Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber (78 page)

The first of these was
Cats
in 1981, an unusual show that abandoned a traditional book and instead added a loose revue-like story line to T. S. Eliot’s poetic collection
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats
(1939). Unlike a traditional revue,
Cats
was told entirely through dance and song. The song “Memory,” Trevor Nunn’s reworking of another Eliot poem not part of
Practical Cats
called “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” surpassed in popularity even the big song hits of
Jesus Christ Superstar
(“I Don’t Know How to Love Him”) and
Evita
(“Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina”). In his next show,
Starlight Express
(1984), with lyrics by Richard Stilgoe (who would contribute about 20 percent of the lyrics to
Phantom
), toy trains come to life, perform on roller skates, and sing a rock based score with a smattering of other popular vernacular styles (blues, spirituals, gospel, and country).

One year after
Starlight
, Lloyd Webber produced yet another album that would eventually lead to a staged show, this time a hit single and promotional music video of the title song of
The Phantom of the Opera
performed by his new bride Sarah Brightman and lead rock singer Steve Harley. That same year, July 1985, a rough rock-oriented version of act I was performed at Lloyd Webber’s annual summer Sydmonton Festival, a performance that introduced his new and previously untested lyricist Charles Hart then only twenty-four. Not wanting to be influenced by a performance, however unpolished, Prince stayed away from Sydmonton but would soon join Lloyd Webber and Hart to shape the work into its present form.

It took some time for Sondheim to gain a wide following and critical respect as a composer-lyricist. I have duly noted allegations of coldness, a lack of melody, and, when discussing
Sunday in the Park with George
, even the absence of a second act. Despite enormous critical praise and scholarly attention, not one Sondheim show lasted as many as one thousand performances during its first Broadway run. Most lasted fewer, and some considerably fewer, than five hundred performances.

By contrast, from the early 1970s to the present, Lloyd Webber has enjoyed record-breaking success on both sides of the Atlantic. The facts are indisputable. Via immense popular and commercial success (with a few exceptions in New York), the British composer of
Jesus Christ Superstar
(New York, 1971; London, 1972),
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
(London 1972; New York, 1981),
Evita
(London, 1978; New York, 1979),
Cats
(London, 1981; New York, 1982),
Starlight Express
(London, 1984; New York, 1987),
The Phantom of the Opera
(London, 1986; New York, 1988),
Aspects of Love
(London, 1989; New York, 1990), and
Sunset Boulevard
(London and Los Angeles, 1993; New York, 1994) has achieved unprecedented popular acclaim on Broadway and still greater popularity in London’s West End.
²
With the two longest all-time Broadway runs (
Phantom, Cats
) and three of the top five West End runs (
Phantom, Cats, Starlight
), Lloyd Webber is simply the most popular Broadway composer of the post–Rodgers and Hammerstein era and probably of all time. Paul Prece and William Everett summarize the economic and geographic reach of the
Phantom
: “In January 2006, it was reported that
Phantom
alone had grossed more money than any other production on stage and screen (£1.7 billion/approximately $3.2 billion), surpassing huge money-making films such as
Star Wars, E.T
., and
Titanic
. The show has been seen by over eighty million people.”
³

One unmistakable sign of success and critical acclaim is the number of major awards a show and its creators earn in a given year and over time. Comparing the awards to Lloyd Webber and Sondheim, the two dominant Broadway composers of the past several decades, and to the number of Tonys awarded to each for Best Score, Sondheim owns a distinct advantage. Between 1971 and 1994 Sondheim received six awards for Best Score (
Company, Follies, Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods
, and
Passion
). Lloyd Webber received three between 1980 and 1995 (
Evita, Cats
, and
Sunset Boulevard
).
⁴
From this elite group all but
Follies
and
Into the Woods
also won the Tony Award for Best Show.

