To bastardise a popular expression, those flying closest to the sun shine brightest before they burn up. That set of words could be the starting point for the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical (with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton) Sunset Boulevard. Set in Los Angeles in 1949 and 1950, the villain is Norma…
Very few stage productions can boast superlatives like Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (‘Joseph’), now on at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre. From start to finish, this production is magnificent musically, colourful in its presentation, engaging in its staging and outstanding in its efficaciousness. First presented by Andrew-Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice in 1968, Joseph loosely follows…
Straight from the West End, the new, reimagined production of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat is a delightful, fun, engaging and dynamic family musical. Wonderfully directed by Laurence Connor, it is based on the biblical character Joseph. Seen as his father Jacob’s favourite son, he is gifted a beautiful technicolor coat by his dad. That enrages his…
Cameron Mackintosh’s new production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s masterful work The Phantom of the Opera sizzles. Everything about the production works a treat. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music, a cavalcade of riches, still stirs the soul 36 years after the musical debuted in London. In this case, plaudits to Orchestra Victoria for bringing it to life, with Anthony…
It was such a delight to welcome back to the stage musical theatre royalty in Debra Byrne. It was the mid ‘80s when she appeared in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats and a decade later she followed that up with another star turn in the maestro’s Sunset Boulevard. So, it seems only fitting that she should reprise solo…
Energetic, colourful and captivating, this is up there with the very best productions of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s CATS and I have had the good fortune to see several of them. A massive cast of 87 (plus an alternative 13 “kitten” chorus) and a 16-piece orchestra breathe new life into a show that was first staged in…
By the end I was bawling like a baby. CATS, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical as a Tom Hooper-directed and co-written (with Lee Hall) film, is a triumph of theatrics – costuming, make-up, choreography, colour and emotion. In the original 1980s stage musical, CATS takes place on the night of the annual Jellicle Ball, when…
