Ever wanted to take a vicarious peek into a recording studio of Broadway stars preparing to make a cast recording? This DVD captures the grueling eighteen and a half hour marathon recording session with the cast and production team as they record the Company Original Cast Album.

Three hand held cameras were used by D A Pennebaker, Jim Desmond and Richard Leacock to capture the long session and the end result is a fifty-eight minute documentary which captures the highs and lows of this recording session. This is even more remarkable because the idea of reality television had not even been conceived when this recording was done.

While there are some stand-out numbers that are performed by the cast (for example, Susan Browning's "You Could Drive A Person Crazy" and Dean Jones' "Being Alive"), the main appeal of this DVD is the behind-the-scenes action that is featured.

The frustration on the faces of Stephen Sondheim (the composer and lyricist) and Harold Prince (the director) is so palpable that viewers can almost feel their tension and stress in the recording studio. Sondheim is a perfectionist and he goes to correct singers who sing a "F sharp" note rather than an "A" in a song but he does it in such a congenial manner that the mistake is seldom repeated.

That is until Elaine Stritch sings the final recorded song "The Ladies Who Lunch". By this time, it is already four a.m. in the morning and Stritch is the only performer left  in the studio because the other members of the cast were not required for the song. Stritch is exhausted but admirably still goes through more than 8 takes of the song before Prince and Sondheim decide that they had reached diminishing returns and that it would be better if they continued the recording of the song some other day. To my untrained ear, I actually thought that she had turned in rather decent performances in her takes. 

A short clip of the subsequent attempt shows Stritch nailing the song and it is only then did I realise how much better she sounded compared to the day when she was tired.

The DVD contains a commentary feature by Prince, Stritch and Pennebaker thirty years after the documentary was filmed and also includes the additional music track 'Have I Got A Girl From You".

This is a good DVD to get which showcases the process and events that take place in the recording studio. It is just unfortunate though that this turned out to be the only one of a series of cast recording sessions that was originally planned.

 Reviewed on 19 July 2004