Big Steve

Always interesting to hear what Stephen Sondheim has to say for himself; certainly a lot more interesting than what anyone else has to say about him. This interview seems like a typical bit of smirky indifference:

"I can’t say I enjoy writing [lyrics]. I find it extremely difficult, but then I can’t think of a lyric writer I’d rather work with than myself!”

I've always thought that that has been a great shame. For me his greatest work was as a lyricist for other composers. I'm kind of a Sondheim fan in reverse: merrily rolling along with the early stuff, from West Side Story up to Company, but gradually getting more take-it-or-leave-it from Follies onwards.

I don't like the fawning of some critics and it must irk his Broadway contemporaries no end, but Sondheim himself is always worth listening to. He always seems clear-sighted about his own work, never openly scornful about the work of others. And a lot jollier than you might expect.

What's "Football" in Canadian?

It seems that Citizen Elton and Lord Andrew are polishing off their football show "The Beautiful Game" and putting it on in Winnipeg. I remember going to the London original not long after it opened and was pleasantly surprised. I didn't rate the songs too much but the story-telling - and, in particular, the second act - was very strong.

Having had success with sitcoms, novels, plays you'd expect Elton to be good at structuring a story which might explain his success as a bookwriter for musicals and also makes this little nugget very interesting:

"I did it as a favour over a weekend," he says of writing the Phantom of the Opera sequel. "Andrew didn't have the story in any kind of shape at all. He asked me to take a look. I did it as a favour for a bloke. That's it. I don't take much interest in it." Lloyd Webber had been toiling over the project for years, and Elton says he immediately saw where the holes were. The four-page plot synopsis he wrote will form the basis for Love Never Dies...

If he can just fix the title as well.

Anyway, just as an aside, here's my old review of the original cast recording for "The Beautiful Game":

On the pre-opening interview circuit Ben Elton was always keen to point out that The Beautiful Game was the first Andrew Lloyd Webber show with knob gags. Well, here's another first: this is the first Lloyd Webber CD with one of those black-and-white "parental advisory" labels on the front cover (although, to be fair, some of his harsher critics have been issuing health warnings for years now). Even more significantly its Ben Elton's first musical. So the big question is just how well does Britain’s top supplier of knob gags cope with the demands of lyric writing? Well, the jury's still out.

Elton has a reputation as a bit of a political animal but comedy-wise he's always been better at the everyday observational stuff like getting on a train ("Double seat, double seat, got to get a double seat") or the incidental idiocies of love. It’s the same with his lyrics. So, for example, there's a cute number called "Don't Like You" where the two leads John and Mary get together and do what most teenagers who fancy each other do, they start trading insults like 5 year-olds in the playground:

MARY: Don't like you. Don't like you. I don't think I like you.
You're bad. You're sad. And I know nicer boys.
JOHN: Not bothered. Not bothered. I simply am not bothered.
You're vain. A total pain. And I know sweeter girls.

Its not vintage but its sweet and simple and in character. He even manages to catch a bit of Oirishness in the odd turn of phrase: "I never flippin' did sure it was you who called me".

The problem comes with the serious stuff. Elton initially had the idea of making the whole thing a big metaphor for conflict and setting it in various locations around the world - Belgrade, Kosovo, West Bank, wherever. With some of the lyrics we're still not sure that he's settled for 1970s Northern Ireland. He's big on the general statements ("If hatred's all we're fighting for then I don't want to win") but short on the particulars of time and place that make songs memorable. The song titles don't really help. Some are hopelessly saccharine ("Let Us Love in Peace", "All the Love I Have") while others read more like scenic sub-headings ("Off to the Party", "The Happiest Day"). The result, in both the politics and the love, is a kind of plodding earnestness; well-intended but uninvolving.

Musically Lloyd Webber is up to his old tricks: a mix of catchy, soft rock and the trademark, sweeping melodies. But there's signs that his dramatic instincts are letting him down. Take the big heart-tugger of the score, “Our Kind of Love". It’s a gorgeous melody, beautifully sung by Hannah Waddingham, but sounds nothing like a care-free young girl swooning over her boyfriend and George Best's thighs. The words put up a good fight but there soon drowned underneath the bombast and by the time you get to the end, you're not really sure it was worth the effort:

People must love,
Now and forever.
There’s only one love in the end.

