| Posted: 14 October 2008 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | 6
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Has the screaming stopped in your head from the Dreamcoat score?
I've dumped on "Sir" Andrew Lloyd Webber earlier in this thread, but will HAPPILY do so again! JOSEPH was written when ALW was nineteen, as part of a college assignment. Written as a twenty-minute cantata for boy's choir, it paired him for the first time with Tim Rice (who I'll rail on another time).
Now, here's the thing: the 20-minute cantata is my favorite itineration of the show. It's quick -- it tells the story -- and it gets the hell out of its own way. It's not pretentious or "clever," just good, straight-forward stuff.
After the boy's choir was finished with it, it was put in a drawer and nearly forgotten about until the unexpected success of the JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR album, show, then movie. ("SUPERSTAR" and Schwartz's GODSPELL happened at just about the same time, with some interesting things in common, none the least of which was that Schwartz wrote GODSPELL while in Grad School -- meaning that two composers wrote their best works early.) Looking through the desk drawers after the success of "SUPERSTAR," ALW pulled out JOSEPH and "expanded" the cantata into a one-act, hour-long piece by adding several "specialty" numbers, a western, a calypso, a chevalier-type, taking it into a weird new direction.
It played in London to good-enough reviews, but more importantly (here it comes, ALW's theme song), it made money!
Then there was EVITA, which was HUGE in the USA (thank you, Patti LuPone -- don't cry for her, Argentina!), and desperate to make some more money (money, money, money, what a common theme), JOSEPH was again "expanded" -- but instead of fixing some of its silliness and weak writing (some VERY weak musical transitions and key changes), several reprises we incorporated, a new structure to the opening that actually kind of helps it, and -- in order to make it a two-act and have a second act that was longer than twenty minutes (literally) -- a MEGAMIX was added as a curtain call, reprising EVERY in the show to a disco beat and hot choreography in "modern" clothes, lenthening the whole she-bang by over ten minutes!
It's actually painful for me when I hear the house-beat start and see the light show flare at the beginning of curtain call.
That's the story of JOSEPH, a cute little piece that got morphed into a horrible monster -- though it's STILL ridiculously short for a show (a 35 minute first act and a 40 minute second act (with Megamix)), it's seventy-five minutes of your life you'll never get back.
So, Geoff, to answer your question, I could hardly hear the screaming when I cashed the checks -- though I felt so DIRTY. To this day, I can't get my hands clean... and I keep rubbing and rubbing...
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