On Andrew Lloyd Webber's Britishness-- Part 3

A flop can close in one night or a week—a couple perhaps. On Broadway, that is. The West End is not known for too many gregariously long runs, but it is known for trying to let a show find an audience before closing it over night. Even failures get a little more room to fail. Failure was not a word known to Andrew Lloyd Webber in the mid-1970s. His Jesus Christ Superstar had played Broadway and was settling in for a long West End run. Even the plucky little Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was expanded into a two-act musical that ran Off-Broadway.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, 1970s

His next musical was to be an adaptation of the Jeeves stories of P. G. Wodehouse. Tim Rice had actually given him the idea, but then bowed out to research Eva Peron for an idea of his own. Jeeves could not be a sung-through musical like Superstar given the wordy quality of the stories. So, Lloyd Webber enlisted British playwright Alan Ayckbourn to write the book and lyrics. Wodehouse even heard some of the songs and gave his blessing to the project before he passed away.

David Hemmings leading the cast of the '70s JEEVES

Ayckbourn is known for medium-sized cast plays often written to run in repertory, such as his Norman Conquests trilogy and the set-related trilogy Damsels in Distress. Having never written a musical libretto, he decided to write the musical as a play in which songs would be peppered through. His lyrics had some level of professionalism for a first time try, but his book was long, largely without female characters, and with many characters who had little to no purpose whatsoever. The early runs in Bristol clocked in at four and a half hours. David Hemmings was a perfect Bertie, but the director was frequently inebriated and what cutting was done did not improve morale much before the show premiered in the West End.

Jeeves ran for a little over a month in London. Again, no triumph—but, given its advance press, longer than it would have run in New York. A cast album was released, including a few numbers cut by opening night, but the director Harold Prince recommended Lloyd Webber buy up every copy so that he could reuse melodies in later shows. Indeed, some melodies did appear in later shows, such as Aspects of Love and Sunset Boulevard. One full song, “Half a Moment,” was recorded by Sarah Brightman for an album. But the failure of Jeeves nagged at Lloyd Webber and he and Ayckbourn took another look in the mid-1990s.

The West End playbill for JEEVES

A few of the songs were retained, many more were substantially rewritten, but mostly new work appeared. The paired-down show (now under two hours) played the Edinburgh Festival and eventually received performances in the West End and on Broadway. By Jeeves has become a regular favorite for community theatres. The small band, simple sets, and small, charming songs allow thrifty companies to mount a Lloyd Webber show without the extravagant budget.

The revamped BY JEEVES for a video production

The piece shows an English and gentile side of Lloyd Webber that is perhaps in line with his upper-class upbringing. His shows set in the United Kingdom have an authenticity that the mega-blockbusters do not. You can take Cats, Starlight, Phantom—even Superstar—and transplant them to any country and, without even translating the lyrics, they speak to a universal audience for spectacle. While there is a large audience for this, there is a low common denominator; spectacle doesn’t have try hard in the way of story or song.

But, Song and Dance, Aspects of Love, and By Jeeves are quintessentially English. When Song and Dance came to Broadway, it was Americanized and ruined. The other two were transplanted intact—success found one (in a limited engagement) and puzzlement was the response to the other. Yet even though they are not commercial smashes, they seem true to Twain’s adage to write about what you know. Lloyd Webber knows upper- and middle-class English morality. Perhaps he should write about it more.

Below is “Half a Moment” from the original recording.

On Andrew Lloyd Webber's Britishness-- Part 2

How do you follow up a colossal megahit like The Phantom of the Opera? That must have been the question on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s mind when he approached the late 1980s. His Cats, Starlight Express, & Phantom had helped changed the way musicals were produced and marketed in the West End. Two of those shows did even better on Broadway than in London.

Sarah Brightman, Michael Crawford, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Diana of Wales

One thing you can do when you’ve gone all-out with a mostly sung-through maximalist musical is write something more restrained, perhaps a chamber musical? Something for a smaller venue? His next show would have fewer characters and would not have an overly ambitious reach, but even though it might have been conceived as an intimate entertainment, Aspects of Love was still produced with aplomb in lavish, state-of-the-art design. In recent years, however, it has been given as intimate offerings in multiple revivals across the U. K.

David Garnett was a member of the Bloomsbury group in the early-middle 20th century. His mother, Constance Garnett, was a noted translator of Russian novelists. Her son’s output included a small novella, Aspects of Love, about an impetuous British soldier named Alexis and his goings-on with the French actress Rose Vibert. Multiple couplings dot the very European story focusing on bohemians in the French countryside during and between the Wars.

Autographed Photo of David Garnett

Tim Rice first brought the novella to Lloyd Webber’s attention in the mid-1970s. The idea was to have written it as a film musical with its multiple scenes spreading across about twenty years. But the project never did materialize. When The Phantom was safely at home in London and on Broadway, the stage was finally set for another Lloyd Webber hit. The dashing, young lyricist Charles Hart, who had written the lion’s share of the Phantom lyrics, was recruited to collaborate with Don Black, the lyricist of Song and Dance, on the vast exercise. Aspects was, again, a mostly sung-through musical—almost an operetta, except not comic. The finished musical has one or two spoken lines. Those were provided by Lloyd Webber himself, who chose to adapt the novella as the sole credited bookwriter.

