Prototype Andrew Lloyd Webber
Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber were once so young that nobody would take them seriously enough to stage their early work.
Undaunted, they cobbled together a first effort, and when nobody was interested quickly pressed on with something completely different. The result - like so many musicals and operas that didn't quite make it - was partially lost - in particular the original "book". All that is left were the songs.
So this is a concert version, with connecting comment from a narrator, rather than either a record of a "real" (staged) performance, or a conventional "original cast recording" with the songs extracted from their context.
It has to be said, even by someone who on the whole admires ALW, that this is well short of being a forgotten "Evita". None the less - we have to be grateful that the songs have at last been recorded. I agree with another reviewer's opinion of the "staying power" of the commentary - which sounds as if it has been more or less ad-libbed and does not improve with repeated hearings - it is indeed a shame it is not on separate tracks so it can be "programmed out".
But yes, if you take your musicals seriously you will obviously want this one for your collection. I doubt if it will ever be on anyone's list as their favourite Andrew Lloyd Webber, but who can tell?
One exercise that will be found amusing by people who know Webber's work is tracing bits of music he later re-cycled in other works. The composer commented on looking at the score again after so many years that he had always felt that he had re-used so much that this alone would have precluded a production - and was surprised to find so little he was aware of reusing.