Marie Christine

1	Before The Morning / Jennifer Warren 3:15
2	Manzell's Marie / Audra McDonald 1:42
3	Your Grandfather Is The Sun / Audra McDonald 1:44
4	Beautiful / Audra McDonald 1:44
5	In An Instant / Anthony Crivello 1:07
6	Way Back To Paradise / Audra McDonald 2:32
7	When You Look At A Man / Anthony Crivello 0:25
8	The Storm / Audra McDonald 2:44
9	C'est L'amour/To Find A Lover / Audra McDonald 4:17
10	Nothing Beats Chicago/Ocean Is Different / Anthony Crivello 2:47
11	Danced With A Girl / Anthony Crivello 3:30
12	Tout Mi Mi/He Is My Release / Audra McDonald 0:41
13	Miracles And Mysteries / Vivian Reed 2:40
14	I Don't Hear The Ocean / Anthony Crivello 2:52
15	Bird Inside The House / Jim Weaver 1:22
16	We're Gonna Go To Chicago / Audra McDonald 2:53
17	And You Would Lie/I Will Give / Jennifer Warren 3:00
18	Act I Finale / Jim Weaver 4:02
19	Cincinnati / Janet Metz 3:32
20	You're Looking At The Man / Peter Samuel 2:44
21	The Scorpion / Anthony Crivello 2:19
22	Lover, Bring Me Summer / Kim Huber 1:38
23	Tell Me / Audra McDonald 2:53
24	Billy Was Sweet/Paradise Is Burning Down / Audra McDonald 3:12
25	Prison In A Prison / Audra McDonald 2:22
26	Better And Best / Audra McDonald 1:07
27	Good Looking Woman / Audra McDonald 2:44
28	No Turning Back/Before the Morning (Reprise) / Vivian Reed 3:41
29	Beautiful (Reprise) / Audra McDonald 2:03
30	I Will Love You / Audra McDonald 2:36
31	Your Name / Anthony Crivello 2:29
32	Finale-Innocence Dies / Vivian Reed 2:02

Barnes & Noble

Audra McDonald is the most dazzling singing actress to arrive on Broadway since Barbra Streisand's legendary 1962 debut. MARIE CHRISTINE, composed by up-and-comer Michael John LaChiusa, is the highly anticipated first leading role written specifically for the triple Tony-winner (CAROUSEL, "Master Class," RAGTIME). LaChiusa's dark 1999 musical, loosely based on Euripides's Medea and set in turn-of-last-century New Orleans and Chicago, delivers ample opportunities for McDonald to exhibit her amazing dramatic and vocal talents: Her crystalline soprano brilliantly conveys emotions -- from mirth to misery and from menace to madness -- with minimum effort and maximum effect. Buoyed by a superb ensemble featuring Tony-winner Anthony Crivello [KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN], producer Jay David Saks has created a thrilling,risky,and riveting recording that will likely turn the last new American musical to open on Broadway in the 20th century into an enduring classic. David Cohen

All Music Guide

The Greek myth of Medea has attracted dramatists throughout recorded history. The tragic story of the princess and sorceress who helped Jason steal the Golden Fleece, but responded to his infidelity by killing his lover and her own children, it most famously provided the source for Euripides' play in 431 B.C., but also was adapted by French playwright Pierre Corneille in 1635 (this version in turn made into an opera by Luigi Cherubini in 1797), Robinson Jeffers in 1947, and Jean Anouilh in 1953. In seeking to provide a vehicle for Broadway star Audra McDonald, composer Michael John LaChuisa returned to Medea and transferred the story to late 19th century New Orleans, turning Medea into Marie Christine L'Adrese, a cultured Creole who falls in love with a sea captain and follows him to his home in Chicago with the usual tragic results. Among the more prominent young Broadway composers of the 1990s, LaChuisa seems to be interested in creating a post-Sondheim musical theater that is a hybrid form somewhere between traditional musical comedy and opera. While musical, his shows rarely employ traditional song structures, though the settings of the lyrics make for more than just recitatives. His choice of subject matter here is hardly typical for a Broadway musical, but he and the show's investors seem to have banked on the notion that three-time Tony Award winner McDonald could be sufficiently compelling to overcome the forbidding plot and uncompromising score. Compelling she certainly was, onstage and on this cast album, but that wasn't enough to make Marie Christine a hit. Announced for a limited run (but with the producers doubtless hoping to extend), the show opened on December 2, 1999, and closed on schedule after five-and-a-half weeks on January 9, 2000. The cast album, released three months later, preserves an intense and striking work that moves inevitably toward its shocking conclusion. It is far from easy listening, but remains powerful, especially because of McDonald's committed performance. But since it makes no obeisance to the traditional pleasures of musical theater, the show doesn't seems likely to live beyond this recording and stands as a significant example of the rift between a generation of serious-minded young Broadway composers (typified by LaChuisa and Jason Robert Brown) who set little store by mere entertainment and a group of pop-oriented songsters (Frank Wildhorn, Elton John) who prize entertainment above all and who, thus far, have been winning the war for Broadway's future, at least as far as commercial success goes. William Ruhlmann