Despite an accomplished background as both a writer and an actor,
Studs Terkel
has never been known as a playwright. It has been left to other writers to put
Terkel
's works on the stage, and several have given it a shot, including
Arthur Miller
(
The American Clock
) and
Jamie Pachino
Race
). But none of them has had more success than
Stephen Schwartz
, whose
musical
adaptation of
's
Working
has been produced around the world for more than 20 years now. In 1999,
Schwartz
set about the task of updating the
to reflect the changes in the workplace since the show debuted in 1978. The cast recording of the revised production demonstrates the continued relevance and resonance of
's work as well as the evocative range of the songs by
and his five well-known collaborators. The strength of the
is the diversity of the songwriting, which is meant to reflect the diversity of the working men and women of America.
Mary Rodgers
and
James Taylor
are especially effective at capturing the voices of their characters without falling back too readily on
musical theater
cliches. There are one or two clunkers here that suffer in the translation from live performance to recorded soundtrack (
"Neat to Be a Newsboy"
tops that list), but on the whole the soundtrack captures the substance of both the
's book. ~ Evan Cater