Put On a Happy Face

Synopsis

Includes songs 'Tomorrow', 'Put on a Happy Face', 'A Lot of Livin' To Do', 'Once Upon a Time' and 'Maybe' as well as his musicals 'Annie', 'Bye Bye Birdie', 'Applause', 'Rags' and 'Golden Boy',

Our Review:

16 April 2009

Charles Strause was a successful composer of musical comedies in the sixties and seventies - including Bye Bye Birdie, Applause and Annie (there were many others that never arrived this side of the Atlantic). His early collaborator and lyricist was the very witty Lee Adams, who was responsible for those magical rhymes “mask of tragedy/you’ll be glad you decided to smile)” and “pleasant outlook/full of doubt look”. Strause later had a fairly disastrous collaboration with Alan Jay Lerner and a rather more successful one with Martin Charmin (for Annie).

For Put On A Happy Face, Barry Fantoni has brought together some of the lesser-known songs and wrapped around them a rather perfunctory version of the life of Strause based on his recently published autobiography. Some of the songs are a joy. In particular the very amusing “Da Da Da Da Da Dah“, played at the piano and sung by Michael Chance (who plays...

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