Roger Moore with Lloyd Webber and Michael Ball

The casting of Aspects of Love was tabloid fodder. An unknown American actress, Ann Crumb, was chosen to star as Rose and Michael Ball, said to be one of the true finds from the original cast of Les Misérables, was to co-star as the solider, now named Alex. The biggest news, however, was that former James Bond Roger Moore was to finish out the cast in his first role for the musical theatre. In the end, Moore did not feel his singing voice up to the task and bowed out, leaving Kevin Colson, his understudy, to take the part.

Aspects of Love opened in the West End in 1988 and ran for several years. The Broadway production, essentially a replica, ran out of steam after a couple of months. The story was hardly American faire and, while it had a few genuine hits like “Love Changes Everything” and “The First Man You Remember,” those did not get radio play in the states. Nevertheless, from then on, New York critics would be less kind to Lloyd Webber. Perhaps retaliation for the madcap successes of Cats & Phantom?

One Poster for the UK Production

Aspects is a lovely, mature musical—its score rapturous, its lyrics skilled, its story moving. Numbers like “Hand Me the Wine and the Dice” and “Falling” show Lloyd Webber trying to do something legitimately different and succeeding, at least artistically. As mentioned above, revivals have skewed toward more minimal approaches. Aspects does not demand extravagance or restraint. As long as the scenes flow in a cinematic fashion, the production should move audiences. Below, Michael Ball singing “Love Changes Everything.”

On Andrew Lloyd Webber's Britishness- Part 1

In the 1960s-70s, the world of musical theatre changed rapidly. The introduction of rock and roll all but decimated the days when a showtune would be a number one hit on the radio. Show music largely did not follow into popular forms in the 1960s, with the notable exceptions of Hair on Broadway and Your Own Thing Off-Broadway. However, one composer-lyricist team was bringing rock to theatres and making a killing in the process.

Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice, c. 1971

(Now Lord) Andrew Lloyd Webber and (now Sir) Tim Rice collaborated on three sung-through rock musicals from the late sixties to the late seventies. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat began its life as a pop cantata for schools, but it eventually received glitzy productions on Broadway, in the West End, and as a film for home video. Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita followed Tommy’s mold as a successful concept album, but both eventually straddled the Atlantic onstage and were made into three successful films, two for cinemas and one for home video. But the relationship of the team that wrote them had soured by 1975. Rice abandoned Lloyd Webber on his flop Jeeves (later reworked as By Jeeves) and Lloyd Webber felt forced into the work on Eva Peron.

On the lookout for other projects, one came about as the result of Andrew losing a soccer bet against his cellist brother Julian. Andrew’s punishment became an album, Variations. He wrote 24 rock’n’roll variations on Niccolo Paganini’s 24th Caprice in A Minor, to be led by Julian on the cello. The album was a rock-classical crossover hit and the opening track became the theme song for The South Bank Show.

Next, Lloyd Webber met lyricist Don Black, who had won an Academy Award for his song for Born Free. The two independently had wanted to write something for an English female character. The result was a song cycle—Tell Me on a Sunday—the concept album of which in 1980 told the story of a British woman in various states of romantic entanglement with American men. It spawned the hit singles “Take That Look Off Your Face” and “Tell Me on a Sunday.” A concert of the cycle was also performed on the BBC.

Original Poster for the West End version of SONG AND DANCE

It was Cameron Mackintosh, the producer of Lloyd Webber’s next show Cats, who recommended Lloyd Webber pair the two works together for an evening entitled Song and Dance. Billed in the West End as a “Concert for the Theatre,” Act I was Tell Me on a Sunday featuring Marti Webb, who had recorded the album and Act II was Variations, a ballet featuring Wayne Sleep. Only at the end did song and dance come together in the touching final number “When You Want to Fall in Love.” Song and Dance ran for years in London, a live recording of the opening night performance served as the Original Cast Album and, in the final year of the run, a revised version was recorded for television starring Sarah Brightman.

Bernadette Peters as "Emma." Did I mention this was in the 1980s?

To translate the work for Broadway, Richard Maltby, Jr. was hired to direct the show and pen “additional lyrics,” much to Don Black’s chagrin. Maltby gave the characters names—Emma and Joe—the latter being one of Emma’s offstage boyfriends from the first act who gets his own story in the second. Maltby attempted to meld the evening together as some kind of experimental full-length musical, but the framework was essentially the same. One of the later “Variations” from the evening became the first act Overture and “When You Want to Fall in Love” was transformed into a first act song called “Unexpected Song,” which was introduced in the West End late into its run. The result was a mixed bag. Critics and audiences both equally loved Bernadette Peters in the role of Emma and, while they appreciated the steps of Christopher d’Ambroise and his company of dancers, the evening was considered top-heavy and, even then, beneath Ms. Peters’ talents.

Today, Tell Me on a Sunday gets performed by itself as a single evening’s entertainment most often. Variations was recorded in a symphonic version years after the original. Below is Brightman's version of "Unexpected Song."