Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

When Drury Lane Theatre in Oakbrook produced a sexy, pop-culture-y Joseph several critics were horrified. The Chicago Tribune claimed it was "shorn of all heart and emotion." 'But wait,' said I, 'isn't Joseph already a sexy, pop-culture-y show shorn of all heart and emotion?' It certainly has been in the three professional productions and Webber produced TV film I've seen.

Joseph is a weird show. A fairly grim story from the Book of Genesis retold as a sexy panto and performed by schools. As Bible musicals go it's closer in tone to the silly Godspell than Webber's angsty Jesus Christ Superstar. But who knows? Maybe some day I'll see a production that changes my mind.

Thoughts on Jesus Christ Superstar

Jesus Christ Superstar has always straddled a line between sincerity and camp. Last night's NBC production leaned toward earnest. That was the right move for a family audience but did make things a little dull. The rock stars lacked acting chops and the Broadway babies lacked the money notes. The show has always been a sound engineers nightmare and the screaming audience didn't help.

Still it reminded me how smart the writing is and why some audiences are offended. It's not the goofy 70's slang as much as the fact that it's told from a secular perspective. The principals see Jesus as "just a man" or a political "puppet." For me this raises the stakes over a traditional passion play or a syrupy piece like Godspell. 

The structure is interesting. Judas carries the show. Mary gets the heart. The Pharisees get the exposition. Jesus is unknowable to all around him. Herod and Pilate get the opportunity to steal the show. Alice Cooper won some fans last night by showing up but I was underwhelmed by his deadpan rendition of Herod's song. It was more fun to see Ben Daniels make a meal of Pilate's trial scene.

Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote this when he was 22. What have I done with my life? (Sob)

Aspects of Love

"We... we sleep with everyone.
One by one and two by two.
And if you're in the audience
then you'll sleep too."
~ Forbidden Broadway

"Though ''Aspects of Love'' purports to deal with romance in many naughty guises - from rampant promiscuity to cradle-snatching, lesbianism and incest - it generates about as much heated passion as a visit to the bank."
~ Frank Rich, New York Times

Webber's Aspects of Love is not as romantic as it thinks it is. The May-December country house romance drew unfavorable comparisons to Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music. Sondheim's lovers know they're in a bittersweet comedy. Webber's bores take themselves so seriously that the plot turns to camp. They vow "love will never let you be the same" while repeating the same toxic patterns. The leading lady jerks three lovers around till their attentions turn to an underage girl. Then she sings an angry anthem, "Anything But Lonely," vowing to round up someone new "who'll say how good [she] looks each day." Send in the clowns indeed.

Sunset Boulevard

Scan the reviews of Sunset Boulevard and you’ll see some common threads. The leading lady gives a star turn but the lyrics are klunky and there was no point adapting the film for the stage. Sondheim declined a chance to adapt after Wilder said the film could only work as an opera. The current revival has been praised for scrapping the giant sets but something else is missing. What exactly? Let’s take a closer look at the libretto.

What is the story about?

May-December romance? The dark side of Hollywood? The horrors of age, death and time? The horrors of being trapped in a big house with a crazy lady?

The characters pursue big dreams and destroy themselves in the process. This lends itself to the musical form. At the same time the characters are static. This does not. Their fatal flaws lie in their denial. Norma isn’t hustling to be a star. She believes she is one. Joe isn’t hustling to be a better writer. He believes the folks rejecting his work are fools and jerks. Halfway through act one the career arc fades. The action shifts to Joe’s attempts to escape the house and Norma’s attempts to keep him there.

Who is the protagonist?

The music thinks Norma is. She gets the “I want” songs (With One Look, The Perfect Year), the “I am” songs (With One Look again, New Ways to Dream) and the “celebration” song when she thinks she’s achieved her goal (As If We Never Said Goodbye).

The plot thinks Joe is. We follow his journey and everything is seen through his eyes. He leaves the house frequently to pursue work at the studio and a relationship with Betty. Norma becomes his antagonist attempting to lure him back with money, threats and violence.

Sadly the score doesn’t have much use for Joe. He’s stuck with recitative and reactive duets. His only solo, Sunset Boulevard, has to serve as his “I want,” “I am,” “I’m becoming” song as well as a takedown of Hollywood culture. It’s more responsibility than the lyrics can handle. (“Beneath the tan the battle rages.”)

What’s missing?

For me it’s a consistent tone. Webber’s romantic score undercuts Wilder’s cynicism. The music buys into her delusion that she’s a dethroned queen. A tragic victim. Is she? Is it really so bad to be a wealthy retiree living in an L.A. mansion with a servant who worships her? A snarkier composer might have played up the contrast between her dreams and her reality. They might have given Joe something interesting to sing while they were at it.

