With Broadway still dark due to COVID-19, many musical theater aficionados are desperate for a hearty helping of belters and ballads, Merman and Martin (Mary or Short). One of the easiest and best ways to satisfy a craving for musicals comes courtesy of a small studio nestled in the West Hartford, Connecticut home of Stuart Brown.
The New Jersey native and longtime Connecticut resident hosted a weekly radio program, “On Broadway,” on WRTC-FM, Trinity College, in Hartford for 25 years. Brown last year launched the 24/7 online program “Sounds of Broadway” at soundsofbroadway.com. Listeners can stream the music of Broadway hits, flops, obscure show songs and off-Broadway and London cast recordings.
Not just that, but theater geeks can test their musical acumen with Brown’s challenging weekly multiple-choice quizzes. Each quiz features eight regular questions plus two challenger ones, all on a particular theme like musical collaborators, song lyrics, Broadway flops and all things Andrew Lloyd Webber. The quizzes are posted or emailed Tuesday nights as a way to keep listeners engaged and to have fun. There’s also “On Broadway,” Brown’s companion podcast for “Sounds of Broadway.”
Quizzes and trivia come naturally to Brown. “In my real life, I am director of student services at one of the UConn campuses. I’ve been in higher ed for 40 years so part of it is the educator in me,” he says. “I want to feature both well-known and popular shows along with obscure ones and even flops. They all have great songs. I just uploaded songs from the musical sequel to ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ called ‘Bring Back Birdie.’ It was a flop, but there are a couple of good songs.”
“Sounds of Broadways” boasts one of the most diverse playlists on terrestrial or online radio, says Brown, which he’s culled from his 800 to 1,000 CDs, “a couple hundred LPs” and the digital files that he downloads. From 8 to 10 p.m. EST nightly, listeners can reach the database and select songs during an all-request time slot.
“You can’t get bored. I curate 18 hours a week of music,” Brown says. This includes both familiar and obscure material. “I’ll mix in songs from ‘The Music Man’ and then maybe ‘Louisiana Purchase’ from Irving Berlin or the British musical ‘The Card’ with Jim Dale that most people have never heard of,” he says.
He does research in order to provide background information for his shows. This leads to ideas for his quizzes. For example, he recently discovered a recording for a 1986 British musical called “Time” written by Dave Clark of The Dave Clark Five that featured vocals by Clark’s close friend Freddie Mercury of Queen fame.
Brown vividly remembers his first Broadway show—as any high schooler dropped in the middle of early-1970s Times Square would. He and a friend took the bus from central New Jersey with once-common discount coupons called “two-fers” for the show “Twigs.” But when they got to the box office, there was a notice that the show had closed. They ended up with Saturday matinee orchestra seats that cost a whopping eight dollars a ticket for “Grease.” It was a life-changing show, he says, because the original “Grease,” pre-movie and pre-phenom, was earnest and so it was funnier.
“It’s still on my top 10 of all time,” says Brown who says that, to this day, he “can’t bear” to sit through any new production of “Grease” because “songs have been taken out” and the musical “has become a parody of itself.”
Brown stopped going to shows in early March once the pandemic forced the shutdown of theaters.
“I am president of the Connecticut Critics Circle; I see 60 to 70 shows a year,” he says. He’s most disappointed that he may not get to see the much-anticipated, gender-swapped revival of Stephen Sondheim’s groundbreaking 1970 musical comedy “Company,” which was staged in London, starring Tony winners Patti LuPone and Katrina Lenk. It was to be directed by British director Marianne Elliott, Tony Award winner for “War Horse” and “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” and who directed last year’s Tony-winning revival of “Angels in America.”
“I saw [Lenk] in Paula Vogel’s ‘Indecent’ at Yale Rep. It was an incredible show. I hope Lenk and the rest of the cast and crew stay together” for an eventual run, he says.
Don’t we all?
Brown’s other favorite shows or cast albums are a decidedly eclectic list.
“I love the cast albums for ‘Li’l Abner’ and ‘It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane… It’s Superman,’ a huge flop [in 1966],” he says. His favorite shows are tied to particular productions. “I saw ‘The Producers’ with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. No way could there be better chemistry,” he says. “Or the 1987 Lincoln Center revival of ‘Anything Goes” with Patti LuPone. I remember sitting there during the overture and getting goosebumps.”
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