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    Review: Ivo van Hove Takes on ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’

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    The Belgian director’s revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar” showcases some of his signature aesthetic techniques. But it’s an odd pairing.On a dark, featureless stage in Amsterdam, a soon-to-be-crucified Jesus Christ laments his predicament while sporting a shimmery tank-top and gray New Balance sneakers. His followers, gathered around him, look like they have raided an Urban Outfitters store sometime around 2012.By stark contrast, his persecutors, led by King Herod and Pontius Pilate, wear severe white, floor-length robes and black coats. In an earsplitting falsetto, Jesus reproaches his father, God, for having put him in this position. As well he might.This revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s kitschy 1971 musical about the last few days of Jesus’s life, is directed by the Belgian auteur Ivo van Hove. It’s an odd match.Van Hove has built his reputation on aesthetically striking, often psychologically intense re-imaginings of well-known works — including canonical plays (“Hedda Gabler” and a riveting “A View from the Bridge”); golden-age Hollywood movies (“All About Eve”); and contemporary fiction (“Who Killed My Father” and “A Little Life”). And though his range is wide, there has always been intellectual ambition in his choice of subject matter: a serious interest in the poetics of human tragedy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      How Directors Are Reimagining Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Shows

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      The closing of “The Phantom of the Opera” last spring left a chandelier-sized hole in New York. And as of this summer, for the first time in 44 years, there is no Andrew Lloyd Webber musical running on Broadway.But now comes an unexpected new chapter in the career of one of musical theater’s most successful, if not always appreciated, composers: Several adventurous contemporary directors are declaring they love his work and want to put their stamp on it.Ivo van Hove, the Belgian director known for his profuse use of video and viscous fluids, is tackling “Jesus Christ Superstar” in Amsterdam, while Jamie Lloyd, the British auteur with a penchant for Pinter and an aversion to scenery, is sharpening “Sunset Boulevard” in London. Meanwhile, in the United States, Sammi Cannold is putting a feminist stamp on “Evita,” while Bill Rauch and Zhailon Levingston are humanizing “Cats.”The shows, and Lloyd Webber himself, occupy a paradoxical place in the theatrical canon.Critics have sometimes dismissed his work as overwrought. This newspaper’s reviewers, in particular, have often been underwhelmed, initially declaring that “Jesus Christ Superstar” had “minimal artistic value,” and also deriding “Evita” (“like reading endless footnotes from which the text has disappeared”), “Cats” (“if you blink, you’ll miss the plot”) and “Sunset Boulevard” (“lurid”).But “Evita,” “Cats” and “Sunset Boulevard” won best musical Tony Awards, and all four shows are widely staged and enormously popular. These new productions, reflecting contemporary trends, are emphasizing psychology and politics over spectacle and sentiment.Lloyd Webber, 75, said in an interview that there is no grand strategy at work here — that the directors individually sought permission to stage the shows. But he also said he believes that it is healthy to allow others to explore older material in new ways.“When we were approached, we just thought, ‘Well, great! Why not?’” he said. “You can’t just sit on these things.”Even “Starlight Express,” one of his zanier musicals, which involves actors on roller skates pretending to be trains, is getting a reboot: Luke Sheppard, the “& Juliet” director, is reimagining it for a run scheduled to begin next summer in London.The productions come after a rough patch for Lloyd Webber. His latest musical, “Bad Cinderella,” bombed on Broadway last spring, shortly after the “Phantom” closing. But he is undeterred: In August he signed with Creative Artists Agency, the powerhouse talent representatives, and in September he named a new chief executive for Really Useful Group, the company he owns that licenses and manages his shows.