Word: webber
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...hard not to pity the Woman in White. The poor, pale lady arrived in London's West End last week hauling a wagonload of expectations. This is, after all, Andrew Lloyd Webber's homecoming. Eighteen years after The Phantom of the Opera, after his American odysseys (Sunset Boulevard and Whistle Down the Wind), his Irish adventure (The Beautiful Game) and his Indian idyll (Bombay Dreams, which he produced), the composer has at last found an English gothic tale with which he might be able to harness the spooky power - not to mention the box-office returns - of Phantom...
...busy Brit MINNIE DRIVER is grounded enough to know her budding music career hasn't prepared her to deliver pop arias. Driver, whose first album, a "super-lo-fi, Cowboy Junkies kind of thing," is due in October, doesn't sing in the film version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. "It would have been ridiculously arrogant to believe I could pull it off without a lifetime of training," says the Good Will Hunting star, who appears with Gerard Butler as the Phantom. Besides, the role of Carlotta provides other outlets for Driver's pipes...
...Dreams a big risk for Broadway: a $14 million musical with no stars, a score by a composer famous in most of the world (see box, below) but not in the U.S., and a story set in the Bollywood milieu unknown to Broadway's conservative audience. Producer Andrew Lloyd Webber hired writer Thomas Meehan (The Producers, Hairspray) to cut a lot of in-jokes, pump up the mother love--domesticate the Bollywood beast. Will the transplant work? The show has a $6 million advance; and at a preview last week, the audience, perhaps 25% South Asian, seemed to love...
...Rahman's fans was Andrew Lloyd Webber, who had caught Dil Se on TV and was entranced by Chaiyya Chaiyya, an all-time irresistible bhangra sung on the roof of a speeding train. Lloyd Webber had found not just an inventive composer but also the solution to a vexing problem. "Musical theater had become very predictable," Rahman says. "I think Andrew felt that Bollywood musicals could be a new treat for the Western audience." Bombay Dreams (about half new Rahman songs, half greatest hits from his movies) has run for nearly two years in the West End. This week...
...Webber is taking a little risk: a $14 million musical with unknown actors, an unfamiliar foreign milieu and a who-he? composer. Still, anyone with half an ear will hear the most vibrant, varied new score in ages. Audiences will walk out of Bombay Dreams humming Rahman's songs and singing his praises. If music is the crucial part of a musical, then Rahman's genius will ensure that Bollywood conquers Broadway...