CDs Now Available:

Cats: Highlights From The Motion Picture Soundtrack
(Republic - new on CD/mp3/at iTunes)
Songs from the 2019 motion picture. Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber; lyrics by T.S. Eliot. "Overture," "Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats," "The Old Gumbie Cat" (Rebel Wilson and Robbie Fairchild), "The Rum Tum Tugger" (Jason Derulo), "Bustopher Jones: The Cat About Town" (James Corden), "Mungojerrie And Rumpleteazer" (Danny Collins and Naoimh Morgan and Francesca Hayward), "Old Deuteronomy" (Robbie Fairchild), "Beautiful Ghosts (Victoria’s Song)" (Francesca Hayward), "Magical Gus" (Andrew Lloyd Webber), "Gus: The Theatre Cat" (Ian McKellen), "Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat" (Steven McRae and Robbie Fairchild), "Macavity" (Taylor Swift), "Mr. Mistoffelees" (Laurie Davidson), "Memory" (Jennifer Hudson), "The Addressing Of Cats" (Judi Dench), "Beautiful Ghosts" (Taylor Swift).

Colette Collage
(Kritzerland - new on CD)
1994 studio cast album. Music by Harvey Schmidt. Book and lyrics by Tom Jones. Judy Kaye, Judy Blazer, Jason Graae, George Lee Andrews, Rita Gardner, Jonathan Freeman and more. Orchestrations by Larry Moore. Produced by Bruce Kimmel. Limited to 500 copies only. Available at Kritzerland.com.

DIGITAL RECORDINGs Now Available:

Little Shop of Horrors digital
(Ghostlight Records - new digital album on mp3/at iTunes)
2019 Off-Broadway cast recording of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken score. Jonathan Groff, Tammy Blanchard, Christian Borle, Tom Alan Robbins, Kingsley Leggs, Ari Groover, Salome Smith, Joy Woods, Stephen Berger, Chris Dwan , Kris Roberts, Chelsea Rurbin, Eric Wright, Teddy Yudain. "Prologue / Little Shop Of Horrors," "Skid Row (Downtown)," "Da-Doo," "Grow For Me," "Ya Never Know," "Somewhere That's Green," "Closed For Renovation," "Dentist!," "Mushnik And Son," "Sudden Changes," "Feed Me (Git It!)," "Now (It's Just The Gas)," "Act 1 Finale," "Call Back In The Morning," "Suddenly Seymour," "Suppertime," "The Meek Shall Inherit," "Sominex / Suppertime (Reprise)," "Somewhere That's Green (Reprise)," "Da-Doo (Reprise)," "Finale (Don't Feed The Plants)." Music Supervisor, Orchestrator, Arranger Will Van Dyke. Album produced by Alan Menken, Will Van Dyke, Frank Wolf, Michael Mayer. Also at GhostlightRecords.com. Physical CD release expected in the future.

BOOKs Now Available:

Broadway Musicals, Show by Show, 9th edition
(Applause - Paperback Book)
By Stanley Green and Cary Ginell. Newly updated edition (first published in 1985). Includes many of the most important and memorable productions of American musical theater, including revivals. Arranged chronologically, beginning with musicals from just after the Civil War. Trends in musical theater and capsule features on the most significant musicals of the day. This edition documents important musicals produced since the end of the 2012–2013 season through spring 2019. Features statistics and inside information, critical reception, cast lists, pithy commentary about each show, and numerous detailed indexes. 544 pages.

Costume at the National Theatre
(Oberon Books - Paperback Book)
Companion to the 2019-2020 National Theatre showcase Costume exhibition. Lavish large-format photographic book featuring the extraordinary work of the costume department that will appeal to fans of theatre, costume and fashion. 208 pages.

Good Nights Out: A History of Popular British Theatre 1940–2015
(Methuen Drama - Hardcover Book)
By Aleks Sierz. A thematic survey of commercially successful London stage productions over the past 75 years... from R. F. Delderfield's Worm's Eye View and Hugh Hastings's Seagulls Over Sorrento, to The Mousetrap and The Phantom of the Opera. 240 pages.

Staging America: Twenty-First-Century Dramatists
(Methuen Drama - Hardcover Book/Kindle Edition)
By Christopher Bigsby. Explores the lives and works of eight award-winning playwrights—including Ayad Akhtar, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Young Jean Lee and Quiara Allegría Hudes—whose backgrounds reflect the social, religious, sexual and national diversity of American society. Each chapter is devoted to a single playwright and provides an overview of their career, a description and critical evaluation of their work, as well as a sense of their reception. Draws on primary sources, including the playwrights' own commentaries and notes, and contemporary reviews. 248 pages.

