Word: webber
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...played Vegas and Edward Albee was on Broadway. Today essentially idea-free spectacle -- The Phantom of the Opera, Cats -- dominates New York City's so-called legitimate theater, and stand-up comedy is ubiquitous. In the '90s, Friars Club comedians like Mason have hit Broadway shows, and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Broadway musical Starlight Express has been permanently installed in the showroom of the Las Vegas Hilton. The crossbreeding seems complete...
When Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical retelling of the Hollywood film noir classic Sunset Boulevard made its debut in London in July, audience response was respectful but restrained. The staging that opened in Los Angeles last week had playgoers shouting with delight. Part of the difference may be the American propensity for public exuberance; some is surely the special joy Angelenos derive from a sly, knowing look at the gritty world of make-believe that dominates their local commerce. But the major reason is that the creators have at last figured out what the show is meant...
...reconception involves very little change in the text -- some tinkering and one new song -- but a top-to-bottom rethinking of attitude. The intention of composer Lloyd Webber, lyricist-librettists Don Black and Christopher Hampton, choreographer Bob Avian and director Trevor Nunn was always to echo Billy Wilder's astringent film. In London, however, the team confused fidelity to the plot with fidelity of tone...
...downside is that her singing voice, while warm and true, does not extract nearly as much angst or musicality as LuPone does from the anthems With One Look and New Ways to Dream. Lloyd Webber's music, as usual, has the lush extravagance and candy-box prettiness of Puccini, with themes repeated often enough to ensure their hummability. Though no single number has the pop allure of Memory or The Music of the Night, the score is probably his most coherent and effective...
...maybe lots of heterosexuals born since World War II really do love musicals. But I have never knowingly hummed a show tune. I take it only on faith that Rodgers and Hammerstein were geniuses. Ethel Merman's voice was powerful, sure, and powerfully annoying. Each new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical seems like an ice show putting on airs, Siegfried and Roy with bathos. To a majority of people under 50, I'm convinced, the formal conceit of musicals (a so-so play during which the actors inexplicably sing their hearts out every 10 minutes) is both corny and surreal, like...