3 Albums With 3 Takes on the Best of Broadway

*** 1/2 “BABES IN ARMS,” 1999 New York cast recording, DRG Records ($16.99). The 1937 Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart musical about broke Depression-era show biz kids eager to make good yielded a sublime crop, including “My Funny Valentine,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “I Wish I Were in Love Again” and that incomparable expression of deja vu “Where or When.” No wonder people keep trying to revive the show--and failing, because the book resists revival. Oh, well. You needn’t fuss with any pesky libretto problems while listening to this sharp new cast album from this year’s semi-staged concert version produced by New York’s Encores! series. Standouts include sweet-but-not-too Erin Dilly, soon to be singing a different tune in the Ahmanson’s “Martin Guerre.” She’s particularly affecting on “Valentine.” Rob Fisher’s Coffee Club Orchestra does right by the original Hans Spialek charts. Even with some dream-ballet padding, it’s a charmer.

** 1/2 “UNSUSPECTING HEARTS,” Emily Skinner and Alice Ripley, Varese Sarabande, ($17.99). Wasn’t it just last year that the stars of Broadway’s cult flop, “Side Show,” did a duets album? Why, yes, what a superb memory you have. They’re back and eager to show off those power-ballad vocal chops. The results resemble many other albums in the Varese Sarabande catalog; at times you feel as if you’re listening to a nicely produced (if orchestrated on the pushy side) audition tape. The song list is rangy enough to risk a lack of focus. But “Unsuspecting Hearts” is worth hearing, if only for Skinner and Ripley’s sardonic, swinging attack (ghost-coached by Mel Torme?) on Cy Coleman and David Zippel’s “City of Angels” up-tempo pip, “What You Don’t Know About Women.”

*** “THE ONLY OTHER BROADWAY CD YOU’LL EVER NEED,” RCA Victor ($17.99). Another sequel, this one a follow-up to last year’s RCA greatest-hits compilation. Inevitably it’ll make you think, “Well, maybe blah-blah-blah, but BLAH-BLAH-BLAH? Gimme a break.” My gimme-a-breaks include “The Music of the Night” from “The Phantom of the Opera” (although I prefer this Colm Wilkinson version to Michael Crawford’s). On happier notes, or rather, notes in happier succession, you get “You’re Just in Love” (featuring Dinah Shore). And there’s “Song on the Sand,” one of the nicest things Jerry Herman has ever written, from “La Cage aux Folles.” And the nerve-racking confrontation “We Do Not Belong Together” from Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George.” The 19-song multi-decade survey ends with “The Old Red Hills of Home,” from the recent, controversial “Parade.” Jason Robert Brown’s score clangs its symbols pretty heavily, but he’s a talent to watch. And to hear.

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Albums and other gifts in this section are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).