Hard to know where to start. At first I thought it was just another anti-Lord Andy rant. But not so, says the author. He clarifies things a bit in the comments:
"It's about how capitalism shifts generally and specifically towards the safe, easy money. Webber, for all his worth, is the easy money"
He may be now but he wasn't then. Cats struggled to find investors. Only after that did he look like a sure-fire bet. And since Phantom his shows have had more investment but made less money. Seems to me that this capitalism thing is a bit more complicated than Mr Whalley is letting on.
"The article (heavily edited, as it happens) is about writing musicals that (and I quote) 'have something to say'"
As opposed to those silent musicals? I'm kidding. But honestly, what does this mean? I'll come back to this.
"Webber's musicals just don't fit in this arts-cuts world. They have bugger all to say."
To the best of my knowledge, Lord Andy's shows don't rely on government subsidies. Whatever they have anything to say or not, they're bugger all to do with the arts-cuts world.
"They blot out the sun and soak up the money."Again, they're not competing with subsidised theatre so I'm not sure how they're blotting out anything. And that money they're soaking up is paying the wages of actors, musicians, stage hands, front of house and the rest.
"They give people the impression that musical theatre has to be through-composed and grand. A sort of pretend-opera for the masses."
This I sort of agree with. Imitation is inevitable when somebody's successful. But that applies in artistic terms as much as in commercial ones. Lots of musical writers pretend to be Stephen Sondheim.
"Don't try to sell me the idea that Webber is avant-garde"
Wouldn't dare. Lord Andy certainly isn't before his time. I don't see him as pre-empting a future direction for musicals. He's more of a one-off original. He may have had his imitators but, so far, none have had the same success by following in his footsteps.
"Any writer who sucks up to the establishment and accepts their patronage ought to be viewed with nothing less than suspicion"
Isn't government-subsidised theatre a bit like accepting the patronage of the establishment?
"I only watch Man Utd on telly in the hope that someone will beat them. I feel the same about Webber"
Nice. No anti-Lloyd Webber rant here. Good to clarify that.
Now obviously I'm in disagreement with a lot of this. I think the article falls into the trap of seeing big, commercial theatre as "safe" and smaller-scale, subsidised work as "risky". If anything, when it comes to musicals, it's probably the other way round.
But there is, I think, a distinction worth making between musicals that have "something to say" and the rest, although it's a bit hard to work out how Mr Whalley makes that distinction. He seems to approve of West Side Story, Hairspray and small-scale musicals dislikes Evita, Cats, Disney and jukebox musicals. To my mind, it's the last category where the true distinction lies.
How does a musical "say" anything? Primarily through its songs. It's hard to see how a musical writer who has something to say can do so by stuffing old songs into a new plot. Jukebox musicals are undoubtedly hard to get right and can be far better nights out than a musical with new songs. But I'm not really sure that they can ever have much to say.
That's the real distinction to be drawn. In the end it's not about the size of the budget, the scale of the production or the whether it's commercial or subsidised theatre. It's about the songs.
Boff Whalley has written the songs for a show about a Liverpool family divided by the Dockers' strikes of the 1960s. I'm sure he hopes that the songs tell the story, that the story has something important to say and that the show's successful. In that, I suspect he has more in common with Lord Andy than he'd care to admit.
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