yet another stupid question??

Elton doesn't always seem aware of the line between the eloquently simple and the clunky. But though Lloyd Webber, too, has his ordinary moments in The Beautiful Game, he not only extends his musical range but comes up with two or three lovely numbers, each packed with his trademark wistfulness. If there's a problem with their treatment of the football team that wins the cup in 1969, and falls apart afterwards, it is predictability... Yet there's plenty to admire at the Cambridge Theatre. We get a superb duet in which Walker's Mary and Dianne Pilkington as an unnamed Protestant sing of their love for "God's own country" and their sense of ancestral belonging, first separately, then in unknowing unison... Again, an even lovelier song called Our Kind of Love - "If this is what we're fighting for, I don't want to win" - is put across with restrained intensity by Hannah Waddingham as the America-bound Catholic. But Lloyd Webber's admirers will be equally taken with the inventive dissonance of his score when danger is in the air or, more happily, soccer is being celebrated. A pity the dance doesn't match the bang and clatter of the lads as they mime their "beautiful game