Word: webber
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
EVITA Lyrics by Tim Rice; Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber...
...Argentine First Lady Eva Perón (1919-52) may be the biggest London smash since Jesus Christ Superstar opened there six years ago. Like Superstar, which will soon pass Oliver! to become England's alltime longest-running musical, Evita is the creation of Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and Lyricist Tim Rice. Both shows also share a producer, Robert Stigwood, who is best known to American audiences as a force behind the movies Saturday Night Fever and Grease...
Despite its synthetic Latinisms, flip dissonance and references to Lennon-McCartney songs, Webber's music is evocative and often catchy. Prince's staging is more problematical. Using a large company and rear-projected newsreel footage, the director has created some undeniably powerful tableaux: Evita's political rallies, her death and funeral have a dark and chilling majesty. But Prince is capable of sinking to Rice's simplistic level: Argentina's aristocratic class is symbolized by a phalanx of chorus people who seem to have stepped out of the Ascot Gavotte number of My Fair Lady...
Then there are the familiar, likable actors: the recently-revived Dyan Cannon (better than ever these days) as Clouseau's tag-along; the smooth, stylishly resonant Robert Webber (also not around in the last few years and also better than ever) as the heavy; and Herbert Lom, in the best of his Inspector Dreyfuss portrayals. There was too much of Lom in Strikes Again, and Edwards directed him badly, but here he's wired to short-circuit on sight of Clouseau, toppling over in hilarious catatonia...
...bigger the company, the more difficult it is to finance a raid. By paying more than twice the book value for a ho-hum company, Milliken let himself in for savage criticism of his business judgment. John Bogert, a former Kennecott employee who is a copper analyst with Paine, Webber, Jackson & Curtis, says of Milliken and his board: "They're not about to give things out to shareholders. They think of the company first and foremost...