{"id":3249,"date":"2010-12-09T23:16:04","date_gmt":"2010-12-10T04:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/?p=3249"},"modified":"2010-12-10T05:29:25","modified_gmt":"2010-12-10T10:29:25","slug":"recording-the-ladies-who-lunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/?p=3249","title":{"rendered":"Recording “The Ladies Who Lunch”"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the original Broadway cast<\/a> of Company<\/a> <\/em>went into the Columbia recording studios to lay down the revolutionary\u00a0Sondheim score, theatre fans were afforded an incredible opportunity as documentary filmmaker\u00a0D.A. Pennebaker<\/a> was on hand to tape\u00a0the marathon 18 hour session. It was to be the first\u00a0in a\u00a0series, but the full project never materialized. But this one session became\u00a0the legendary Original Cast\u00a0Album: Company<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0Before present union regulations, the tradition was that a cast album was recorded on the first day off after opening night. In that one day. It was a marathon session which started early in the morning and would usually take up the entire day and often go well past midnight.<\/p>\n

Sitting like lords in the sound booth, Sondheim and 12 time Grammy winning record producer Thomas Z. Shepard<\/a> give input and feedback regarding individual performances.\u00a0Producer-director Harold Prince<\/a> is also on hand to observe.\u00a0But it’s mostly Sondheim and Shepard running things, conferring with conductor Harold Hastings, orchestra\u00a0and performers. It’s quite clear that the original cast album is the definitive performance and everyone and everything must be perfect, down to the last note. Therefore, Sondheim asks Beth Howland<\/a> that she sing rather than speak more of the patter of “Getting Married Today” and they re-do “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” when a wrong note is heard in the tight three part harmony.\u00a0Dean Jones,<\/a> whose singing on the album has always sounded impassioned to me, stands at the microphone like an automaton throughout most of the session.<\/p>\n

But the most memorable\u00a0segment was the notorious\u00a0attempt to record Elaine Stritch<\/a>‘s “The Ladies Who Lunch.” Coming at the end of the session, Stritch tries her hardest to get out her showstopper. She’s in her trademark tights and long button-down shirt. No make-up and her hair askew. However, for a variety of reasons\u00a0 – physical exhaustion, vocal fatigue included\u00a0– she just can’t nail it. She gives it her all, but to the disappointment of those in the booth\u00a0her takes are lackluster. Sondheim suggests taking it down\u00a0a half tone, Stritch’s response is that she can do it if she takes her hat off (among similar signs of nerves and exhaustion). It doesn’t go well, and in fact\u00a0each take gets progressively\u00a0worse\u00a0as the session progresses. Tensions arise\u00a0with an impatient record producer and a perfectionist composer struggling to figure out how to fix the problem. Eventually we cut to\u00a0Stritch screaming at her own performance\u00a0on the playback.<\/p>\n

It’s decided to have the\u00a0orchestra lay down the track and to have\u00a0Elaine come in and record over it another day. When she returns to the studio several days later, it’s like night and day – Stritch coiffed\u00a0in full hair and makeup for the show – hits the home run heard on the cast album. A triumph for all. In the DVD commentary<\/a>, Hal Prince suggests that Stritch might have been playing to the cameras in the room – even down to the hair and makeup. Stritch denies it outright – that she was at her worst and quite humiliated and insecure and that she doesn’t even remember where she ended up that night.\u00a0The star also talks about how hurt she was to hear Shepard say, “Once more from the top. Sung.”<\/p>\n

Pennebaker,\u00a0using just\u00a0three hand held cameras captured the entire day of recording and\u00a0whittled it down into\u00a0this hour-long documentary showcasing the hard work that goes into the creation of a cast album. It’s a shame he wasn’t able to do his full series (I can’t imagine what the Follies <\/em>session must have been like with all the devastating cuts Capitol\u00a0insisted\u00a0upon\u00a0for the record)\u00a0Who knew making a cast album could be so riveting? (And yes, one of those 12 Grammys was for Company<\/em>).<\/p>\n

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When the original Broadway cast of Company went into the Columbia recording studios to lay down the revolutionary\u00a0Sondheim score, theatre fans were afforded an incredible opportunity as documentary filmmaker\u00a0D.A. Pennebaker was on hand to tape\u00a0the marathon 18 hour session. It was to be the first\u00a0in a\u00a0series, but the full project never materialized. But this one … Continue reading Recording “The Ladies Who Lunch”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1608,1134,1135,1996,1617],"class_list":["post-3249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-company","tag-d-a-pennebaker","tag-documentary","tag-elaine-stritch","tag-stephen-sondheim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3249"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3252,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3249\/revisions\/3252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theatreaficionado.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}