The musical centers on the fraught relationship between Anna, who is selling the roller rink she owns, and her estranged daughter, Angel, who returns home. The recording captures the show's exploration of generational conflict, nostalgia, and reconciliation through numbers ranging from the wistful "Colored Lights" to the explosive "The Rink".
Upon its release, the cast album was met with a mixed critical response. While the performances of its stars were widely acknowledged, some reviewers found the score to be less innovative than the songwriters' previous work and noted that it did not fully showcase the talents of its legendary leads.
Background
The Rink is a Broadway musical with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and a book by Terrence McNally. Starring Chita Rivera as Anna Antonelli and Liza Minnelli as her daughter, Angel, the show centers on their strained relationship as Angel returns home to find her mother closing the roller-skating rink she runs in a decaying amusement park. Originally written as a vehicle for Rivera, the musical was later adapted to expand Minnelli's role, exploring themes of generational conflict, urban decline, and reconciliation.[2]
Several songs in the score reflect these tensions. Anna expresses nostalgia and frustration in "What Happened to the Old Days?", while Angel opens the show with "Colored Lights", a number later associated with Minnelli's nightclub repertoire. The music combines Kander's characteristic preference for early twentieth-century jazz styles with elements that evoke the setting's working-class atmosphere, including electric guitar passages that suggest urban blight. Other songs, such as "All the Children in a Row", reference the cultural shifts and generational divides of the 1960s.[2]
Release
According to Music Week, the Original Broadway Cast Recording of The Rink was released on compact disc (CD) by That's Entertainment Records at the end of March 1985 as part of the label's ongoing CD reissue program.[3] In October 1999, Billboard reported that Jay Records, the label founded by British producer John Yap, released a newly remastered edition of The Rink Original Broadway Cast Recording.[4]
William Ruhlmann of AllMusic described The Rink as a work marked by the bitter and ironic tone of composers John Kander and Fred Ebb, more concerned with reflecting generational tensions than offering musical innovation. According to him, the songs, with a sound inspired by the jazz of the 1920s and 1930s, feel familiar within the duo's repertoire, and the musical conveys a skeptical view of both the youth of the 1960s and the adult world.[2]
Billboard noted that the score of The Rink was "perhaps too talky" and suggested that composers John Kander and Fred Ebb did not fully take advantage of the abilities of its leading stars, Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera.[7]
David Barbour of Cast Album Reviews praised the cast album as an irresistible showcase for Chita Rivera and Liza Minnelli, highlighting Rivera's sardonic and heartfelt performances in numbers like "Chief Cook and Bottle Washer" and "We Can Make It", and Minnelli's moving and whimsical interpretations in "Colored Lights" and "Angel's Rink and Social Center". He noted the strong chemistry between the two stars in duets such as "Don't Ah Ma Me", "The Apple Doesn't Fall", and "Wallflower", and described the score by Kander and Ebb as expertly tailored to their talents. Barbour considered the ensemble numbers, particularly "Mrs. A", to be dramatically effective, and despite some less convincing moments, he concluded that the album offered numerous glitzy pleasures for fans of Broadway divas.[6]
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