MUSIC to be released this Friday, December 20:

Little Shop of Horrors digital
(Ghostlight Records - new digital album)
2019 Off-Broadway cast recording of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken score. Jonathan Groff, Tammy Blanchard, Christian Borle, Tom Alan Robbins, Kingsley Leggs, Ari Groover, Salome Smith, Joy Woods, Stephen Berger, Chris Dwan , Kris Roberts, Chelsea Rurbin, Eric Wright, Teddy Yudain. "Prologue / Little Shop Of Horrors," "Skid Row (Downtown)," "Da-Doo," "Grow For Me," "Ya Never Know," "Somewhere That's Green," "Closed For Renovation," "Dentist!," "Mushnik And Son," "Sudden Changes," "Feed Me (Git It!)," "Now (It's Just The Gas)," "Act 1 Finale," "Call Back In The Morning," "Suddenly Seymour," "Suppertime," "The Meek Shall Inherit," "Sominex / Suppertime (Reprise)," "Somewhere That's Green (Reprise)," "Da-Doo (Reprise)," "Finale (Don't Feed The Plants)." Music Supervisor, Orchestrator, Arranger Will Van Dyke. Album produced by Alan Menken, Will Van Dyke, Frank Wolf, Michael Mayer. Currently at GhostlightRecords.com. Physical CD release expected in the future.

Recordings RECENTLY MADE AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER:

Kiss Me, Kate
(Ghostlight Records - new on CD)
2019 Broadway revival cast recording of Cole Porter score. Featuring Kelli O'Hara, Will Chase and Corbin Bleu, with Darius Barnes, Preston Truman Boyd, Will Burton, Derrick Cobey, Jesmille Darbouze, Rick Faugno, Haley Fish, Tanya Haglund, Erica Mansfield, Marissa McGowan, Sarah Meahl, Justin Prescott, Christine Cornish Smith, Sherisse Springer, Sam Strasfeld, and Travis Waldschmidt. Orchestrations by Larry Hochman. Music direction by Paul Gemignani. Album produced by Kurt Deutsch and Lawrence Manchester. "Another Op'nin', Another Show," "Why Can't You Behave," "Wunderbar," "So in Love," "We Open in Venice," "Tom, Dick, or Harry," "I've Come to Wive It Wealthily in Padua," "I Hate Men," "Were Thine That Special Face," "Kiss Me, Kate (Act 1 Finale)," "Too Darn Hot," "Where Is the Life That Late I Led," "Always True to You in My Fashion," "Bianca," "So in Love (Reprise)," "Brush Up Your Shakespeare," "I Am Ashamed That People Are So Simple," "Kiss Me, Kate (Reprise)." Recording date: Monday, April 22. Album produced by Kurt Deutsch and Lawrence Manchester. Released earlier on mp3 and at iTunes. Also at GhostlightRecords.com.

Show Boat
(Criterion Collection - new on Blu-ray/DVD)
1936 film based on the musical. Score by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. Book by Hammerstein. Directed by James Whale. New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the blu-ray. Audio commentary from 1989 featuring Miles Kreuger; new interview with James Whale biographer James Curtis; Recognizing Race in "Show Boat," a new interview program featuring professor and author Shana L. Redmond; Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist (1979), an Academy Award–winning short documentary by Saul J. Turell, newly restored; two performances from the sound prologue of the 1929 film version of Show Boat, plus twenty minutes of silent excerpts from the film, with audio commentary by Kreuger; two radio adaptations of Show Boat, featuring stage and screen cast members Allan Jones, Helen Morgan, Charles Winninger, plus actor Orson Welles and novelist Edna Ferber; essay by critic Gary Giddins. Currently at Criterion.com. Other purchasing links expected soon.

Books RECENTLY MADE AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER:

Dancing Man: A Broadway Choreographer's Journey
(Univ Press of Mississippi - Hardcover Book)
By Bob Avian, with Tom Santopietro. Bob Avian's life story, a memoir in three acts. Act I reveals the origins of one of Broadway's legendary choreographers who appeared onstage with stars like Barbra Streisand and Mary Martin all before he was thirty. Act II includes teaching Katharine Hepburn how to sing and dance in Coco and working with Stephen Sondheim and Michael Bennett while helping to choreograph the original productions of Company and Follies. During this time, Avian won a Tony Award as the co-choreographer of A Chorus Line and produced Dreamgirls. In Act III, Avian choreographed Julie Andrews's return to the New York stage, devised all of the musical staging for Miss Saigon and Sunset Boulevard, and directed A Chorus Line on Broadway. He worked with the biggest names on Broadway, including Andrew Lloyd Webber, Carol Burnett, Jennifer Holliday, Patti LuPone, Elaine Stritch, and Glenn Close. Candid, witty, sometimes shocking, and always entertaining, here is the ultimate up-close and personal insider's view from a front row seat ... of Broadway musicals of the past fifty years. 240 pages.

OTHER NEW ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Added, non release date:

Broadway Bounty Hunter
(Ghostlight Records - new album)
Original cast album of score by Joe Iconis. Cast includes Annie Golden, Alan H. Green, Brad Oscar, Emily Borromeo, Shiro Jin; Badia Farha, Jasmine Forsberg, Omar Garibay, Jared Joseph, Christina Sajous. Album Joe Iconis and Charlie Rosen, and co-produced by Geoffrey Ko and Ian Kagey, with Jennifer Ashley Tepper serving as executive producer. To be released later this season.

Compiled by Talkin' Broadway Staff.