Tom’s Two Cents: “Unmasked” by Andrew Lloyd Webber

At the age of 70, British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has certainly lived more than one lifetime, perhaps several.  He is unquestionably the most financially successful musical composer of all time; two of his musical brainchildren, Cats and Phantom of the Opera, have been running somewhere for thirty years—yes, those two musicals have been on some stage somewhere for THIRTY years apiece!   The string of his successes, both in London and New York City, not to mention cities elsewhere, has been nothing short of phenomenal.  Yes, he has had his share of bloopers, but they seem almost incidental by comparison.  He was famous at the age of 23, with the unqualified success of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Despite all thus, I have never taken Webber very seriously as a composer.  Reared in the operetta tradition of Romberg, Friml, Jerome Kern and other such notables of the 30s, I barely realized at the time (1943) that Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma was the beginning of a breakthrough in the American Musical!  (Actually, the first real breakthrough came much earlier, in 1927, with Jerome Kern’s Showboat.)   Webber’s early work at least seemed to me more in a modern pop tradition, or at least a mixture of old and new, despite the fact that he cites Richard Rodgers as one of his all-time idols.  To me the one exception has been Phantom, which is clearly a throwback to operetta at its most glamorous and romantic.

Webber’s book, “Unmasked,” is a very disarming memoir, strongly emphasizing his career over his life.  In fact, despite his three marriages and five children, his personal life seems to figure almost incidentally into the total scheme of things—Webber is obviously a driven perfectionist, whose successful collaborations with Tim Rice, Hal Prince, Cameron Mackintosh and other notables has come at a cost.  Not the least of his accomplishments had been the launching of the career of Sarah Brightman (now very much a star in her own right), whom he married, but subsequently divorced.  If you are a Webber fan, you should love this book, even though at times it goes into excruciating detail about the trials and tribulations of his productions.  As interesting as that was, it was more the personal stuff falling through the cracks that absorbed me as a reader.