The Ideology and Aesthetics of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Musicals
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THE IDEOLOGY AND AESTHETICS OF ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER’S MUSICALS: FROM THE BROADWAY MUSICAL TO THE BRITISH MEGAMUSICAL by Vagelis Siropoulos A dissertation submitted to the Department of English Literature and Culture, School of English, Faculty of Philosophy, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece In fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2008 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………..page 4 Introduction A Dialectical Method for the Analysis of Musicals: From Fredric Jameson to Andrew Lloyd Webber..............................................................................................5 Chapter 1 Historicizing the Musical Number: From Vaudeville to MTV 1. Defining the Musical Number………………………………………………25 2. The Old Razzle-Dazzle……………………………………………………..32 3. Thinking in Fragments……………………………………………………...43 Chapter 2 The Era of Rodgers and Hammerstein and the Origins of the Megamusical: From Show Boat to West Side Story 1. The Musical Play……………………………………………………………56 2. Problems of Integration……………………………………………………..71 3. Modernist Experimentations………………………………………………..92 Chapter 3 Counterculture and the Birth of the Megamusical: From Hair to Evita 1. Rock/ Pop Opera…………………………………………………………..109 3 2. Musical Montage and Conceptual Staging……………………………….. 128 3. Counterculture and the Culture of Narcissism: From Jesus to Madonna……………………………………………………149 Chapter 4 Blockbuster Aesthetics and the British Invasion: From Cats to Les Misérables 1. “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service:” The British Conquer the Globe....................................................................169 2. The Postmodern Hyperspace………………………………………………184 3. From Revue to Pop Opera…………………………………………………207 Chapter 5 Apotheosis and Decline of the British Megamusical: From The Phantom of the Opera to The Lion King 1. The Exemplary High-Concept Megamusical………………………………226 2. A Postdramatic Composer in Search of a Dramatic Aesthetic…………….245 3. From Lloyd Webber to Disney…………………………………………….269 Appendix The Musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber ………………………………………..294 Works Cited………………………………………………………………………..298 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This is my opportunity to thank those persons who have not only assisted in this project but have also given me the careful guidance and support I so needed to undertake this endeavor. I am extremely grateful to my committee: Dr. Elizabeth Sakellaridou, my supervisor, for giving me the necessary space to develop my ideas, challenging me to produce work to the best of my abilities and teaching me the true meaning of being a scholar; Dr. Ruth Parkin-Gounelas, my co-advisor, for questioning assumptions that I had taken for granted and helping me to find my own voice; and Dr. Savas Patsalidis, my other co-advisor, for his insightful comments and the thought-provoking discussions we have had about the Broadway musical. I would also like to thank Dr. Tina Krontiris for believing in me, Dr. Alexandros Lagopoulos for inspiring and encouraging me and Dr. Karin-Boklund Lagopoulou for introducing me to Fredric Jameson’s theory. I must also note that the completion of this thesis would be impossible without the economic support I had from the National Institution of Scholarships (ΙΚΥ). It is impossible for me to thank everyone, but none of this would have been possible without the never-ending support of my good friends, Aneta Karagianidou, Despina Alexandra Konstandinidou, George Mamoglou, Giannis Soumbasis and Marios Tsiknis. I can never thank them enough for their support of all of my artistic, professional and scholarly endeavors. Last but not least, I thank my family and especially my parents, who made me the person I am today and helped me to 5 understand the true nature of love and support. This thesis is dedicated to them, with love. INTRODUCTION A Dialectical Method for the Analysis of Musicals: From Fredric Jameson to Andrew Lloyd Webber Andrew Lloyd Webber is the most successful composer/ producer in the history of musical theatre. His musicals have traveled all around the world, from the UK and the USA to Ireland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Sweden, Australia, Canada, Japan, China and South Africa. Cats (1981) and The Phantom of the Opera (1986), his two mammoth international blockbusters, have been seen by more than one hundred million people and have taken in a cumulative gross of almost $6 billion. Such shows seem to be tailor-made for a global, cosmopolitan culture, in which mass artifacts transgress national borders and function more and more like multinational franchises and international brand-names, achieving the same level of recognition as Coca Cola and Nike. In this unashamedly commodified