Since
Phantom
was nominated the same year as
Woods
, it would have been necessary for the shows to share the award for both to win. In some
sense they did share the award in that
Phantom
received the award for Best Musical, Director (Prince), the three major design awards (Maria Björnson for both scenic and costume design and Andrew Bridge for lighting), principal actor (Michael Crawford as the Phantom), and actress in a featured role (Judy Kaye as the Prima Donna Carlotta Guidicelli), while
Into the Woods
took home the awards for Book (James Lapine), Score (Sondheim), and principal actress (Joanna Gleason as the Baker’s Wife). Staging awards to
Phantom
, the writing awards to
Into the Woods
, and a split in acting awards (with the edge to
Phantom
).

In the years since
Into the Woods
(November 5, 1987) and shortly thereafter
Phantom
(January 26, 1988) first arrived on Broadway, the former show, with a solid but unremarkable 765 performances, has already experienced a seven-month revival in 2002 (18 previews and 279 performances). Meanwhile,
The Phantom of the Opera
, like Carlotta in
Follies
, is still here. Four years after the
Into the Woods
revival closed, on January 9, 2006,
Phantom
surpassed another Lloyd Webber musical,
Cats
, as Broadway’s longest running show. At the time this is written
Phantom
has reached 8,771 performances, giving it the distinction of being the first to cross 8,000.
Cats
remains in second place at 7,485.

Among currently running shows only the revival of
Chicago
(5,088) or
The Lion King
(4,720) are in any position to overtake these two Lloyd Webber megamusical megahits, and these still have long way to go.
⁵
From the New York arrival of
Jesus Christ Superstar
in 1971 to the present, the sun has yet to set on the Lloyd Webber era either on Broadway or in the West End. As John Snelson writes, “in the West End, the opening of
Jesus Christ Superstar
in 1972 marked the start of a continuous presence of Lloyd Webber shows through to the time of writing [2004]; often during that span there have been four concurrent Lloyd Webber shows, and in both 1991 and 1997 six were playing simultaneously.”
⁶

Before the first edition of
Enchanted Evenings
was published in 1997, the only serious Lloyd Webber biography to appear was Michael Walsh’s biographically thorough, generally sympathetic, non-technical
Andrew Lloyd Webber: His Life and Works
(1989, revised and enlarged 2nd ed., 1997).
⁷
In
The Broadway Musical
(1990; revised and expanded 2nd ed., 2002), Joseph P. Swain devoted a highly critical chapter to
Jesus Christ Superstar
and
Evita
.
⁸
Before the end of the 1990s serious Broadway scholarship was still the exception to the rule, but a number of books, dissertations, and journal articles on Sondheim had already appeared, including Stephen Banfield’s comprehensive analytical
study
Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals
(1993). A journal devoted exclusively to Sondheim,
The Sondheim Review
, was launched in 1994. In recent years at least three full essay collections on Sondheim have appeared in addition to major scholarly and analytical attention to Sondheim in books, journals, courses and seminars, papers and even whole sessions of papers at musicological conferences, and substantial parts of more general books in the field. Readers have come to expect more than a “cursory mention” (see the quotation that opened this chapter) on Sondheim when they pick up a survey of the Broadway musical.

On the other hand, in a situation similar to the relatively sparse attention given Puccini in comparison with Verdi and Wagner, serious study of Lloyd Webber, including recent scholarship, “is conspicuous by its absence” (also quoted from the opening of the chapter). The second edition of Steven Suskin’s
Show Tunes
(1991) included a section called “Notable Imported Shows.” About half of the shows listed were shows with music by Lloyd Webber. In the Preface to the third edition Suskin justifies the omission of this section and the expunging of Lloyd Webber that resulted: “All of the British imports since the Second Edition have failed; thus, I have seen fit to excise the import section and concentrate on matters of more interest.”
⁹
As a consequence of this executive decision, the most popular Broadway composer of the last thirty years and probably in history is now banished from a major reference book that purports to cover “The Songs, Shows, and Careers of Broadway’s Major Composers.” In his critical remarks on Maury Yeston’s excellent version of
Phantom
, which was performed to some acclaim by Houston’s Theater of the Stars in 1991, Suskin compares the work favorably with its vastly better known predecessor: “Yeston’s score is actually far more tuneful than you-know-who’s.”
¹⁰
Even the identity of “you know who” remains securely hidden, a phantom of the musical theater.

