Original London Cast
From the opening number, this show sounds less like Andrew Lloyd Webber than a lovesick high school student's diary. "Love Changes Everything," the first song, which is reprised endlessly throughout this two-record set, informs us: "Love changes everything./ Now I tremble at your name./ Nothing in the world will ever be the same." Thanks for the hot newsbreak.
For the talented if compulsively derivative Lloyd Webber to follow Phantom of the Opera with this phantom musical is inexcusable.
The plot—a polite word for it—concerns artists, actors and airheads fooling around in France. Thanks to inane lyrics by Don Black and Charles Hart, these characters aren't love struck; they're love stuck. The audience, of course, is just plain old stuck.
Without Lloyd Webber's pedigree, this show, which opened on Broadway this spring, wouldn't have made it at the most moth-eaten community theater. Actor Roger Moore bailed out of this musical during its previews in London last year; his years as James Bond clearly taught him to avoid trouble. (Polydor)
Your Reaction