Evita

When the money keeps rollin in
what's a girl to do?
Cream a little off the top
for expenses wouldn't you?
...
Never been accounts in
the name of Eva Peron
~ Evita

Don't recognize that lyric? Well it isn't in the movie version. I wondered why Antonio Banderas was so angry at Madonna. Her Eva Peron didn't seem to accomplish much of anything, good or bad. Turns out the film cut several references to the Peron's crimes, settling for ambiguous montages. The film doesn't even bother to tell us what she's dying of.

The stage musical presented Eva as a ruthless opportunist. The New York Times has described it thus:

Some of the musical detractors have objected to ''Evita's'' glamorization of a fascinating, albeit Fascist, figure. The show has even been compared with ''Springtime for Hitler,'' the parody in the film ''The Producers.'' This is sheer nonsense. ''Evita'' is about media manipulation, the power of ''hype,'' the gullibility of the masses and, perhaps most of all, the arbitrariness of stardom.

However Madonna's turn seems to present her as a feminist icon. In an interview with Roger Ebert she said:

And then there were the people who thought she was a saint. They thought only Mother Teresa could portray her in a movie. Then there were other people who thought she was a sinner, and they didn't want a tribute being made to her. So it got very confusing.... The stage version of the musical portrays a very one-dimensional version of her. It doesn't show her in a very humane way; it doesn't show any vulnerability, it doesn't explain her past. Alan Parker had the chance to do that in a movie

Madonna took some flak for lowering Webber's keys, but even Patti LuPone admits the original score is a bear to sing:

"I was always in danger, from the first D, which was at 20 minutes into the show," says LuPone.

The dependence on a star with a range of E3-G5 makes Evita challenging to revive. Elena Roger won praise in London but when she transferred to Broadway in 2012 she drew mixed reviews. Some suggested the role had simply overtaxed her voice after years of performing. Despite the song, Eva is a role that will make a singer cry.

Starlight Express

Co-worker: "Why are you drawing gay Transformers?" 

Me: Because Starlight Express!

I'd been told the story was "The Little Engine that Could" on roller skates. It starts that way but goes into much more... interesting places.

Frank Rich of the New York Times noticed as well. In his 1987 review he wrote:

"Andrew Lloyd Webber modestly explains that he conceived his new musical, ''Starlight Express,'' as an entertainment ''event'' for children who love trains. Over two numbing hours later, you may find yourself wondering exactly whose children he has in mind...

All the women are subservient carriages vying for the favors of mostly abusive male locomotives - with only an androgynous male caboose occupying lower social status. This hierarchical scheme is reinforced by Ms. Phillips's muscle-flexing choreography, seemingly inspired by male physical-culture magazines, and by the robotic costumes, which emphasize codpieces for the men and tight corsets and miniskirts for their groupies."

Dueling Phantoms

Yeston and Kopit wrote their version first. Webber's was produced first. Yeston and Kopit released their rights to regional theaters first allowing it to be produced around the country.

The Phantom of the Opera was originally a horror story, though both musicals emphasize the tragic romance. When the Phantom's do begin their killing sprees the tones are inconsistent, often promoting as many giggles as gasps.

There was something unwholesome and pathetic about the 1925 Phantom, who scuttled like a rat in the undercellars of the Paris Opera and nourished a hopeless love for Christine. The modern Phantom is more like a perverse Batman with a really neat cave. ~ Roger Ebert on the 2004 Webber Film.

What transpires from this point to the end of the show is a frustrating mix of comedy, spectacle, sentimentality, revelation and suspense, with great highs and great lows. ~ L.A. Times on Yeston and Kopit's Phantom. 

I've written about Webber's sequel here.

The Woman in White

After exploring some new territory, Andrew Lloyd Webber returned to gothic novel adaptation with Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White. The magic of Phantom was not recaptured. The show ran 19 months in London and 3 months on Broadway despite the efforts of leading lady Maria Friedman and a series of guest stars in the role of supporting villain Count Fosco (Michael Crawford, Michael Ball, Simon Callow).

• Maria Friedman singing the belty All For Laura.
• Count Fosco's duet with a misbehaving live rat.
• Guardian 2004 Review - "It's a pity Jones's book isn't better because the show has a lot going for it. Lloyd Webber has written a particularly good score...  in trying to ... show all Victorian women as social victims, she actually deprives Marian of much of her odd, independent quirkiness that makes her one of the most original characters in fiction."
• NYT 2005 Review - "It's not a terrible show, but it's an awfully pallid one. The difference between it and "Sweeney Todd" is the difference between water and blood."
• Broadway Abridged's Recap - "I'm so glad I found you!  I've come back to again mention I have some vague secret, then to sing in very poorly-written ballads, and to shriek enough for the audience to cover their  ears."

