ALW & Les Mis — Page 2

Kitzarina, I support you all the way so keep them coming.
Les Miserables did get condemned for its dark nature but The New York Times gave it a good review, the Times critic wasn't too fond of Randy Graff or David Bryant though. He loved Ms.Ruffelle who would later take a Tony, and he enjoyed "One Day More" very much. Also, the show was the major front-runner at the Tonys that year. Like Ray said, the triangle in this show is very different because we care more for the character outside the couple, we feel for her. And I agree with him in that Lloyd Webber cannot write complex characters like the ones from Victor Hugo's novel. Look what he did to Woman in White.

ALWrules - GIVE UP!

He compared ALW to Victor Hugo...

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ALW can't write complex characters? What kind of pot are you smoking? I don't care for Sunset myself, but he has dozens of complex characters in JCS, Evita, Phantom, Aspects, and Cats.

I never compared Andrew Lloyd Webber to Victor Hugo, that would mean I'm insane. I was merely saying that Lloyd Webber could never make characters as complex as Victor Hugo's to work in the space of a musical as Schonberg and Boublil did very well.
I recognize when I'm wrong, Mr.Lloyd Webber has written TWO complex characters that have made it to the Broadway stage: 1.Judas, 2.Eva Peron. Someone tell me how Phantom is a complex character? I was an English major in college and I studied Gothic literature, characters in Gothic novels were stereotypes, there was the evil figure trying to take over the naive young girl and the hero who was there to save her. Norma Desmond is indeed a much complex character but Mr.Webber never figured out a way to make this complexity work on stage so it was all up to the actress who was playing the role to do something with it. I confess I love "As If We Never Said Goodbye" and "With One Look," but ultimately, Lloyd Webber couldn't make the beautifully complex Norma Desmond from the film, work on his musical. Oh, and JudasIscariot, I want to know what character in Cats is complex, Grizabella could have been a complex character if she had been part of a plot with a book.

So you're saying Cats is more like Company? Its more about an idea rather than a plot?

I would argue that the character of the Phantom is pretty complex. Can he love Christine? Will she love him, even though he looks the way he does? Should he be selfish and keep Christine even though he knows she wants to be with Raul? He's a very complex character going through a lot of emotions. Loneliness, confusion, love, heartbreak, etc.

I don't know enough about COMPANY to say.

But the plot of CATS is both superficial and based on an idea. I love the way it was executed as well.

You begin with learning about the different types of Cats...then you meet a few different examples. Throughout you meet Grizabella. Also throughout, you are reminded that one Cat gets to be "reborn" - got to the Heavyside Layer.

I've always seen it as each cat that we meet is trying to convince Old Deuteronomy to choose them. Then you have Macavity who captures OD - scaring the other cats that, perhaps, no one will be chosen.

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I heard that, for awhile after Miss Saigon, if you were auditioning for Lord Lloyd Webber, you were advised NOT to sing anything from either Les Miz or Saigon, and that he definitely felt the French had encroached on his territory. Personally I think there's room for everyone, and considering that ALW supposedly earns $200,000 a day from "Memory" royalties alone, he should get over himself.

I think both Judas and Jesus are incredibly complex. "Gethsemane" alone says more to me than "The Last Temptation of Christ" and "The Passion of the Christ" combined. That tune is deep.

I disagree that the Phantom as portrayed in the musical is not complex. He is a villain who completes a serious character arc - from lovesick, egomaniacal thug to a creature capable of sacrificing his happiness for another's. That dude is deep.

I think Cats is beyond ridiculous, JCS is my fave ALW show, and Les Mis is the best musical ever.

Let me clarify myself just because I want to make my point clear. Like Margo very well explained, Norma Desmond, Eva Peron, Grizabella, the Phantom, Jesus, and Judas are all characters created outside the space of the theater that Lloyd Webber later musicalized. My point is that authors like Sondheim, Arthur Laurent, James Lapine, Jerry Herman are able to make the complexities of their characters work on stage, and sometimes they even add more complexity to them such as it is the case with characters such as Dolly Levi, Fosca, George Seurat, Gypsy Rose Lee, Rose Havoc, etc; all of these characters were either real (just like Eva Peron) or they were literary figures (like Grizabella, the Phantom, Judas, etc). Those characters not only are portrayed seamlessly on stage but they sometimes become completely different from the original medium they were taken from.
Mr.Lloyd Webber has used characters as popular as Norma Desmond, a woman who in my opinion is probably as complex as Blanche DuBois or any other significant woman in literature. My point is that whenever Lloyd Webber attempts to musicalize for the stage figures as complex as Ms.Desmond, he fails. His two big hits are full of characters that lack the complexity of George Seurat or Rose Havoc (Mamma Rose). Like I said before, there are a couple of songs from Sunset Blvd. that I enjoy but that doesn't mean the musical itself worked, he failed to create a new Norma Desmond for the stage, he wasn't able to effectively musicalize Desmond's final breakdown which was so powerful in the original film. Woman in White is a novel famous for its sense of suspense and darkness, and look what Lloyd Webber did to it, and as you can see it has not become a big hit. So the point I'm making is that yes, Lloyd Webber tries to work with complex characters but he is never able to make the transfer from another medium to the stage be successful for those characters.

That's getting on a religious discussion. To me Judas is a literary figure to you it might be a historic figure.