global landscape, where products of every possible origin compete for attention, Lloyd Webber’s shows have been amongst the shiniest and loudest. Insanely over-budgeted and technologically cutting-edge, they have offered a barrage of impressive visuals, overscored with the composer’s trademark pop-operatic anthems. Grand, excessively emotional and ravishingly romantic power-pop arias, like “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” “Memory” and “The Music of the Night,” have captured the imagination of audiences and have filled the theatres all around the world, making Lloyd Webber not only the most well- 6 known and well-paid composer that musical theatre has ever produced, but also a theatrical Czar, a business mogul and an international brand-name in his own right. Despite his unprecedented financial success and the adoration of the audience, Lloyd Webber has been the subject of intense critical controversy. In Britain, where he was born and brought up, the critical response has been mostly divided, but, in the US, Lloyd Webber has been subjected to at times savage and humiliating criticism and has been largely dismissed as an opportunist, in spite of his impressive output, the development of a personal aesthetic and the consistency of his success over the years. Led by Frank Rich, chief drama critic of the prestigious New York Times throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, most of the Broadway musical “authorities” declared open war on Lloyd Webber, by consistently providing the most malicious reviews that a commercial composer/ producer of his success and status has ever received. In their opinion, Lloyd Webber constituted an anomaly and aberration to the canon of musical theatre. Although his works revitalized the Broadway musical both aesthetically and economically, by introducing aesthetic forms that met with stupendous audience acceptance and broke box office records, for most of the critics Lloyd Webber represented the decadence of the musical genre which, in their view, had reached its peak during the so-called “golden” era of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. Criticisms like these have created the impression that Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musicals (and their imitations) belong to an artistic league out of Lloyd Webber’s reach, being something like the “Cherry Orchards” and “Waiting for Godots” of musicals. Thus, a good vs. bad, high vs. low opposition has been created that duplicates within the genre of musical theatre the well-known opposition between high and mass art, producing the illusion that somehow the Rodgers and 7 Hammerstein’s and Lloyd Webber’s musicals belong to opposite realms of aesthetic production. One of the main reasons for such critical misconceptions is probably the fact that Lloyd Webber is a foreigner, who has dared to dominate an art form, in which Americans have excelled for most of the twentieth century. During the “golden” age, from the 1940s to the late 1960s, New York was the centre of light musical entertainment, defining how a musical should sound or look. Broadway’s biggest hits were seen in most foreign countries not only on the stage, but also on the screen, as high-profile, big-budgeted film adaptations of Broadway’s top-grossers became international hits and the best ambassadors for American musical theatre aesthetics. However, by the 1970s, the well-established formulas had grown rather stale, failing to pay off and leading Broadway into deep economic crisis. In the midst of this crisis, the so-called “British invasion” started, as a string of bewilderingly successful musicals, originating in London, took New York and the whole of the U.S. by storm, becoming the biggest money-makers in the history of Broadway and using their American triumph as a ticket for their exportation all over the globe. These shows saved the economic fortunes of Broadway and, in the process, altered the economy of musical theatre, transforming it from a cottage industry into a multinational corporate enterprise with multimillion-dollar risks and multibillion-dollar gross potential. From an obscure, little-known composer, Lloyd Webber suddenly became the titan of Broadway, launching one musical supertanker after the other and easily crushing all local competition at the box office. Among his “victims” have been the more idiosyncratic and introverted shows of Stephen Sondheim, who was idolized by Rich and is highly respected by the Broadway establishment. Sondheim is the most talented 8 American theatrical composer/ lyricist of his generation, Hammerstein’s disciple, and thus the last connection with the “golden” era. It is not surprising, then, that many people in New York wanted him to be in Lloyd Webber’s position, and so resented the British invader for preventing the ascension of an American-Jewish royalty onto the throne of Broadway.1 This critical resentment has made Lloyd Webber a taboo subject