This is my 50th comic! Thanks for reading everyone!

The Beautiful Game and The Boys in the Photograph

So you've advertised a show about football but it’s really about terrorism. Most of your football players end up dead or maimed and your ending is a downer. What to do? Change the title to take the emphasis off the football. Then slap on a new happy ending for your protagonist. Neither The Beautiful Game nor The Boys in the Photograph was a great success but it was an interesting development Andrew Lloyd Webber’s career. As with Whistle Down the Wind he attempted to apply his music too a small naturalistic story. A few years later he’d return to form with The Woman in White and Phantom of the Opera 2: Coney Island Boogaloo. 

Performance Clip.

Review Round Up from 2000

Whistle Down the Wind

The 80’s were a strange time for American Musical Theater. While American artists suffered crisis after crisis producer Cameron Macintosh and composers Andrew Lloyd Webber and  Boublil and Schönberg brought their hits from the West End to Broadway and settled in for long, franchise building runs. Later in his career Webber tried a hand at some smaller scale stories with mixed results. 

The novel and film of Whistle Down the Wind focused on precocious children in Lancanshire. The musical gave us sultry teens in Louisiana. When your leading lady has to believe Jesus is in her barn, and you cast a sexy 18 year old woman in the role, you are begging for camp. Maybe she was kicked in the head by a pony.

Review quotes:

Washington Post (1996)

Near the end of "Whistle Down the Wind," the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that had its world premiere last night at the National Theatre, we finally get the Big Snake-Handling Number. Performing "Wrestle With the Devil" in a diabolic red light, the singers writhe and sweat and spin and grimace and shake rubber snakes and dance frenziedly and fall into ecstatic trances with their feet twitching. It's all pretty embarrassing, but at least the evening momentarily comes to life. Rarely has a show needed a jolt of bad taste more. Lloyd Webber is often accused of vulgarity, but that's not the problem here. "Whistle Down the Wind" is just dull.

Chicago Tribune (1996)

"Whistle Down the Wind," in its premiere here at the National Theatre, may be the most spectacular miscalculation in Andrew Lloyd Webber's long and phenomenal career…. The script… scuttles everything.

The Guardian (2006)

But, although Bill Kenwright's new production is infinitely superior to the over-inflated original, I still can't warm to a musical that asks me to believe six impossible things before suppertime.

Song clips:

Sarah Brigthman singing the title song accompanied by Webber.

No Matter What - Children giving gifts to Jesus in the 1996 production.

Tire Tracks and Broken Hearts - Jeremy Jordan and Ashley Spencer in 2012. The song goes to the sexy biker teens who betray the convict's hiding place.

Cats

Younger me: I don't understand what's going on.
My aunt: Neither do I.

We sat in the top balcony of a cavernous auditorium while an old lady cat tap danced with a troop of cockroaches. The  acoustics and sound design left the touring company's lyrics unintelligible. It was only later I learned that Cats was adapted from a book of unrelated poems and that there was only the smallest sliver of a story. If the Cats are auditioning for Cat Heaven are they all dead? Or are they planning a mass junkyard suicide after the curtain call?

The much mocked show broke records running 21 years in London and 18 years on Broadway. and Webber is once again pushing for a film adaptation. Will a narrative be built around it or will the screenplay adapt it as is? Also would Memory be remembered today if the fabulous Judi Dench had originated the role of Grizabella as originally planned?

Over the coming days I'll be posting quick sketches of some of Webber's lesser known musicals.

Background reading
NYT review of Broadway opening

Love Never Dies

More musical sequels this week now that the Tony Awards have passed.

One challenge in writing a sequel to Phantom of the Opera is that the Phantom had tarnished has chances as a love interest in Part 1 by going on a killing spree. In order to restore his romantic lead status in Part 2 they had to reboot other characters, retroactively undoing the arc of Part 1. Male ingenue Raul is now a drunken gambler who mistreats Christine. Confidante Meg Giry ("who is this new tutor?") has been turned into Carlotta 2.0 as a homicidally jealous burlesque singer. It's a bit jarring.

Stranger still is the revelation that the Phantom and Christine conceived a child. We saw the extent of their few interactions in Part 1. Did it happen on the boat while they sang the title song? In the bed after she passed out? On stage in front of an audience singing Point of No Return? 

Read the plot synopsis here.

And some reviews here.