Bright Star

The other day I posted a couple of songs from the recent Broadway musical Bright Star, that had a score by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, with a book by Martin.  While tracking them down, I came upon this video by chance.

The show, which is based on a true story, ran for 109 performances and got five Tony nominations including Best Musical.  It closed on June 26 of this year...but only about two weeks ago -- on December 12 -- the entire original cast and original stage bad reunited to put on a concert version of the show.  I'm not quite sure why, but perhaps it was to promote the cast album which was nominated for a Grammy.  Though that's awfully uncommon, so who knows?

It's not the full show, but a trimmed down version that focuses mainly on the music, as Steven Martin explains in his very entertaining introduction.  Also worth-watching at the beginning is a song that was cut from the show which he and Edie Brickell perform.  (The song, by the way, won a Grammy in what I assume was a separate presentation than the main Grammy Awards night.)

If you don't want to watch the whole video, but only those first five minutes, I still suggest jumping to the 1:15:40 mark.  That's where Carmen Cusack, who got a Tony nomination for the show as Best Actress in a Musical, sings her gorgeous anthem, "At Long Last."  That's the song I embedded the other day, but it was the audio only.  Needless-to-say, it gets a rousing reaction from the audience -- and since this is just a concert reuntion, she doesn't feel a need to stay in character, and her reaction afterwards is charming.

Also worth jumping to is the Q&A that Martin and Brickell participate in along with the principals that starts at the 1:25:40 mark.  Actually, it starts a couple minutes after that, but you might enjoy the introductory remarks by the album's producer, Peter Asher.  If that name is familiar to you, it's becauses he was half of the popular singer duo in the '60s, Peter and Gordon.

As I said, I don't know exactly why they did this reunion concert -- since not only the concert, but also this video recording are professionally done.  Great video, solid sound (with some hiccups) and well-edited.  Perhaps it's for later broadcast on PBS.  That's my leading guess, as I think of it.  But then, why release it on YouTube.  It's posted by the BroadwayHD group, which has a commercial site, so...I default back to "I don't know."

​But I'm glad they did.