Barnum (Musical)
Picture: C
Sound: B- Extras: D Program: B-
Michael Crawford has quite a comeback story to tell. After starring in Disney’s infamous kids
film bomb Condorman, the 1981 British romp, he became one of the stage’s
premiere performers with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera
musical. In that time, he also took on
other roles, including the title role in Barnum, here on DVD in a 1986
taping.
The Musical debuted on Broadway and was a hit in London,
shown here in a 113 minutes version that has a fine cast and solid production
values. The songs are not always
memorable, but part of the problem here is a combination of the fidelity of the
recording and the arrangements that seem to be holding back the material. This is certainly a talented cast backing up
Crawford, but it falls a bit short for what sounds like more to offer.
The set design is fun, recreating the feel of the time,
and Crawford has at least as much high energy as anyone else in the cast. He always stays in character, showing the
legends showmanship through his own.
This is some interesting Musical theater, even if this version seems
lacking in parts.
The full screen, color image was taped in an older analog
format back in 1986 and it shows. The
colors are bordering on the poor side, while definition is problematic. The conversion of such an old tape to DVD’s
MPEG-2 video stream seems to have had a step in between the two formats,
indicating an older video master was used.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Pro Logic surround is also old, sounding like old
analog Dolby A or some equivalent, which is not credited either way.
Cy Coleman (City of Angels, Sweet Charity) wrote
the music, while Michael Stewart did the lyrics, and they have a genuine
interest in the subject at hand. With
the sudden return of the film musical with Chicago and even Moulin
Rouge, it would be interesting to see someone try to do this as a feature
film. That alone is reason enough to
check out this Barnum.
- Nicholas Sheffo
