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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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