Andrew lloyd webber

Tuesday

August 5, 2025

The evolution of Andrew Lloyd Webber

Unless you have been rock-bound over the last few weeks – or avoiding all social media, which in 2025 amounts to much the same – you can scarcely have missed the controversy over the recent three-night gala staging of the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hollywood Bowl. Jesus, you see, is not played by a white man, as is customary, but Cynthia Erivo, the Wicked star who is black, female and queer. This has not gone down well with traditionalists, but Erivo is one of the most talented singers working today – as well as a fine actress – and so, if the first reviews are to be believed, she blew the roof off the Hollywood Bowl, stealing the show entirely from a starry cast including Adam Lambert and Josh Gad.

Sunday

May 21, 2023

Robert S. Erickson

Bringing back Stephen Sondheim and enduring a new Andrew Lloyd Webber

On Sunday April 16, the curtain went down on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera for the last of 13,981 performances on Broadway, a titanic thirty-five-year run grossing north of $1.3 billion. The end of an era? Not quite — dating back to the 1979 opening of Evita, Lloyd Webber musicals have run continuously on the Great White Way for forty-four years. That streak is now hitched to the fortunes of Bad Cinderella, which opened just weeks before Phantom closed. The show gets a lift from a lush score and some winning numbers, as well as sumptuous set design. The whole premise, however, turns out to be a pumpkin, and it may spell midnight for the composer’s magical run within the year.