Speaker 1: From The Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.
Speaker 1: I'm Claire Harvey. Of all the performing arts, musical theater
Speaker 1: has to be the most polarizing, So it makes sense
Speaker 1: that the hero of the genre, Andrew Lloyd Webber, is
Speaker 1: loved and loathed in equal measure. Our own Richard Ferguson
Speaker 1: is a musical feeder fan and an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan.
Speaker 2: No, don't see that. I hear andre Lloyd Webber. If
Speaker 2: I do enjoy some of the musicals, I'll explain that.
Speaker 1: Okay, But Richard does think that Andrew Lloyd Weber is
Speaker 1: having a moment right now, just not here in Australia.
Speaker 1: Is that okay to say, yeah.
Speaker 2: But I do not approve of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Just
Speaker 2: meet that very.
Speaker 1: Clear, Richard Ferguson, tell me about the moment Andrew Lloyd
Speaker 1: Webber is having right now.
Speaker 2: Andrew Lloyd Weber, for the first time in about fifty years,
Speaker 2: has become chic, which is unbelievable to anybody that has
Speaker 2: followed musical feared her. So when Andrew Lloyd Webber first
Speaker 2: came onto the musical fearder scene, he was a young
Speaker 2: English composer, working with the songwriter Tim Rice. Probably their
Speaker 2: first big hit was Jesus Christ Superstar, which was so
Speaker 2: controversial at the time because it was pretty irreligious. It
Speaker 2: did not state that Jesus Christ was the Lord and Savior.
Speaker 2: It had Judas as the hero, and it also had
Speaker 2: some of the best songs I think in musical fear
Speaker 2: to history, including probably the best romantic ballad, I Don't
Speaker 2: Know How to Love Him, which is the song by
Speaker 2: Mary Magdalene, and Mary Magdalene goes on to Snogham at
Speaker 2: one point that being Jesus, so you know he was edgy.
Speaker 2: And then they had a Vita which was a pretty
Speaker 2: interesting kind of edgy musical. Then he started Phantom of
Speaker 2: the Opera, and then it really made a turn when
Speaker 2: it came to Cats, which was the musical version of ts.
Speaker 2: Eliott's collection of Poems and at Children, which makes no
Speaker 2: sense whatsoever to anybody who has ever watched the darn thing.
Speaker 2: So when he first came up with the idea of
Speaker 2: doing ts. Eliot's Possum Cats as a musical, he went
Speaker 2: to the great Broadway director Harold Prince, who did many
Speaker 2: of the great Broadway hits with Steven Soheim and Harold
Speaker 2: Prince told the story of saying to Andrew Lloyd Weber,
Speaker 2: I don't really get what this about. Is it an
Speaker 2: I allegory for Victorian politics? Is you know one of them?
Speaker 2: Queen Victoria is one of them, Lord Melbourne. And Andrew
Speaker 2: Lloyd Weber said, Harold, it's about cats. And that's when
Speaker 2: he turned it down and said to ever none did
Speaker 2: it instead, and has ever since made millions and millions
Speaker 2: of dollars off the fact that Trevor Nunn wrote the
Speaker 2: lyrics to the song memory Your Fast to them. But
Speaker 2: very quickly Andrew Lloyd Weber became a goal word for ghosh.
Speaker 2: He was famously Margaret Thatcher's idea of high culture. She
Speaker 2: loved Andrew Lloyd Webber because she said, you know, Andrew
Speaker 2: Lloyd Webber makes money. You know, this has been exported
Speaker 2: to the United States and makes money. So Margaret Thatcher
Speaker 2: loved Andrew Lloyd Webber, which, as you can imagine, did
Speaker 2: him great favors in the British cultural scene of the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties at the time. Well.
Speaker 1: He was also later at a life pee who said
Speaker 1: in the House of Lords and generally voted with the conservatives,
Speaker 1: wasn't he exactly?
Speaker 2: But you have to admit some of the musicals are fantastic.
Speaker 1: Don't cry funny Gentine.
Speaker 2: Some of the songs in particular are brilliant. I mean,
Speaker 2: don't Cry for Me. Argentina is actually an extraordinary political satifire.
Speaker 2: I mean, don't Cry for Me Argentina is basically full
Speaker 2: of all these Pirhnian kind of platitudes that mean absolutely nothing,
Speaker 2: and that is the point. He is responsible for some
Speaker 2: of the most successful musical fear hits that have their
Speaker 2: own lives as songs, as top cultural moments outside of
Speaker 2: the musicals, which is very hard to do, you know.
