THE CONFIDENCE MAN (Original Cast Records)

Along with the new recording of Man With a Load of Mischief, Original Cast Records has distributed two other recent show CDs. The more interesting of the pair is a 2003 studio-cast disc of a thirty-year-old musical based on Herman Melville's The Confidence Man.

It's chiefly of note because its composer is Jim Steinman. In 1974, Steinman wrote the score for a Public Theatre musical called More Than You Deserve. Around the same time, he began collaborating with librettist-lyricist Ray Errol Fox on The Confidence Man, which is set on a Mississippi riverboat in 1861.

The musical was first under option by Joseph Papp and the Public Theatre. Papp ultimately passed on the show, and instead it had its premiere, in a capsule version, in Manhattan Theatre Club's cabaret space in 1976.

Steinman worked on another musical, Neverland, at Stuart Ostrow's Musical Theatre Lab at the Kennedy Center (1977), then shifted to the pop world, where he went on to have considerable success with singer Meatloaf. In the '90s, Steinman returned to musicals with the score for Dance of the Vampires and the lyrics to Andrew Lloyd Webber's Whistle Down the Wind.

As for The Confidence Man, it received its first full staging at Queens College in 1986. With no additional mounting on the horizon, a CD was made, featuring theatre regulars singing individual songs rather than specific roles. In his liner notes, Fox notes the strength of the show's big ballad, "Milady," which has been performed by Barry Manilow and is sung on the CD by Yancey Arias. Fox fails to mention that the melody of "Milady" became "For Sarah," the prettiest tune in Dance of the Vampires. Also finding its way into Vampires is the melody of the Confidence Man chorus called "Something of This Masquerade May Follow."

With a touch of rock, a good deal of music-hall jauntiness, and Melville himself figuring prominently in the action, The Confidence Man opens and closes with the attractive "New Orleans Is Comin' to Me," led here by Norbert Leo Butz, who knows a thing or two about New Orleans musicals. Julia Murney supplies an intense "Edging Into Darkness," while La Chanze effectively croons "Nocturnally Yours." Chuck Cooper delivers a strong rendition of the anti-war aria, "Give Us This Day Our Daily Flesh," and Butz makes the most of "Pain Humbles." The vocalists include Andre De Shields, Garrett Long, KT Sullivan, and Andrea Marcovicci.

Another Melville sea saga, Billy Budd, made a fine opera but a poor Broadway musical. While it's difficult to know how all of this would have played in the theatre, The Confidence Man sounds like it might have made for an intriguing show.