Composers who put together albums of their songs, especially if they are up and
coming talent who haven’t necessarily had a breakthrough show yet, are often in
something of a bind. Do you go for as diverse a selection of your material as
you can find or do you concentrate on showcasing your strengths – both
approaches have their merits and their disadvantages and I don’t personally
think there is any easy, or right answer.
Act One – Songs from the musicals of Alexander S Bermange is probably closer to the latter option and sure enough,
it has its strengths and its weaknesses.
Bermange has quite a list of credits to his name but has arguably yet to really
mark his mark on the London scene. I only really became aware of him recently when his
show
Thirteen Days had a small run as part of this year’s Arcola’s Grimeborn
Festival. As a musical treatment of the Cuban missile crisis, it was a work of
mixed qualities, not always entirely successful but one which equally showed
intriguing promise, not least in the firmly old-school manner of rousing
song-writing. And that is what comes across most clearly in this collection, which
bypasses the post-Sondheim school to cleave closer to the likes of Schwartz and
balladeer. Oh, and it features a simply sensational cast of sheer quality.
Bermange loves a stirring piano-driven ballad and there are several cracking
examples of the form on this CD. He’s particularly good at writing for more
than one voice, so trios like Shona Lindsay, Dianne Pilkington and Ramin
Karimloo’s passionate I Only Wish For You (one of the best songs on here) and
Ricardo Afonso, Sabrina Aloueche and Cassandra Compton’s intriguing Trial of
the Heart (the female harmonies at 1:34 are some of my favourite ever) are
gorgeously layered, swirling songs of love, loss and drama. Duets like the
delicately understated Enchanted, Ben James-Ellis and Alexia Khadime on great
form, and Mark Evans and Susan McFadden’s sweetly optimistic Higher Than a
Shooting Star is lovely.
The two songs from Thirteen Days sound great here: Anyone But You, the theme of
which recurs throughout the show, is an irresistibly catchy duet, Jenna
Lee-James and Dean Collinson making regret sound exquisite, and Oliver
Tompsett’s driving More Than A Memory seems destined to be a cabaret staple for
young male singers. The marvellous Janie Dee lends immense class to Where’s the
Love?, Sally Ann Triplett strides confidently through Can’t Get Enough and
Linzi Hateley’s aching rendition of If This Could Be Forever is just elegant
perfection.
But, there’s something about the homogeneity of the material here that makes it
run together a little too much. There’s a clear sense of who Bermange is as a
composer but less so of the shows themselves, non-specific feels like too harsh
a comment to make but stripped of their context, several of these songs feel
like they could be interchangeable pop standards where perhaps a little more
diversity in the track-listing might have been better placed.
Lara Pulver’s My Prince is a great example of this, a witty character-driven
song that shows another string to the bow extremely well, but it is very much
the exception to the rule. Far be it from me to end this review on a bit of a
downer though, make no mistake that I love this album. I’m a great fan of new
musical theatre writing to be sure, but I was raised on Disney theme tunes,
Lloyd-Webber and Les Mis and this collection touches on all three of those
reference points to create something that immediately feels warmly familiar and
wonderful.