Speaker 2: Stephen Sondheim famously said, I'm going to play you a
Speaker 2: collection of my greatest hits played sending the clowns, and
Speaker 2: then he said, well that's it. All the other songs
Speaker 2: don't work outside the context of musicals. While as Andrew
Speaker 2: Willoyd Webber turned his songs into major chart topping hits,
Speaker 2: but then he just develops this reputation for being cheap,
Speaker 2: for being lowest common denominator. But things really get bad
Speaker 2: when they make the film of Cats. So this came
Speaker 2: out about five years ago. Tom Hooper who directed the
Speaker 2: King's Speech, won an Oscar for that. He made a
Speaker 2: very successful version of Le mis Rabelais, which also won
Speaker 2: a couple of Oscars. But then he did Cats. Tonight
Speaker 2: is a magical night film. It is, without a doubt,
Speaker 2: probably the worst big budget film ever made out of Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Going to the Ball could get dangerous.
Speaker 2: It is atrocious, It is weird. They didn't even finish
Speaker 2: the CGI in time for the premiere. They had to
Speaker 2: release another version two weeks afterwards. Didn't matter because anyone
Speaker 2: who saw the fair told everybody else, don't bother going.
Speaker 2: It's extraordinary that you can have a film with Judy
Speaker 2: Dent and Taylor Swift in it, and yet it's still
Speaker 2: absolutely appalling. It doesn't make any sense. The cats look
Speaker 2: so strange. They're weird and kind of creepy with each other,
Speaker 2: like sexually creepy with each other. Just the whole thing
Speaker 2: is a complete disat and it was a real box
Speaker 2: of Was this the end of alw Then Jamie Lloyd happened.
Speaker 2: We know that we can reinvent Shakespeare, we know we
Speaker 2: can reinvent Chickle. Why don't we reinvent angeloid Webber? Let's
Speaker 2: give it a go. So Jamie Lloyd is a terrible
Speaker 2: thing I think for a lot of us more traditional
Speaker 2: fear of lovers, because he has shown that you could
Speaker 2: do post modern deconstructing everybody just wearing black or no
Speaker 2: clothes at all, running around with pants in your head
Speaker 2: kind of theater and actually make it good. But what
Speaker 2: he did was he did Sunset Boulevard, not a great musical,
Speaker 2: but he got in the Coach Schwerzinger, who is most
Speaker 2: famous as the lead singer if the pussy Cat dolls,
Speaker 2: you know, don't yell, don't you wish fund like me,
Speaker 2: don't you Button? You know songs that I'm not sure
Speaker 2: many of our were just from the big fans of
Speaker 2: But she was extraordinary as Norma Desmond. It is one
Speaker 2: of the best performances I have ever seen. She won
Speaker 2: the Olivia on the West End for it, and then
Speaker 2: she won the Tony the Best Actress in the musical.
Speaker 2: Nicole Scherzinger is here to perform with one look from
Speaker 2: the critically acclaimed Broadway musical sun Set Boulevard, Take it Away.
Speaker 2: So this brings everybody back saying they can make Sunset
Speaker 2: Boulevard cool? Can they make anything seem cool. So then
Speaker 2: we come to Avita. So Avita on the West End
Speaker 2: stars Rachel Zegler as Eva Peron, the first Lady of Argentina.
Speaker 2: She has just come out of doing Snow White, which
Speaker 2: may be the only film to ever rival Cats for
Speaker 2: being the worst big budget film ever produced by Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Absolute disaster. But what Jamie Lloyd also does, as well
Speaker 2: as screens and people running out round looking like their
Speaker 2: backstage at the Rockus Deedford, is he does parts of
Speaker 2: the performance outside. So every time she sings Don't Cry
Speaker 2: for Me Argentina, Rachel Zegler goes onto the balcony of
Speaker 2: the theater out on the London Street and she sings
Speaker 2: it to the crowd outside. She doesn't sing it to
Speaker 2: the audience wow, which is quite controversial because people say,
Speaker 2: we're paying, you know, up to two hundred pounds for
Speaker 2: these seats and she's going to sing main the main
Speaker 2: song outside. But it has been a triumph. This has
Speaker 2: led to some other really interesting things with alw They
Speaker 2: seem to have found the way to do Cats, which is,
Speaker 2: don't do it with stupid leatards and people with silly makeup,
Speaker 2: do it as a ballroom competition. So just like the
Speaker 2: ballroom culture of the nineteen eighties in the early nineties
Speaker 2: in New York where a lot of these street kids,
Speaker 2: gay kids, trans kids will go to these ballrooms and
Speaker 2: do basically disco competitions. That's putting it very simply. There's
Speaker 2: a great film about it called Paris Is Burning, which
Speaker 2: is a great documentary. But this is where voguing came from,
Speaker 2: which of course was popularized by Madonna and song vogue.
Speaker 2: So they're doing Madonna style dancing as a competition, because
Speaker 2: the whole point of Cats is that the cats are
Speaker 2: competing to go to Heaven. Then you've had the Jesus
Speaker 2: Christ Superstar Concert at the Hollywood Bowl where Cynthia Reevo,
Speaker 2: who is obviously the Wicked witch and Wicked playing Jesus Christ,
Speaker 2: Adam Blambert, the winner of American Idol playing Judas. That
Speaker 2: has never been an absolute huge hit in America.