Of the thirty-eight Broadway musicals explored in Raymond Knapp’s two-volume survey of the American musical and musical film, seven feature shows by Sondheim and only one considers a show by Lloyd Webber (
Evita
).
¹¹
Although Knapp notes that not everyone shares a negative view and offers dramatic reasons behind Lloyd Webber’s reuse of melodic material, the disparity in emphasis nonetheless speaks for itself and reveals a stronger interest in Sondheim. Of the thirty-four shows discussed in Scott Miller’s three volumes of essays, eight are devoted to works by Sondheim, only one by Lloyd Webber (the early
Jesus Christ Superstar
).
¹²
Ethan Mordden, who devotes from four to fourteen pages each to nearly every Sondheim show in his seven-volume survey, dismisses Lloyd Webber through sharp criticism but mainly through neglect. In fact, among all of Lloyd Webber’s output, only
Jesus Christ
Superstar
, according to Mordden, demonstrates meaningful dramatic correlation between theme and characters (and consequently merits two pages).

Despite relative inattention in mainstream surveys, the past few years have witnessed serious studies on Lloyd Webber musicals that combine biographical, critical, and analytical commentary, especially John Snelson’s
Andrew Lloyd Webber
(2004) and Jessica Sternfeld’s
The Megamusical
(2006).
¹³
Both Snelson and Sternfeld are sympathetic to their subject and offer spirited defenses of Lloyd Webber against his many critics. For the most part, however, authors who devote some attention to Lloyd Webber characteristically treat significant elements of his shows, if not the composer himself, with undisguised disdain. Some of these studies minimize—they can’t ignore—Lloyd Webber’s achievement and attribute the staggeringly popular success of his shows, and other overblown megamusicals, merely to stagecraft and media hype.
¹⁴
Another commonly voiced criticism of Lloyd Webber shows, even in writings that are largely positive—for example, Stephen Citron’s double study of Lloyd Webber and Sondheim in 2001—are aimed at what is perceived as generic and otherwise sub-par lyrics, especially those written by lyricists who have come after
Evita
, when Rice and Lloyd Webber parted ways.
¹⁵
On the whole, the overwhelming critical assessment of Lloyd Webber so far consists of high marks for stagecraft, spectacle, and popular success, and low marks for artistic craft, inspired originality, and general overall esteem.

Two controversial issues have long haunted the musicals of Lloyd Webber: (1) his common practice of musical borrowing from other composers; and (2) allegations of excessive reuse of his own music within a musical. Neither issue is unique to Lloyd Webber. Virtually all composers, including Broadway composers, borrow from other musical sources. Composers in the classical tradition from Handel, Bach, and Mozart to Stravinsky and Ives have used previous music frequently and with great originality and craft for centuries, a force that prompted eighteenth-century theorist Johann Mattheson to pronounce that “borrowing is permissible, but one must return the object borrowed with interest.”
¹⁶
The problem is that Lloyd Webber is often accused of borrowing without paying interest. Since the days of Sigmund Romberg it would be difficult to produce a Broadway composer who has so blatantly been accused of plagiarism, several steps beneath borrowing.
¹⁷
Similarly, in regard to the second controversy, all composers surveyed in
this volume reuse material and reprise songs in their musicals. Here too, the issue is that Lloyd Webber, perhaps more than any major Broadway figure, is accused of indiscriminate or dramatically meaningless reuse.

This volume has shown that the composers of our featured shows occasionally quote or allude to the music of other composers. The most interesting borrowings are those that are dramatically purposeful and meaningful—for example, the use of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony as a source of the River Family in
Show Boat
, the use of Tchaikovsky’s
Romeo and Juliet
and Wagner’s “Redemption through Love” leitmotiv in
West Side Story
, and the “Dies irae” in
Sweeney Todd
. It has also been observed that a number of borrowings are seemingly less than meaningful to the work at hand (e.g., the Puccini allusions in
My Fair Lady
or the undisguised resemblances between Bernstein’s “Maria” and Blitzstein’s
Regina
).