Jack in the Box, page 12
Nor do we tend to mention these massive triumphs when encountering their authors. You rarely find yourself, over the odd shared glass of crisp sauvignon blanc sitting across from a wildly wealthy fellow director, and casually saying, How much are you making from those six running productions of How Dudley Got His Hickey, anyway? You can’t help but think about it. They may come to damned few once in a lifetime, but occasionally, they do come!
It was in this vein that I received a phone call from one of my happiest and best collaborators—the inestimable Irish designer Bob Crowley, with whom I had managed to create something very gratifying from our series of challenging works by Tom Stoppard: Hapgood, The Invention of Love, and the massive, three-part The Coast of Utopia, all for Lincoln Center Theater. Bob had recently been contacted by Andrew Lloyd Webber, a peer of the realm with more hits to his credit than perhaps anyone else in the lists of modern theatre. Lord Lloyd Webber was contemplating a sequel to the seemingly inextinguishable The Phantom of the Opera, to be called Love Never Dies, and wanted Bob to design it. Having read an early draft of the script, Crowley had most definitely decided against it. (First yellow flashing light!) But Andrew wasn’t one to be put off that easily, and pursued him in earnest, which is nothing if not flattering. Cornered once more, Crowley threw out that I might be among the two or three directors with whom he could see himself facing such a challenge, and I, at the moment, happened to be available. And so shortly thereafter I found myself sitting with Bob Crowley, the late Really Useful Group producer André Ptaszynski, and the esteemed composer himself and his wife, Madeleine, at the restaurant in the Covent Garden Hotel, straining to hear one another over the din surrounding us. Naturally, everyone was at their most socially vivid, Andrew’s face flushed, I assumed, with enthusiasm. We all seemed to have a remarkably spirited time, and since I appeared to be Crowley’s sole demand, the evening did nothing to dissuade the others present that I might be their boy.
Imagine—and I cannot believe Crowley and I didn’t at some point confess this to each other—if simply a fourth, a tenth, a fiftieth of all the people who had ever seen Phantom were curious enough about visiting the sequel, can you even approximate what those numbers might possibly add up to? (Second flashing yellow light!) If the newly revised scenario wasn’t altogether distinguished, still, it seemed clearly a marked improvement over the one Crowley had turned aside, and that promised a brighter day ahead. (Flashing yellow lights turns distinctly red!)
And so the danse macabre began, and I found myself, one sunny day, crossing London in a cab, accompanied by the ever-helpful, witty, and always supportive André Ptaszynski, on my way to lunch with Andrew and his librettist, Ben Elton of We Will Rock You fame, among others. If there were meant to be a titular producer of this musical, André would surely have qualified, but because he, too, was employed by Andrew’s vast organization in another capacity, he could hardly have been expected to stand aside, icily independent and authoritative. In the cab, André, knowing I had serious concerns about the book and the narrative proposed, tried gently to steer me away from anything like confrontation in this initial meeting with Elton and the brilliantly confident composer: there was a moment in the written libretto so clearly unsupported in reality that I felt I had to offer some suggestion to see if it might not be an idea better served by coming later in the show, if only to indicate that I had a brain and some modicum of experience and was, at the very least, paying attention. André was unconvinced, although he appeared clearly on my side so far as the dramaturgical aberration on the page was concerned. He opened the cab door with an encouraging smile and wished me luck.
Lunch was a hazy blur of white wine and very little food, but I tiptoed resolutely toward my tiny contribution. Andrew was always a marvelous host, generous, eager to engage, and wanting very much for Ben and me to get on, even though I felt Mr. Elton was far more interested in his lemon sole than in me. Wasn’t the book done? What was this meeting all about? Although my dramatic objection got tossed testily this way and that for a while, I didn’t go away with the impression it wouldn’t be considered and, in the light of some other day, maybe even accepted.
Andrew was, and probably ever will be, deeply concerned with the music above and beyond everything and anything else. If I didn’t understand that immediately during our first shared meal, I most certainly did some months later, when we were barely into rehearsal with our foggy, fragile scenario, and I discovered that His Lordship had scheduled a recording session in Studio One of the famous Abbey Road, where more than one hundred musicians were gathering to record the score for the much-anticipated album. Cast members not yet blocked into more than the sketchiest of scenes found themselves crammed into booths, where they were expected to give an assured indication of how they might be singing the material some five or six weeks later, when we would all gather in the Apollo Theater to tech and finish the show. Normally, a cast recording is scheduled for the first Monday off after the official opening night, so everything presented to an audience is settled, worked out, and polished. We, on the other hand, were committing ourselves to a costly version of the score virtually locked away and cast in stone long before we had even done a single run-through of the first act!
Did I actually imagine that if anything proved tricky, there would be rewrites? Adjustments? Cuts, perhaps?
I didn’t think, that’s what. Like a floating body drifting imperceptibly farther and farther from shore, I fixed my mind on the actors, on the transitions, on Crowley’s gorgeous scenery and elegant costumes, on propping up the fragile narrative, believing that although this was obviously the complete opposite of anything I had ever experienced before, Andrew and his fanatically loyal crew must know what they were doing. Perhaps this was merely “the British way”!
