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Serving Up Webber's 'best of'
Toronto Sun
Listen to the music of the Knight. Sir Andrew Phantom Lloyd Cats Webber is being enshrined across the country in a $2-million concert production headlined by Colm Wilkinson, our original Phantom.
If you saw Livent's prototypes at the O'keefe in 1989 or at the Pantages in 1990, you should know that Music Of The Night is a more complete and satisfying experience.
Roy Thomson Hall, where the new show has settled through the 23rd, has not only been given a proscenium stage for the occasion, it has been transformed into the Imperial Room. The cast of 15 singer/dancers has been elaborately costumed and choreographed. The 37-piece orchestra is celestial in a pastel firmament. The lighting is lavish, the sound lush.
Not a word of welcome or context dilutes in the formal dignity of the occasion. We are in the Webber Hall of Fame, and here is all of the pomp, none of the circumstance.
Undistracted by plot, we can marvel at the work of the man who is arguably the most successful composer of all time
No song is betrayed here. It may be only a stepping stone in the flow of the show, but is never just a novelty.
Much credit to the arrangments, the way Jesus Christ Superstar became Pie Jesu from Requiem with the cast all in white, the way Starlight Express was folded into Cats and Dreamboat with extra children, and especially the way Don't Cry For Me Argentina was interrupted by other songs from the score to dramatize the central argument of Evita.
And no less admiration to Colm Wilkinson. You know what they say about great actors and phone books? This man has a gift of salemanship no less awesome. Marin Mazzie and Laurie Williamson are fine foils for him with lovely voices. He goes way beyond lovely. He sells feelings.
The most distinctive Webber characteristics are probably the large intervals he requires singers to leap, and the descending scales he uses as a structural unit. Few make the hurdles seem as musical as Wilkinson. Fewer make them as suspenseful no matter how often you have heard them.
I was thrilled by his Jesus, touched by the explosive "Touch me!" of his Memory, enthralled by his descant on I Don't Know How To Love Him, and mesmerized yet again by his Phantom.
(Audiences should be warned that not every song ends on a loud high note.) Admittedly, some of the good bits don't seem quite so amazing without long waits to earn them.
But with competitive high points comes a greater appreciation of versatility.
A considerable effort is expended to make Sunset Boulevard the climax of the show. It works. I'll bet this show sells a quarter of a million dollars worth of tickets for that show.
By Wilder Penfield III
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