Gil Hates Everything

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom Of The Opera”.

For my own benefit as much as yours, let me just recap what I’ve thought of ALW shows so far, in three words apiece.

Aspects Of Love: WTF. Long. Eh.
The Beautiful Game: Strained. Average. Tuneless.
Bombay Dreams (he produced it): Percussion. Bollywood. Approved.
By Jeeves: Wodehouse. Excellent. Surprising.
Cats: WTF. Dancing? No.
Evita: WTF. Ambitious. Unlikeable.
Jesus Christ Superstar: Pretty Fucking Good.
Joseph: Pretty Fucking Woeful.

In practice, what I take from this is that Webber is (a) successful (you don’t get to do that many musicals if you’re a loser), (b) productive (see (a)), (c) ambitious (which doesn’t tell you anything about the finished works’ quality), (d) unpredictable (which does).

So here’s his 1986 version of the Phantom. He took some flak (and a court case) for borrowing a tune from Puccini. This time round his lyricist was Charles Hart, working over original lyrics by Richard Stilgoe. (Apparently his first choice was Jim Steinman. I’ll let you know how that pairing worked out when I reach “Whistle Down The Wind“.)

Going by the soundtrack, the story is much more action-packed and sung-through (there’s a lot of recitative, sigh) than Maury Yeston’s version. It also benefits from an absolutely gripping main theme. Oh c’mon, you love it. My biggest problem with this show is that it basically doesn’t live up to the promise of those six notes. Yes, keeping the theme ‘special’ (which ALW often fails to do, especially in terms of controlling his lyricists, leading to the amusing story of “Love Changes Everything” reoccurring later in that show with the lyrics “Would you like a biscuit now”) means that it doesn’t recur enough times to become boring itself, but its occurrences are often only just in time to stop me being bored. The message for composers of shows like this is: more hard-hitting drums, and perhaps more than one strong theme. But hey, if you’re only going to have one, then damn, this one’s a blinder. I have no time for subtlety in this matter. Every time this theme shows up it’s utterly electrifying. Webber gets one piece of bamboo for each those six notes.

(I should note that Roger Waters, formerly of Pink Floyd, asserts that it rips off “Echoes” from the Floyd’s album “Meddle”. I need to check this tonight and may post an update.)

The upshot is that the opening three minutes of this show are transfixing. Of course, those three minutes are immediately followed by an annoying soprano, but you can’t have everything.

The Phantom in this version is psychotic, a murderer, and obsessed with Christine. This makes him interesting. Imagine being given singing lessons and being sponsored in your opera career – by a very talented and genuinely-knowledgable killer. Yes, it’s all handled at a melodramatic level, more like an episode of Buffy than as great moralistic literature, but you could say the same about “Wicked”, and people don’t typically diss the shit out of that. (Although stay tuned for that one when I hit “W”: I will be considerably mocking the lyrics ;-) The result is some spine-chilling moments when the Phantom issues his threats and kills his enemies. “So, it is to be war between us!” – man, I ache to write that line in something of mine. C’mon, admit it, it’s fun.

The advantage of having an interesting lead character, as I’ve noted before for shows like “The Music Man”, is that their material has to step it up… and the Phantom has not just the biggest number of maniacal laughs in any show I know, but an excellent solo, “The Music Of The Night” (music: Puccini) as well as the duet “The Phantom Of The Opera” (which I wish was faster). Unfortunately, Christine is lumbered with “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again”, which sucks, and there’s just no saving “All I Ask Of You”. (Sensibly, Webber, faced with ending Act One with this clunker, throws in another reprise of the Phantom theme.) But some of these the songs ask the singer to provide some range and some lungs, so that’s nice.

But… about half of the soundtrack is somewhat functional. The pastiche opera segments do their job, the “Notes” sequences are funny, and the rehearsal of the Phantom’s “Don Juan Triumphant” is interesting. The rest of it is mostly just there, except, as I say, when the Phantom is at the mic. And there’s a horrible mess for basically five minutes of the longish “Notes” quartet, mostly caused by having a shrieking soprano overlapping everyone else’s words. For god’s sake. It ends up sounding completely unintelligible. Men and women are singing actual lyrics here, I’m sure, but it just sounds like walla.

The bigger problem is that the clash of rock and roll songs with opera-lite is somewhat of a thematic elephant – listen to just one song chosen at random and you’d have no way to guess how the whole show pans out sonically. Rock and roll is all about a beat; old-school opera is precisely not about the beat. The resulting inter-song stylistic jerkiness is unsatisfying, and although Webber clearly took a deliberate decision to divide the music up like this, I think it makes for a slightly random listen.

I can’t stop chuckling that the Phantom signs his notes “O.G.”, which back in 1986 presumably didn’t make people think “Shit! The theatre is haunted by an Original Gangsta? We’d better act like we know, vato, and not disrespect a motherfucker in case he runs up on us with his nine.”

So, how to rate this one? Well, it would be easy to rinse the fuck out of this show, and it’s not like “Musical Of Musicals (The Musical)” didn’t do exactly that. But you can’t mock it out of existence. Webber has done as many shows as Sondheim, has had more hits, has taken at least some risks, has reinvested his money in some unlikely directions, and could be considered the Bill Gates of musical theatre: he has undeniably changed the face of musical theatre, you can’t ignore him or write him off as ineffectual, and I sometimes wonder whether in his absence we would still have musical theatre, at least in England – even if it’s gone in certain directions that aren’t necessarily ideal. People like him, and his shows stop theatres getting demolished. And as you can see from that list at the top, he doesn’t sit still, even if his ambition outpaces his sureness of hand. There’s room for both him and William Finn in musicals. And shows like this make for an excellent entry point for complete newcomers – which is not to say that I don’t think complete newcomers couldn’t be thrown in at the deep end with “A New Brain” or “The Wild Party”, but realistically that’s not going to happen is it?

Summing up… the story is fun and mostly dialled up to eleven, the Phantom is a great character, there’s a handful of very good songs, and the main theme is a total winner. On the other hand, I like raucous rock and roll with banging drums and heavy synths, but there isn’t enough of it.

So: Random Panda is going to award this seven out of ten pieces of bamboo. Discuss ;-)

I’m on vacation tomorrow and Friday, so the next entry may not be till Monday, when, I’m sorry, I’m going to be effusing with nostalgia again… it’s “Pickwick”, which is forever in my mind identified with the majestic Harry Secombe. I’ll warn you in advance, this is not going to score low :)

(originally posted 2009)