Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber by Block, Geoffrey (good story books to read .TXT) 📕

Although Lloyd Webber continued to grow musically in his next two musicals Aspects of Love (1989) and Sunset Boulevard (1993), he would not be able to capture the magic that placed Broadway audiences in raptures over Cats and Phantom of the Opera for so many years. Aspects of Love not only received a critical bashing, but it lasted less than a year on Broadway, and while Sunset Boulevard won the major Tony Awards and had a relatively long run, it managed to lose a record $25 million.53 After Sunset, Lloyd Webber was unable to secure a Broadway venue for either of his next two shows, Whistle Down the Wind (1996) or The Beautiful Game (2000), and his next return to New York was as a producer (not a composer) for Bombay Dreams (2003), another failure. In fact, since Sunset Boulevard closed, only one new Lloyd Webber show, The Woman in White, managed a short New York engagement (108 performances) in 2004.

Just as Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals typically fared far better in New York than in London, Lloyd Webber’s shows were more warmly received on his home turf with the exception of the initial run of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.54 The pattern continued with the shows that followed Phantom, although none were hits on the order of Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, Phantom, or Starlight Express (which failed in New York). The London Aspects of Love ran four years and Sunset Boulevard ran 1,529 performances (but still lost money). Whistle Down the Wind, which did not even make it to New York, ran a respectable 1,044 performances in London. Even in London, however, The Beautiful Game, another non-starter in New York, closed after only eleven months (and is currently being reworked as The Boys in the Photograph), and The Woman in White barely lasted 500 performances.

As of this writing Lloyd Webber’s next show is on the verge of a production in London, if not New York, in 2009. Consistent with his longtime practice, Lloyd Webber’s guests at Sydmonton were treated to a run-through of act I in July 2008. The show is a sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, currently called Phantom: Love Never Dies, and is based on Frederick Forsyth’s 1999 novel The Phantom of Manhattan. According to press reports, the new Phantom takes place in Coney Island in 1906 where Erik has escaped to run a freak show. For those who feared that marriage to Raoul would thwart her career Christine is now a famous prima donna. Unfortunately, Raoul has turned into a dissolute version of Ravenal, not only broke but “a drunken wreck.” New York Post reporter Michael Riedel provides another clue to the plot that leads to unanswered questions: “Christine has a child, Gustave, but is his father Raoul or the Phantom? I can’t tell you because no one’s seen the second act yet.”55

I began this chapter with analogies between Puccini and Lloyd Webber, two phenomenally successful composers for the theatrical stage who are also burdened by a corresponding lack of critical esteem. One can defend or attack either Puccini or Lloyd Webber, and although probably less common, some might remain neutral or agnostic and simply report the parallel criticisms that have followed these perpetually successful and controversial, well-loved and but loathed composers. When it comes to Lloyd Webber, it is admittedly not easy to help those who passionately disbelieve in Lloyd Webber’s work to gain appreciation of this crucially important West End and Broadway composer or those who revere him to discover serious flaws. It should be repeated that, up to this point, the atheists outweigh the faithful and the revisionists. The intention here is to neither praise nor bury Caesar but to try to understand both “the problem of Lloyd Webber” and the pleasure he gives to so many.

Although, as Sternfeld points out, “almost every Lloyd Webber show receives at least a few raves, and most garner mixed reviews rather than outright pans,” the criticism of Lloyd Webber and his creative output remains a real problem that I have tried to confront.56 Perhaps Lloyd Webber has become a symbol, something like Paul Whiteman, a musical figure whose financial success and popularity seem disproportionate to his merits. In the company of music historians I might lead a sheltered life, but I can not think of anyone other than Whiteman or perhaps Kenny G in the jazz field who inspires the kind of antipathy reserved for Lloyd Webber. In any event, as I have tried to show, Andrew Lloyd Webber is a Broadway phenomenon that scholars and historians, if not his idolaters, need to face rather than ignore. His work, although, as I have argued, flawed, has proven lasting and influential as well as popular and merits our attention and respect.

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