Chorus Line: Musical Highlights From the Hit Movie [Audio CD] Hamlisch, Marvin and Musical Stage Company

Because A Chorus Line was originally cast for dancers and had no big names in its initial Broadway lineup, the show is perhaps suited to a budget-priced knockoff recording like this one, "performed by the Musical Stage Company." The unnamed singers are actually pretty good, and on-pitch most of the time, and they get through the chaos of "Goodbye Twelve, Goodbye Thirteen, Hello Love" pretty well. What's more of an assault on the ear is the piano-synthesizer orchestration, which does an awful job of mimicking the pit band. So this 38-minute collection of highlights isn't as bad as you might expect, but there's still no reason to listen to it when the original cast recording is still around. --David Horiuchi