Aah, the unlikely miracle of history. Forty years ago, the United States reigned supreme in the pop music business. The Sound Of Music was the highlight on Broadway, Hair was playing off-Broadway, the Beach Boys were re-inventing California and Elvis had conquered everything in sight. Right?
From left: Michael England, Robyn North, Graham Bickley. Photos courtesy of Bangkok Symphony Orchestra
Wrong! The Beatles, that quartet from Liverpool, defeated both Elvis and the Beach Boys in the battle for the hearts of the proletariat. And this Saturday, at the Thailand Cultural Centre, Bangkok's elite will discover how Broadway was brought to its knees (or feet, rather) with musicals that dwarfed Rodgers and Hammerstein and, at times, even Stephen Sondheim. For the occasion, the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra will be conducted by the legendary Michael England and provide backing for two star singers from the most unlikely _ and most successful _ musicals to ever grace a stage.
- A NIGHT AT THE MUSICALS: The Best Of Broadway Saturday, 8pm Thailand Cultural Centre Tickets are 500 to 2,500 baht, available at all Thai Ticket Major outlets (www.thaiticketmajor.com)
- Special offer for Bangkok Post readers: A 25% discount on ticket prices is being offered to all readers of this newspaper. Simply cut out two frontpage mastheads and bring them with you to any Thai Ticket Major outlet.
- For more information, contact the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra Foundation on 02-255-6617—8 or 02-254-4954 or visit www.bangkoksymphony.org
The composers of those works _ including Cats, Phantom Of The Opera, Les Miserables and Miss Saigon _ were not your usual musical artists. Andrew Lloyd Webber came from such a distinguished musical family that when "serious" listeners heard the name Lloyd Webber, they immediately thought of his luminary cello-virtuoso brother. The same goes for the composer of Les Miserables and Miss Saigon, Claude-Michel Schoenberg, who is a relative of that austere and mystical composer, Arnold Schoenberg. Lionel Bart did come from a more traditional background, but he, too, handled a most non-traditional subject: Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist.
The origins of some of the musicals to be excerpted in Bangkok later this week are also somewhat improbable.
T.S. Eliot, that most intellectual and possibly the most humourless poet of the 20th century, once wrote a series of poems about cats, and that was later turned into the first dance-musical, Cats. The opera, Madame Butterfly, itself taken from an 1890s melodrama, was the starting point for Miss Saigon. Victor Hugo, the most successful French novelist in history, was a very sober moralist. And yet Les Miserables was transformed into a musical and a film which have both been enchanting millions ever since.
An original melodramatic movie written by Billy Wilder _ himself the product of acerbic, barbed Berlin where he worked as a screenwriter from the late 1920s _ was turned into Sunset Boulevard. And that most melodramatic of serialised novels, The Phantom Of the Opera, went on to become a frightening silent movie in 1925, was later remade several times for the big screen, then loosely adapted into a musical film (Brian De Palma's The Phantom Of The Paradise) before finally morphing into the gripping musical and movie of more recent times.
Most unlikely of all was Webber and Rice's dramatisation of the life of and wife of Argentina's fascist dictator Juan Peron. And nobody at that pair's bank had to "cry for me, Argentina", for Evita probably made a greater fortune than that South American couple ever acquired via corrupt means.
What has been the secret of these successes? Partly a reversal of fortune. After The Sound Of Music, Rodgers and Hammerstein parted ways, and Stephen Sondheim _ brilliant, urbane, sophisticated, clever _ wrote patter songs like those by Victorian-era Londoners Gilbert and Sullivan.
On the other hand, Andrew Lloyd Webber and his librettist, Tim Rice, took the rock musical Hair and had the audacity to turn that genre into an "American rock" version of the Old and New Testaments with the musicals Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Jesus Christ Superstar.
After these unlikely British shows were a hit, success was assured all over the world.
Yet the most important secret is that, despite what Andrew Lloyd Webber's detractors had to say, he and Schoenberg really could write good tunes. Did the results sometimes sound like updated Puccini? Or British music-hall ditties? Possibly. But the world still fell in love with some of the numbers to be revisited at the TCC on Saturday.
Few can forget Memories from Cats or The Music Of The Night from Phantom or The People's Song from Les Miserables.
The artists who created these songs understood theatre above all else. When sung by amateurs, they may appear mawkish, almost hokey. When sung by artists who have first-hand experience of the footlights and the reactions of British and American audiences, the songs put on a sparkling new dress.
And here's the third secret to the success (or failure) of productions of these musicals: the manner in which they are performed. The British tradition of music hall, vaudeville, pantomime, even Gilbert and Sullivan has produced a rare level of professionalism which should be exhibited here.
Michael England, for example, the man who will be conducting the BSO on Saturday, is more than just a well-established musical director, conductor and orchestrator; he has been a leading light in this genre of music itself. In London's West End he was musical director for Les Miserables, The Phantom Of The Opera, Spamalot, The Producers, Jerry Springer: The Opera and Doctor Doolittle. On tour he has been filled the same role for The Sound Of Music, Evita, Les Miserables, Aspects Of Love and Grease.
Most important for the concert in Bangkok, Cameron Mackintosh, the vitally successful producer for all of these shows, personally chose maestro England to conduct the opening weeks of the 25th anniversary of Les Miserables and he subsequently conducted the new cast album.
Robyn North is long associated with playing Christine in Phantom Of The Opera. But she was also in the revival of Evita and dozens of other productions.
The last member of this stellar trio is Graham Bickley, who has already played in Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, Sunset Boulevard (opposite Petula Clark) and Ragtime. Bickley has also performed with orchestras in Europe and South America, his concert performances including Bernstein's Wonderful Town with the Rotterdam Philharmonic and Guys And Dolls at the Vienna Konzerthaus, as well as concert arena productions of Jesus Christ Superstar (playing the role of Pilate) and Evita (as Magaldi).
One shouldn't make predictions, obviously. But one has the feeling that instead of asking for an encore (which they assuredly will), the audience at the TCC may well shout out, in unison, those immortal words from Oliver: "Please, madams and sirs, may we have a little more?"
