Andrew Lloyd Webber

I put it here

There’s a pretty high quality copy of the Masterpiece concert from Beijing on YouTube just now. EP makes an appearance with a mixture of western and eastern artists.

I felt sorry for the rather lightweight Asian performer who had to follow Elaine’s belting rendition of As If We Never Said Goodbye. 

ALW got a mention in the long list of superstars that the Queen has met since the 50s ahead of the jubilee concert. Only problem is that Cameron Macintosh was present on screen at the same moment and BBC didn't bother to give him a credit. I predict a riot, or at least a champagne glass chucked at the telly!

Will we ever see another new show from the pen of ALW after the Cinders debacle?

ALW needs a director and producers who can call him out if something isn't quite work. It's telling that the shows where he has no real involvement like JCSS and Evita at the Open Air have been brilliant.

For convoluted reasons I don't care to explain I listened to Jesus Christ Superstar yesterday and I was struck by just how massive the difference is between those early masterpieces and the rubbish he's churned out more recently.

I can think of a few things here: In the late 60s and 70s he was young and perfectly in tune with the zeitgeist and he had a great collaborator in Tim Rice with his snarky lyrics. Those early shows made him rich and popular enough to try things that had never been tried before (dancing cats, rollerskating trains!) and the gamble paid off.

But ever since Sunset (which I agree was his last big show) I feel he's gone to try and create "conventional" musicals and it never really worked. That said, were he to go back to something truly unconventional, how would it be received today? Cats and Starlight Express made me fall in love with musical theatre in the late 80s and Cats especially was incredibly popular. But the last London revival wasn't a big success and there was a lot of snark (not least on this board) about how awful and pointless the show was. Maybe today's audiences are too cynic for just a bit of theatre magic the way you felt transported into that "moonlit night on a junkyard" or enjoyed performers zipping all around you on rollerskates back then?

Collaborators are certainly an issue as I feel his shows are worst when there's an original book involved these days. Back then shows like Evita, Cats, StEx, even Phantom were created based very loosely on their source material and yet they worked. Beautiful Game just about hung on. But Love Never Dies, Stephen Ward and Cinderella were all dire book-wise, whereas School of Rock, which was very closely based on the movie worked for me. Whether this is due to bad collaborators or ALW's massive ego, who knows.

Another issue with Cinderella is certainly that he tried to hard to vibe with the zeitgeist. At some point people just have to accept that no matter how open minded they are for younger generations, they just aren't part of it and their thinking.

What he could do? I think he should

a) realize that his main fanbase has been with him since the 70s and 80s and is now middle-aged. So write something that vibes with them and not with young people, who rather flock to something like Six and Hamilton.

b) choose solid source material, whether movie, book or opera, who cares, just something that's already proved to be solid.

c) Find a good lyricist. David Zippel may have been great once, but most lyrics of Cinderella are cringeworthy and pull the show down. He likes social media, so why not have a competition, put out an idea for a song and a melody and accept contributions from wannabe lyricists.

I am a big fan of many of his musicals, JCS still ranks in my top 3 without question, but I have lost interest of late. My theatregoing properly started in the mid to late 80s, at that time for me ALW epitomised all that was big and exciting about a West End Show and I pretty much devoured them at that point. At that time, he provided huge commercial hits which crossed over from simply being known amongst the theatregoing public. Things have changed and when you look at the shows that are the biggest hits right now, the art form has evolved away from the sung through operetta style which ALW so favoured. The other issue I have is when I look back now with older and dare I say it more cynical eyes I can only cherrypick a few shows out of the repertoire which I consider classics, the other remain fun but flawed. Sunset was in my opinion his last great show, although I enjoyed Whistle. LND was polarising - loved a lot of the music and performances, really didn’t like the story. I didn’t bother with Cinderella as the story just didn’t interest me. Back in the 80s /early 90s his name was enough to get me through the door.

In a way he’s like a star who is past his prime but is too in love with the art form to let it go but also too out of touch as to what is “now” to make a big contemporary hit again regardless of collaborators. I can’t help but think his best move now would be to stop chasing the big hit and simply write your typical ALW score. The critics would probably hate it and it wouldn’t run for ever but it would no doubt make a lot of people very happy.

Benny Andersson, John Kander, Paul McCartney, Carole King, Neil Sedaka, Randy Newman, John Williams, Marc Shaiman, Alan Menken to mention just a few.

I think the reason why ABBA’s music is still adored today, after decades and across generations, is because it IS so melodic.