But its an odd thing that, in musicals, pretty much anything can be made to work so long as its in the right place. At the end of Evita the big song "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" was meant as a string of meaningless, overblown cliches that comes back to haunt Eva Peron in her demise. Something similar happens with the reprisal of "Our Kind of Love". In the finale Josie Walker belts out the cliches with all the bitter frustration of someone who has gradually seen her friends imprisoned, murdered or knee-capped. And what has she to show for it? Nothing but a handful of trite, peace-and-love truisms. Like Tony Blair's sentimental guff about "the hand of history", the soundbites aren’t enough to hide the tragedy underneath. It’s a moving moment that all too briefly brings the score to life.

Maybe it was inevitable that a West End show with all-singing, all-dancing members of the IRA would (ahem) bomb in London. And, whilst its a joy to hear a British musical that's relatively contemporary and about something distinctively British, you have to question the choice of subject matter. Elton is a funny man. He’s written funny books, funny plays, funny TV. If he and Lloyd Webber really want to try something radical, why not do a funny musical? Bring on the knob gags.

I thought it would never happen...

...but it has. Sing out, Leo!

Oh Mummy

Veronica Lee sees "many layers of irony" in Mamma Mia. I've only seen the film but I must have missed them, unless they were in the decision to cast three middle-aged men who can't sing or dance in a musical. Apparently I also failed to experience the "life-affirming joy"; mostly I just cringed behind a cushion.

But you can't argue with money. Mammia Mia is ten years old in the West End, has gone around the planet and done business at the box office. When was the last time that happened? Cabaret in the '70s?

In terms of musical theatre, however, it's really not much more than a souped-up karaoke evening. Nothing wrong with that. It's helped keep many an actor, musician and hen night party off the streets at night, for which we must be grateful. But Kander and Ebb it ain't.

Almost Famous

Michael Billington has been taking in A Little Night Music:

"One of the pleasures of A Weekend in the Country, the second most famous song in this Stephen Sondheim musical..."

The second most famous song in a Sondheim musical? So that would be not very famous at all, then.

Meanwhile Charles Spencer find the seats comfier in the West End. It's good to get some insight from the professionals.

Lordy Lordy

Lord Andy makes a rare appearance in the House on the issue of creative artists and digital piracy:

"The question that occurs to me is whether, in ten years time, Britain will be a place that the Beatles could have emerged from?

Or Connie Fisher for that matter...

... Not in a world where there are no longer shops where you can buy the physical products and where the internet is a Somalia of unregulated theft and piracy."

Although presumably with fewer firearms.

I can see His Lordship's point but I fear that the horse may have bolted on this one. And I'm not so sure that all this digitising will really put a stranglehold on talent. What it will do, however, is put a premium on live performance which, it seems to me, is no bad thing for music and theatre lovers.

Spring is Here, Spring is Here

The daffs are out and all about
The springtime fills the air
The earth makes room for golden bloom
Of flowers bright and fair

And all around is heard the sound
Of bird-call sweet and strange
As folks go by they raise the cry
"Ooh, don't it make a change!"

That's a roundabout way of posting on a new musical to hit the West End. And if I were to discuss a show, well it might as well be Spring Awakening. My hunch is that it's not quite as radical as some people make out. The idea is that in a traditional musical the songs try to arise naturally out of the story. With Spring Awakening the songs make a deliberate break. One minute everyone's acting all 19th century, the next they're singing, like, so totally modern slang, yeah?

But, musically speaking, this is missing the point. Oklahoma doesn't have Oklahoman folk music. My Fair Lady doesn't have mock Edwardian parlour songs. And the gritty, urban, street-wise tragedy that is West Side Story has a symphonic score composed by a posh, classical conductor. The point is that the musical style has always been at odds with the setting. What's really important is whether it's musically appropriate to the drama. The characters in Spring Awakening are frustrated teenagers and they sing like frustrated teenagers so it works just fine. Admittedly, the leap from 19th-century Germany to 21st-century American pop culture is bigger than that from Oklahoma to Broadway. But the difference is one of extent, not form.

So I'm not convinced that Spring Awakening, for all its success, is going to turn everything on its head and usher in a new beginning. Besides if you really want to hear what's getting the kids into the theatre these days, you only have to look at this.