It was sometime during all this that I got a chilling insight into how the experience might possibly go down, while once again convincing myself that this might affect others, but perhaps not me. Andrew had, at hand, an eccentric musical director to whom he was accustomed and of whom he was supposedly fond. This conductor had a methodology in which he luxuriated in practically acting out Andrew’s music, swaying like a wind-lashed reed on the podium, eyes closed, defining immense arcs with his slender arms, virtually swooning with each phrase as he went, and purple as it unquestionably sounded, he took every conceivable opportunity to pump each semblance of romanticism from the score before him. This partnership was not without rumors of tacit historical difficulties, bouts of horrid behavior, benders endured, and there had even been instances when, under the consequences of indulgence, the conductor didn’t show up for a performance. He had been fired, true, but he had also been repeatedly and inexplicably forgiven, so thrilled was Andrew with the passionate results, although it was perfectly clear that no one, including Andrew and Madeleine, ever thought the man was to be trusted. I’m no longer certain of the exact nature of the defection I witnessed, but the conductor had left us seriously in the lurch on at least one occasion, and had once more been banished. But when the hundred recording musicians had been assembled at Abbey Road, there he was in the studio, grimly witnessing our assistant conductor’s repeated failure to make the composer comfortable with the initial results. As he stood beside one of Andrew’s staunchest lieutenants, his sighs, his sneers, his utter contempt were impossible to ignore. As a result, Andrew became more and more frustrated, more worried about the wasted expense of an inferior effort so clearly beneath his standard. On the spot, our assistant conductor was replaced “for the recording only” by this resurrected onlooker, who subsequently lost himself in a flurry of rubatos, crescendos, and blatant sumptuosity to the degree that, teary-eyed and beyond grateful, Andrew once more determined to take him back into the fold, restoring him to sole authority. I was appalled, shared in my opinion by Crowley; Jerry Mitchell, our choreographer; Glenn Slater, our lyricist; and even the continually beleaguered Ptaszynski, who clearly had experienced all the previous disasters.
We all gathered in a nearby pub for a celebratory drink of some kind shortly after the recording session, with Andrew lavishly treating the company to libations in thanks for their spirited participation. But, prompted by the considerable grumbling and dismay of most of the support team, I decided to brave the issue fully. Andrew and Madeleine had stationed themselves nearest the bar at the front of the pub when I accosted them, asking why on earth we would be taking back a musical director who had deliberately betrayed us on three separate occasions. Surely, Andrew could eventually coach the original assistant to a degree of excellence that would be, at the very least, dependable.
Andrew and Madeleine looked vaguely past me as I made my plea, and then, with barely a raised inflection, Madeleine informed me that it was their intention to let this man simply “get the score up,” as it were, through techs and through opening night, when they clearly intended to can him. Andrew grunted his approval. “It’s worth it to me to have him set the bar the way I want, then he can fuck off!” Nearly as one, they turned their attention to pick up a conversation with another member of their team.
The Lloyd Webbers were, from start through the opening, marvelous hosts, lavish in their generosity, and took me everywhere they owned property: Sydmonton Court, of course, that manicured baronial estate in the countryside, which housed the most complete and extensive private collection of Pre-Raphaelite art anywhere in the world; Mallorca, where they owned two separate residences, nestled elegantly into crenellated cliffs with everything that constitutes gouache gorgeousness surrounding them; their castle in Ireland, restored, refurbished, replete with an indoor swimming pool, as well as easy access to the local pub, where the Irish were only too happy to belly up to the bar chummily with the Lord, standing him to endless pints, and where we happily wasted several late-afternoon hours. At one such encounter, I looked before me to see no fewer than four glistening pints lined up like a military exercise, waiting to subdue me. Neither Andrew nor I had paid for a single one. I’ve never felt more happily Irish in my entire life. On many of these creative excursions, Glenn Slater would accompany us. There had been very few choices for a lyricist offered at the outset, but since the proposed story was to be set in Coney Island, I was insistently protective that we have enough genuine American influences everywhere so that the piece might resonate with convincing verisimilitude, and once convinced of Glenn’s skill, Andrew was content to leave the refining of the book scenes to his and my mutual responsibility. My initial luncheon with Ben Elton was the only time I recall he ever appeared, and to my knowledge, he never contributed another word to the development of the story, at least through the London opening. Crowley, as well, was invited along on the retreat to Majorca, as were Glenn and his wife, and Bob and I found ourselves floating in a sybaritic Majorcan pool, scarcely believing our luck. No, “getting there” was more than half the fun.
Andrew had long been a famous wine connoisseur, and for many years the cave belowstairs in Sydmonton Court contained one of the truly great and varied collections of wine in the U.K., until he reportedly sold it all. On one of my several weekends as a guest, he proudly took me below to select wine for our dinner, and his excitement and true appreciation were contagious. He knew the cellar was excessive and remarkable, and thoroughly enjoyed showing if off.