Speaker 1: Coming up, how Australia is responding to the alw face
Speaker 1: lift happening overseas.
Speaker 2: So in Australia they're celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Cats,
Speaker 2: not by doing the cool ballroom thing, not by trying
Speaker 2: to make it interesting. They're doing leotards and funny makeup.
Speaker 3: Let the Memory Live Again. Cats, the musical loved all
Speaker 3: around the world, is celebrating its fortieth Australian anniversary and
Speaker 3: the original cast and creative team from that historic production
Speaker 3: are all still in fine voice.
Speaker 2: They're about to do Phantom of the Opera again, which
Speaker 2: will be beautiful, but it's the same production. Opera Australia
Speaker 2: have been in a big crisis recently. Lynnin Terrencini, who
Speaker 2: left Opera Australian twenty twenty two, had a big success
Speaker 2: bringing musicals into the fold. But the artistic director who
Speaker 2: succeeded Tera Sini, Joe Davis, she left in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: fours just nine months into our contract. The CEO for that, Allen,
Speaker 2: was out the door in January twenty twenty five. They
Speaker 2: haven't been replaced, but once again ALW comes into the picture.
Speaker 2: Recently they did a production of Sunset Boulevard. They brought
Speaker 2: out Sarah Brightman, who was in the original Phantom of
Speaker 2: the Opera, former romantic partner of ALW. She hadn't been
Speaker 2: on stage in many, many years, so people were very
Speaker 2: excited to see her. But she played Norma Desmond and
Speaker 2: was very disappointing according to a lot of ruts. Now
Speaker 2: there are some people who feel that this was unfair,
Speaker 2: but it was a disaster. It was a critical and
Speaker 2: box office disaster. It did a lot of damage to
Speaker 2: Opera Australia. But what was coming to popularity at the
Speaker 2: same time, Sarah Brightman was in this tired Opera Australia
Speaker 2: production of Sunset Boulevard. The pussy Cat Doll, who was
Speaker 2: about to become the new Douyena musical theater was just
Speaker 2: starting in the West End. So this is a problem
Speaker 2: that Australia is having. It is behind theatrical trends. It
Speaker 2: is unwilling to take risks. There are some examples. You know, Sydney.
Speaker 2: Theader companies obviously come out of a bit of a
Speaker 2: funk with the picture of Dorian Gray. It's about to
Speaker 2: do Dracula again with Cynthia Ravel playing Dracula on the
Speaker 2: West End. But after the hey days of Linden Terrenceiny
Speaker 2: at Opera Australia, Cate Blanchette and Andrew Upton at the STC,
Speaker 2: let's not even start on Melbourne. Theoder there's this andre
Speaker 2: Lloyd Webber revival of people being innovative, different, but still
Speaker 2: going to classic hits that everybody loves and making them cool,
Speaker 2: making them, making them big financial winners. And yet we
Speaker 2: can't seem to grasp this, despite the fact that it's
Speaker 2: happening in front of our eyes. We're still going for
Speaker 2: the leatards.
Speaker 1: Staging seems to be a part of the problem, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: I recently saw the arena spectacular version of Le miserab
Speaker 1: at the ICC in Sydney and I was hugely disappointed
Speaker 1: because there was no acting. It was a standard and
Speaker 1: deliver format where the actors stood at microphones are just
Speaker 1: sang into the audience, which meant that the.
Speaker 2: Plot was very difficult to follow.
Speaker 1: I wonder our theater producers a bit lazy when it
Speaker 1: comes to Australia because we do love musical theater and
Speaker 1: we'll kind of go and see anything. Does that mean
Speaker 1: they don't have to work as hard here?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think this is absolutely true. So Tim mentioned
Speaker 2: had a huge success with the musical version of Matelda.
Speaker 2: It is one of the great musicals in the past
Speaker 2: twenty years, and he was talked about it lasting for
Speaker 2: a long time on the West Stand as long as
Speaker 2: the Phantom of the operank At and he said, well,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure about that because I just went to
Speaker 2: see The Lion King, which has been on Broadway for
Speaker 2: nearly friddy years now, and he said, and it just
Speaker 2: looks so tired. It looks so tired.
Speaker 1: Richard Ferguson is the Australian's canber Bureau chief. You can
Speaker 1: read his work anytime at the Australian dot com dot au.
Speaker 1: This episode of the Front was hosted by me Claire
Speaker 1: Harvey and produced by Jasper Leak, who edited the episode
Speaker 1: and also wrote our theme. Thanks for joining us on
Speaker 1: the Front this week. Our team is Kristin Amiot Leat, Samaglue,
Speaker 1: Tiffany Dimac, Joshua Burton and Stephanie Coombs.