in 38 years, especially because, in Nathan Lane, the casting equaled that of the original production's Silver. Lane is as ingratiating as usual, and the supporting players, who include Randy Graff,
Brian Stokes Mitchell, and
Heather Headley, are effective. However, unlike City Center's version of Chicago, this abbreviated production did not lead to a full-scale Broadway revival. The score is a pastiche of old ideas, from the rock & roll parody "What's New at the Zoo" to the concluding "All of My Life," which recalls the climactic "Rose's Turn" from Styne's previous show, Gypsy. Do Re Mi is not a case of a great score that was unjustly forgotten due to a bad book; it is a case of a pleasant, minor score, a bad book, and a nationally known star (Silvers was coming off his Sgt. Bilko TV show) who kept it running for a year. Decades later, despite an excellent new recording, the score remains a minor pleasure. (The 75-minute album is again half as long as the 50-minute original Broadway cast recording, largely due to a six-minute courtroom scene not included on the earlier album, and because of the bonus track, a nearly 12-minute interview with Comden, Green, and Styne conducted during the recording of the first album.) ~ William Ruhlmann