He was obviously gifted, often very funny, with a wicked sense of humor, extremely generous, enthusiastic, and singularly successful. And at the same time, he could be manic, oddly insecure, volatile, egotistical, and privileged beyond reckoning. Like most of us, he was never one thing entirely, but utterly at the service of his creative bent, self-serving as such, and probably rightly so. I thoroughly enjoyed him. And he was intolerable. That pretty much wraps it up.
Rampant creativity mixed with a strong degree of egotism is, to be sure, a combustible cocktail, and that very combustion became operative throughout our creative dealings as we trudged resolutely toward the premiere of Love Never Dies. But the truth, finally, was that nothing but the outpouring of lyric melody was of any serious consequence to him, most certainly not the validity or the honesty of the libretto, nor the petty dealings of business and decision-making, depending on the time of day. I realized that his staff, to a man or woman, would strive to get a ruling on any serious aspect of business that pertained to life in the Really Useful Group before eleven o’clock in the morning, because to ask for an opinion or a ruling or, God forbid, a favor after lunch might risk abrupt dismissal, argument, or sudden death.
Daily, Glenn and I would hunker down in the lovely solarium at the physical heart of the RUG building, surrounded by windows reflecting either ravishing sunlight or pelting gray rain, handsomely equipped with coffee, tea, biscuits, and a beautiful grand piano. Andrew might waft through from time to time to see how we were getting on, if we were making sense of the individual scenes, and then quietly retire to his own office upstairs somewhere, to noodle at his own piano, to listen to recordings, and God knows what else, sometimes leaving us for hours, sometimes working alongside us as we continued in our determination to make logical sense of a rather precarious narrative. He would sit with his elbows on a table, his hands cupping his head on either side, looking like an eager elf, humming to himself, or watching us intently.
So it progressed, and so it rolled inevitably toward the first public exposure. Basically, it all went fairly smoothly. All creative work has a kind of bounce to it—and as I’ve repeatedly said to boards of directors, “No one intentionally starts out to do bad work”—so other than the feeling that the musical’s score was separate and apart, and the drama itself dangerously underbaked, we all got on splendidly and shared the usual optimism that what we were doing was possibly destined for some degree of immortality. It was hard to think otherwise while in the delirious thick of it all.
The trio of secondary characters who were meant to serve the Phantom in Coney Island came to me at one point to say they were utterly baffled; the story seemed to include neither a backstory for any of them nor a clue as to what motivation they should be employing. They were functionaries, and somehow linked together, but how? What possible reality did they possess? I felt complete sympathy for them, so I went to my hotel room that evening, sat down, and tried to come up with a story line that began with the curtain of the existing Phantom and supposedly concluded with our current opening story line, which involved not only how the Phantom got to the United States in the first place, but also what might have happened to him on his arrival that justified him ending up working in Coney Island. My imagination fired up, and I supplied about five pages, which I brought into rehearsal and gave to the three players as well as to Andrew. I was informed by André Ptaszynski the following day that Andrew had found it altogether unnecessary and tossed it away without finishing it. The actors, however, were both appreciative and somewhat relieved, and in truth, it was a pretty good story line that saw the Phantom initially secreted in the area of Five Points in Manhattan, hidden by relatives of Madame Giry, where he encountered the denizens of the underworld and finally gave birth to the idea of inventing a kind of Cirque du Soleil at Coney Island, constructed around the glamorized disguises of the deformed and discarded performers, like himself, who had ability but lacked beauty. He was protecting and hiring the disadvantaged in the process. Well, we liked it!
There were only two really difficult moments, and both were probably predictable. The first was my first actual encounter with the famous “other side” of Andrew. The legends abound, and they are oft repeated, even or especially by employees of his own establishment. At one point in a tech rehearsal of the original Phantom, he was seen to storm down the aisle of the theatre, climb over the rail, pull the very orchestrations from the music stands of the stunned orchestra players, and with those scores grasped against his chest, climb back out of the pit and disappear into the night. You don’t forget a scene like that, and, yes, one would be seriously inclined to repeat if not extensively embroider it.
When several of us gathered in Bob Crowley’s studio one evening to have a first look at his scale model for Love Never Dies, there before us stood a half-inch replication of the intended production, a desiccated, haunted, ruined theatre, half memory and half relic, a space for feverish dreaming over which loomed a dramatic and dangerous night sky. It was not yet completely thought through, but meant to stimulate further refinement and collaboration, and one certainly got the thrust of it, which was already beautiful and arresting.
About forty-five minutes past our appointed meeting time, Andrew arrived with a posse of his usual pals, fresh from an obviously resplendent dinner, all of them clearly in high spirits. Andrew took one look at the model and went off on a blistering tirade. It was horrible, it was wrong, it was ANYTHING but what he had imagined! He would not tolerate another theatrical edifice that in any way quoted the original conception; anyone could see what a disaster that would bring about—comparisons with the original work? Impossible!
