“Thank you, madam. Please call again. Do call again, madam,” is the rejoinder the staff at Maraczek’s Parfumerie sings each time a customer exits the shop. The line charmingly, simply, understatedly -- and politely -- sums up a lot of what works about She Loves Me and why it works that way. This is an incredibly self-effacing show, that might even be mistaken for diffidence. The graciousness of the staff to their customers is a reflection of the way the score and this cast album of the 2016 revival approaches its listeners. It may sound a disingenuous compliment but the entire atmosphere the cast recording creates is one of easy serenity. The recording is amusing but never hilarious, charming but never completely sweet, and really that’s what makes it such an excellent score. In the face of a contemporary musical scene in which scores tend to be either extravagant or significantly cut-back, She Loves Me is a placid case of being just enough. And why wouldn’t it be? This is a musical about people who exude gentility. Even its de facto villain sings in only charming, soothing tones. And what tones!
We were ecstatic last year when Gavin Creel, Laura Benanti and Jane Krakowski were tipped as being cast in the show and this anticipation is justified with the work they – along with the larger cast – put in. Creel plays that de facto villain and threatens to steal the show with his clear voice on “Ilona”, a dubious love song sung to the object of his affection. “Ilona” falls strategically amidst a one-two-three-four-five punch of song after excellent song on the first half of the album bookended by two gorgeous solos from Laura Benanti. “Will He Like Me?” and “Dear Friend” are two of the most beautiful theatre love songs and Laura Benanti finally earns her chance to take centre stage, opening the lead in a show in a way she has not before. Amalia is the headstrong leading lady of this love story and she gets the album’s only moment of raised voices, unlike the typical gentility elsewhere. The more notable is her addled enquiry of “Where’s My Shoe?” in Act Two, but it’s the brief previous track “Mr. Novack, Will You Please?”, a mere 60 seconds, which presents one of my favourite Benanti moments on the recording.
Laura Benanti’s Broadway history includes roles from the shy Cinderella (Into the Woods) to the explosive Candela (Women on the Verge). She can do classic charm and she can do bawdy humour, and her divergent skills make Amalia’s own dynamism as a character work. Her arc on the album is all leading up to the heartbreaking “Dear Friend”, which becomes the pièce de résistance on the first half of the album. Theatre lovers will remain split into those who appreciate bits of the libretto in songs and those who don’t, but regardless of where you stand it’s hard not to feel that “Dear Friend” is made all the more moving on the album for the short dialogue which comes before the climax as Amalia ponders her romantic fate.
The entire album does a clever job of using non-sung moments on the recording to recreate the atmosphere in the theatre, recalling the superlative work on the Follies Revival Cast Recording (still, easily, one of the best recordings of the last ten years). One of the cleverer bits is on “Ilona” and “A Trip to the Library”. The show cleverly opts to have ad libbed dialogue and non-spoken bits of enunciations from Krakowski in the former and Michael McGrath in the latter, creating a conversational atmosphere with the songs instead of a solo feel. It’s an unusual choice but one which ultimately works. She Loves Me as a score depends on the ensemble which is why, as lyricist Sheldon Harnick points out in a recent StageBuddy interview, it’s a musical about every character and not just the two leads. It’s why every character comes equipped with their own song. And they are all beautifully, charmingly, sung.
If “Dear Friend” is the first act’s mainstay, then it is Krakowski’s “A Trip to the Library” which grounds the second half of the recording. She is in fine voice in “I Resolve” earlier on, but it is with this later number that she is able to display her talent best. The role might superficially emerge as her familiar ditzy blonde and on its own Ilona Ritter is an artful type like Carla Albanese from Nine, but Krakowski’s prowess as a comedienne is her ability to add specific nuances in even superficially similar moments. Her Ilona’s vocal tics are all her own and she provides some of the album’s most effective subtle but thrilling line readings. The entirety of “A Trip to the Library”, then, becomes a lesson in enunciation differentiating itself from the excellent renditions. (Just listen to the way she sings, “Now I can see the magic of books.”) These are the specific notes that help to differentiate this She Loves Me from the previous excellent recordings, but they are rarely things the recording calls attention to. And it’s because She Loves Me, like vanilla ice cream Amalia, aims to be comforting in its charm, never loud.
Even when She Loves Me was released in 1963 it seemed like an old-fashioned bon mot to some critics; half a century later it emerges as perhaps even more quaint. But it is more than meets the eye, like the music box/candy holder Amalia sings of in “No More Candy”. To see only the quaint and miss not the charm of She Loves Me is to miss the rich, golden splendour of the music on show here with singers in fine form. Aside from Creel, Krakowski and Benanti each performer works, from Zachary Levi as the confident leading man (he knocks the title song out of the park), to Nicholas Barasch’s childish Arpad and Michael McGrath’s dependable Sipos. It is a journey into a world that is indeed unrealistic, more sanguine, idealistic and charming than ours. “Don’t let it end, dear friend," Amalia plaintively sings midway through, and if you give yourself over to its small joys you might be saying the same about this recording. The 70 minutes whiz and go by, leaving you with a silly smile on your face. As it should be.
