All right, gentlemen, we all agree there is nothing wrong with the Broadway musical that a few hits wouldn't cure. But what we need is some new ideas.
O.K., how about this: long-haired hippie from working-class family in ancient Palestine (salt of the earth dad, saintly mom) falls in with tough crowd of longshoremen, starts proletarian pacifist movement and gets offed by protofascist pigs from Rome.
Never work: too depressing, and it lacks an upbeat ending. No love interest either. Next?
Spunky Argentine firecracker from wrong side of tracks rides casting couch to boffo b.o. in Buenos Aires, weds political top dog, rips off nation, gets cancer and dies.
Are you kidding? Too depressing, lacks an upbeat ending, and no one has ever paid a nickel to see anything about South America. Next?
Well, there's the one about cats singing poetry . . .
Forget it; pigs will fly first. Ditto your other crazy notion, the one about the roller-skating trains. What else?
Ugly guy who hangs out in basement of Paris Opera gets crush on cute chorister, secretly preps her as headliner, goes berserk when boyfriend comes on scene, writes opera with her in lead, gets ditched by girl and crawls into hole to die.
Not too bright, man. Depressing, lacks an upbeat ending, and the opera- house setting is a major turnoff. Broadway audiences are not about to put out + big bucks to watch a downer like that, for crying out loud. Doesn't anybody here have an idea for a hit musical?
Try this one: shy middle-class British kid grows up listening to Mozart and Richard Rodgers, teams with buddy to write school musical, is discovered by slumming music critic, goes on to pen smash biblical epic Jesus Christ Superstar and monster hit Evita, splits with pal, has megatriumphs with Cats and Starlight Express, then comes up with extra-hot spook, The Phantom of the Opera. Along the way swaps bell-bottoms for swank Belgravia flat, 1,350-acre English country estate, choice property on the French Riviera, $6 million apartment in Manhattan, private jet, beautiful second wife and a worldwide musical empire that, conservatively, rings his personal cash register to the tune of $12 million a year.
Hmmm. Talent, friendship, strife, love interest, money -- it seems to have everything. Now there's uplift for you! We'll call it Andrew Lloyd Webber and His Amazing Technicolor Career. I think we've got a winner!
He is an unlikely superstar. Of average height, his long hair a tousled brown arch across his forehead, the man in the tailored, gray pinstriped flannel suit digging into his sole at La Cote Basque could be mistaken for just another of Manhattan's prosperati were it not for one distinctive habit. Sometimes it comes during pauses in conversation, other times in mid-thought. Ever so softly, but frequently and with total absorption, Andrew Lloyd Webber is humming to himself.