ALW's Cinderella - Gillian Lynne / U.K. Tour (rumour)

How do you know it was deplorable? You weren't there, you don't know what happened.

The Daily Mail IS a trashy sensationalist tabloid and usually isn't reliable with regard to its supposed news coverage. However, Baz Bamigboye is normally very reliable and accurate when it comes to theatre gossip.

Also, re ALW not reacting based on one critic...where have you been?! 

True, but I generally tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. I don't know him but he doesn't seem like a bad guy to me. 

Tim Rice, Judy Kaye, Rebecca Caine, Amy Powers, Jack O'Brien and Ann Crumb would no doubt sing/have sung his praises too...

Can't wait for the 'I'm withdrawing the score...from myself' tantrums!

I'm sure that he's fallen out with some people but this "shouting down the entire cast" seems out of character. 

Because he says one thing, someone influential disagrees with him, then he changes his mind has a big flouncy fit blaming anyone but himself for whatever was wrong. His name is above all these shows so has the power to recognise the flaws and fix them rather than waiting to be called out on them, but no, always someone elses fault. In this case its Connor mainly but I can’t believe hes blind to it.

He’s still written some of the most sublime music of the last 50 years so is certainly allowed to be difficult.

Your answer to my question is that you think his popularity is undeserved and that is why you dislike him so much. Fair enough. 

Since it never gets old, this seems like a nice moment to wheel out an old (apocryphal) joke that did the rounds in the late 80s...

ALW to Alan Jay Lerner: Why do people take an instant dislike to me?

Alan Jay Lerner to ALW: Because it saves time. 

Cards on the table, at least four of my favourite all-time shows are by ALW. However, I find his constant propensity to hype everything up as the best thing since sliced bread and then to dismiss it as soon as it fails and blame everyone else except himself tiresome and utterly predictable. I *want* ALW to have a good show that's not just a hit but also a quality piece. But i don't think we've really had that since Sunset, and I don't think we ever will again unless he actually works with peers who aren't dictated to but fight things out with him and stand their corner. He regularly says MT is a collaborative artform but there's precious little sign of that in recent years in his output. Time and time again he makes the same mistakes and those he's surrounded himself with don't call him out on it. When the Internet did once, he was too enraged and called them "fake and malicious bloggers". Had he listened, the show in question might not have been such a catastrophe.

I've heard some accounts like that and I'm sure he can be temperamental at times. I am sceptical that this story has been accurately reported without any exaggeration or misrepresentation. Threatening to take his score away in a tantrum is believable to me. Getting so worked up about a review which actually praised him as composer but had reservations about the show itself (he's had far worse reviews than that) is not, especially since his show has had a good critical reception overall. Even if it's true that he made a point of the NY Times review when he addressed the cast, I don't believe this was the real reason for his anger. He would likely have used that out of convenience as people do. There would have been something lurking in the background which likely had nothing to do with them. 

I saw the show yesterday for the first time and the only thing I can see lurking in the background is his realisation that this show is a terrible mess! The cast are trying their utmost to polish that turd and genuinely were the only reason I managed to sit through it all! There are signs of a potentially decent show in there but it needs chopping some of the overlong song and some of the 5 million reprises (which is the easy part) but the book and direction and structure of the show need a complete overhaul IMO. And the design wasn't that impressive either, especially when you've already sat on the big revolve for Cats, it's a nice little gimmick but nothing that really adds anything. And don't get me started on the 'great transformation' using huge screens dragged across the stage at the end of act 1, I've seen cleverer things done in am-dram shows above a pub. LOL
Also does being a 'feminist cinderella' mean that every single woman on that stage is just a mean and bitter b*tch with pretty much no redeeming features?

And knowing someone who actually sat on that stage during said phone call on Friday, everything in Baz's column is accurate in terms of what happened. What the REAL reason for his outburst was is obviously only for ALW to know, as he is the only person with access to his head, but I am pretty certain it was the NYT article. But whatever it was that triggered it, the outburst was aimed at the entirely wrong group of people.