Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber (83 page)

Snelson offers a persuasive explanation as to why Raoul appropriates the Phantom’s unheard theme:

Both men are trying to lure their prey, initially one ostensibly for art and one for human love, but ultimately both for emotional and physical love; both are investing Christine with their own desires and aspirations; each represents a different potential within Christine…. The Phantom and Raoul are reflections of each other—each defining himself through his opposite number—yet they share a common purpose in the seduction of Christine; and so it is appropriate that their two big vocal gestures should have common features.
⁴⁸

More than any other factor, it is the song “Music of the Night” that persuades Christine (and the audience) that the Phantom should be taken seriously as a romantic alternative to Raoul. In “The Point of No Return,” Raoul gains the trust and love of Christine by usurping the Phantom’s music, making it his own, and thus breaking the spell. In the end, Lloyd Webber’s Christine sings the music of the Sympathy (or Liù’s) theme, “Yet in his eyes,” and ultimately rejects the Phantom, the man who developed her potential as an artist. Instead, she chooses the soon-to-be-endangered Raoul, the man who offers a life of wealth and high society but who might not embrace Christine’s professional career. It is crucial to the Lloyd Webber-Prince vision of the story that the reason Christine decides as she does is neither the Phantom’s “haunted face” nor any lack of musical talent, but the Phantom’s vengeful, murderous, and immoral soul. It is striking that Lloyd Webber gives Christine one of her most original and expressive melodies (and a melody that does not belong to anyone else) to express her conflict about whether to regard the Phantom as an angel or a monster (“Twisted every way what answer can I give?).
⁴⁹

In addition to borrowing and reuse issues, some may legitimately wonder why in a non-rock score the title song should contain such a prominent rock beat or why the Meyerbeer parody,
Il Muto
, which sets up for the most part a reasonable facsimile of mid-nineteenth-century French grand opera style, would include a generic pop song “Think of Me” that undermines the evocation of a historical style. In the film, servants insert ear plugs when Carlotta begins to sing in an overdone operatic manner and remove them when Christine continues with her lighter and more pop manner, modeling a nihilistic boredom with the opera tradition for a presumably appreciative audience—yet this is the same tradition Lloyd Webber draws on frequently (although relatively few in the audience know it).
⁵⁰
Is it fair to ask “What would Sondheim do” or is popularity the final critical arbiter for these decisions?

Lloyd Webber may not be Sondheim, but his ability to reach audiences is impressive.
Phantom
, the show that Snelson and other authorities considers the Lloyd Webber show “most assured of a place in the canon,” is a musical that authors of surveys on Broadway should take seriously for its stagecraft, theatrical polish, and memorable melodies.
⁵¹
Snelson admirably sums up the significance of this achievement: “His work has inspired a visceral response to be praised for itself, and the enjoyment in the dramatic moment or the phrase that catches the ear so effectively is not to be lightly dismissed. This, after all, is fundamental to the greatest of musicals composers and the most long-lived of shows.”
⁵²

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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