Gil Hates Everything

At last, then, “The Woman In White”: this is an Andrew Lloyd Webber show from 2004, based on a Wilkie Collins novel from 1859, a novel involving a plot to steal a woman’s fortune, hugely popular at the time and still feted as one of the first mystery stories (the story hints at strange and supernatural elements, but it’s based around dubious practices by very human agents).

So this is ALW in full-on opera mode here, and it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on the comparative success of his various operas… because it occurs to me that he’s been making operas for a while, and as opposed to the traditional view of operas, expressed in Terry Pratchett’s “Masquerade” as “an opera house is a thing which you put money into and get opera out of”, ALW may be that unusual thing, a composer-businessman who treats theatres as something which you put opera into and get money out of. GHM didn’t think much of “Sunset Boulevard”, but the most likely reason is the inappropriateness of operatic recitative for a character piece set in 1940s Hollywood. The opera aspects worked tolerably in the period melodrama “The Phantom Of The Opera” (the problem there being the clash with a simultaneous poppier style) and I think they work well in “The Woman In White” because again we’re talking a period piece where we can have some expectation of a portentous and elevated speaking style. When I went to see “Nixon In China” it really didn’t work because, y’know, it’s Richard Nixon, but rightly or wrongly I have more tolerance for characters from 1836 acting like they’re in an opera.

Lyrics for this show are by David Zippel, who also wrote lyrics for “City Of Angels”, and they don’t suck, which is good, because there’s a lot of them. There’s a lot of fairly blandly-set but tolerably-rhyming exposition, and only a few songs that you’d recognize and extract as such; in the first act, “Perspective” is good, “I Believe My Heart” is very traditional ALW and sadly awful with it, “A Gift For Living Well” is tolerable and does its job but isn’t fantastic. “Lammastide” is a hoot – it’s the macarena, transplanted to 1836. Literally, the macarena. It’s extremely funny. In the second act there’s even more recitative, but I found the story interesting enough that I didn’t get (too) bored.

The portrayal of Glyde’s shady-if-independent confidant Count Fosco is excellent throughout; the role is sung here by the ever-reliable Michael Crawford, and he clearly has an absolute ball with the part. The highlight is his second-act comedy aria “You Can Get Away With Anything”; this song is simple but verrrry funny, and worth hunting down and adding to your repertoire, fellas. Interestingly, there’s a first-night live performance tacked onto the end as a bonus track, which is extremely interesting to analyze to see how Crawford milks it and gives the audience their money’s-worth, as well as keeping the conductor on his toes. Here it is, although sadly not with video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT8h_2X9uiY&feature=related (and in case you’re wondering who on earth he’s talking to, Fosco keeps tame white mice, which run all over his costume during this song).

I have to congratulate the numerous leads here; the character singing on this recording is very good. And there’s a ton of it; the show runs to something like two and a half hours, so as usual you can’t claim that ALW stints on documenting his shows, although it’s nice that for once the show is at all worth the effort. There isn’t much chorus work save the aforementioned “Macarenatide”, but it’s not like this is one of ALW’s great strengths and I didn’t miss it.

You’ll remember from other reviews that I find ALW usually comes up with one fascinatingly addictive little snippet of music for each of his shows; here it’s the little phrase which other characters sing whenever they’re fawning over the villain of the piece, Sir Perceval Glyde. It’s pitch-perfect.

Overall… okay, this is surprisingly good, and makes up for the horror of “Whistle Down The Wind” and the misfire of “Sunset Boulevard”. I’ve listened to it three times now in the space of a month, and I didn’t feel any great urge to kill myself. ALW has scraped his average back into the positive with this, and although it would take a lot of effort to ignore the power of the original story and the efforts of bookwriter Charlotte Jones and Zippel on lyrics, we can presume ALW was the prime mover. And at least he managed to keep his musical failures to a minimum. We’ll file this one as a win, especially by his mobile standards. After all, yes, the show only managed 500 performances in the West End and a hundred-odd nights on Broadway (hampered by the leading lady’s illness) and that’s low by ALW standards, but I definitely think this is an opera in all but official label, and I think we should treat it as a runaway commercial success as operas go. I’m surprised they haven’t filmed it; it would translate perfectly to the Performance Channel.

Random Panda awards “The Woman In white” seven out of ten pieces of bamboo.

(originally posted 2009)