From Andrew Lloyd Webber to Angora Goats

Thirty-six years ago this month, Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera opened in New York, and went on to become the longest-running show in Broadway history.

I’ve never seen it.

I don’t hold much brief for ALW, and I’ve only seen two of his musicals over the past fifty-three years. The first was either late in 1971, or early 1972, when Jesus Christ, Superstar was all the rage. The album came out first; then the musical, on Broadway, in October of 1971. At much the same time, dozens of touring companies throughout the United States travelled around performing their own versions of the play.

One of those touring companies came to a suburb of Pittsburgh, to one Bethel Park High School, before I graduated in 1972.

The school allowed the group to perform in its auditorium (during the week, during school time), and gave students the option of attending if they’d like to. I was a fan of a few of the songs, and of what was for the time a novel art form, so I went to what turned out to be quite a good performance.

I cannot imagine any such happy confluence of events taking place in these days of political correctness and outrage theater. As far as I know, however, there was no permanent damage done to any of us who watched the performance, and it’s one I remember with great fondness.

A few decades later, Mr. She, his oldest and closest friend dating back to high school days, and I went to see Cats at the Capitol Music Hall in Wheeling, WV. It’s a charming venue and we had a lovely meal beforehand. (I had a couple of drinks, which–as it turned out–was a very good thing.) Ron was a terrible driver, and he’d just gotten new tires for his vehicle–cheap Chinese ones– which (I deemed from my position in the back seat) must have been square rather than round. It was a very long twenty-two miles from our front door to the theater. I’m not much of a T.S.Eliot fan, although Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats is on my “keeper” list, but–IMHO–the musical suffers from rather too much of ALW, and not-quite-enough of T.S. Eliot.

What is it about Andrew Lloyd Weber that bugs me so? I can’t find a direct link to explain the phenomenon, but it is exemplified on a set of CDs that have nothing to do with the man himself:

Upon the birth of my darling granddaughter, my sister in the UK searched out, bought, and sent to us a complete set, on CD, of all the Beatrix Potter tales. There were a couple dozen CDs, the stories were read by known British TV and–sometimes–movie personalities, and one of the CDs contained Potter’s “Cecily Parsley’s Nursery Rhymes” set to music and sung. My stepdaughter dubbed them the “Andrew Lloyd Webber Nursery Rhymes,” and I instantly knew what she meant: Overproduced and overwrought music, with lyrics (whomever they are by) over-emoted, and largely to match.

That’s my issue with Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The only other time he’s appeared–even glancingly–in my life was in 1993. I went, with a small group of friends, to a goat festival (🙄) in Allegan, Michigan. I’d been before, with Mr. She, but this year the festival had expanded, and was featuring its first annual talent show.

We entered, with a musical skit for which we’d rewritten the words to several quite well-known musical numbers (from The King and I, and My Fair Lady, among others), and hung them on a rather sketchy framework about a couple of sisters in the “city-mouse,” “country-mouse” mold.

We won!

Our only real competition was the seven-year old little boy in full “Phantom” costume, singing “Music of the Night,” and the guy who broke concrete blocks in half with the side of his hand. They took second and third place, respectively.

I’ll never forget it. One of the proudest moments of my life.

Ah. Memory.

Yeah.

Here we are, thirty-one years ago, with our blue ribbons:

What are your memories?