“I really must concentrate, in the latter days of my composing life, on creating and writing,” Lloyd Webber said. “It’s exciting to me that there are so many directors now coming forward, who actually are the directors who everybody is going to at the moment. And it’s very interesting to me to hear new minds and see new ideas — some of them I’m going to like and some of them not. But why not? I can’t see any possible reason.”Here is a look at four upcoming reinventions.London‘Sunset Boulevard’Forget the staircase and the turban. Jamie Lloyd is bringing an intense interest in psychological exploration to “Sunset Boulevard” — “putting the emphasis,” he says, “on people and their emotional journey.”With that aim, he asked Lloyd Webber to rework some aspects of the score “to lean into the darkness and peculiarity of certain moments that are dreamlike or nightmarish.” And, to his surprise, Lloyd Webber agreed. “He’s been so open,” Lloyd said, “which is kind of crazy.”The production, which is now running at London’s Savoy Theater, ends with a rush of blood and integrates live camera work in a nod to the Hollywood milieu of “Sunset Boulevard.” Lloyd called it “a hybrid between theater and cinema.”Lloyd, 42, didn’t grow up seeing theater. But his father, a truck driver, liked listening to show tunes, and that’s how Lloyd first encountered Lloyd Webber’s songs.The original Broadway production of “Sunset Boulevard,” which opened in 1994, starred Glenn Close, above with Andrew Lloyd Webber.Associated PressSoon he had his own cassette of the composer’s greatest hits, and he would “force my cousins to do performances in the living room.”“It was kind of the soundtrack of my youth,” he said.Fast forward to the summer of 2019. Lloyd, by then an acclaimed experimental director, had moved on from his Lloyd Webber fixation, or at least so he thought. But when he was invited to stage a musical outdoors, in Regent’s Park, one show came to mind: “Evita.”His sneakers-and-spray-paint production of that show was a hit, and he made a mental note of Lloyd Webber’s openness to “radical reappraisal.” Then, idled at home during the pandemic, he found himself imagining what he could do with “Sunset Boulevard.”“The characters he chooses to write about are weird and otherworldly, often with tormented minds, and the scores take these big leaps which are good to explore,” Lloyd said. “They are like fever dreams, and they respond well to a more experimental, less traditional approach.”WASHINGTON‘Evita’Sammi Cannold has long been obsessed with “Evita.” At 29, she is 16 years younger than the musical, but she still remembers hearing the songs as a kid in New York, seeing the revival that starred Ricky Martin, and, as an aspiring director, proclaiming it her “dream project.”She has been nothing if not determined: She directed a production while an undergrad at Stanford; she visited Argentina three times to do research; and then she pitched an “Evita” revival to New York City Center.In 1979, Patti LuPone (above with Bob Gunton) took on the role of Eva Perón for the show’s Broadway premiere.Martha Swope/New York Public LibrarySo in 2019, there was Cannold, directing a 12-day gala run of the Lloyd Webber classic. The production was eye-catching, starting with Evita’s iconic white ball gown hovering like a ghost over a flower-bedecked stage. This year, Cannold was able to develop it fully, staging it first at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., and now (through Oct. 15) at Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, where the Washington Post theater critic Peter Marks called the show “gorgeously reinvigorated.”Cannold’s take is informed by feminism — “I think she’s a victim and a survivor who learned to use her sexuality as armor,” she said of Perón — but also by the regime’s authoritarianism. “When I first started working on it, I was head over heels in love with Eva — I was so obsessed with her and her history, and I couldn’t really hear any of the criticism,” she said. “I’ve gone on a whole journey, and land in a different place.”AMSTERDAM‘Jesus Christ Superstar’Even in Belgium, where Ivo van Hove grew up, “Jesus Christ Superstar” was a big deal. The concept album was released in 1970, when van Hove was young, and the music has lived in his head ever since.“At the time that I was an adolescent, this was huge — not the musical, but the album — the album was something that everybody bought,” said van Hove, who at 64 has never seen a stage production of the show. “Nobody could believe that ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ could be a rock thing.”Van Hove, whose production of “Dead Man Walking” is this season’s Metropolitan Opera opener, said he has wanted for years to direct “Jesus Christ Superstar.” “Some projects live in me for a long time,” he said.Jeff Fenholt in the title role of “Jesus Christ Superstar” on Broadway in 1971. Bettmann, via Getty ImagesNow he’s getting his chance, directing an English-language production that is set to begin performances in January at DeLaMar in Amsterdam.“I can tell you what interests me,” he said. “First, it’s a story of a group of friends who became friends because they believed in one mission: to take care of the poor. Second, these friends become a threat to political and religious leaders. And third are the geopolitical tensions, in this case with Rome.”“These things,” he added, “feel like very contemporary themes.”How contemporary? Let’s just say that in van Hove’s production, the cast will begin the show wearing hoodies. And, he said, some members of the audience will be seated onstage, because he wants to create a “pressure-cooker” environment.What is van Hove’s theory about why Lloyd Webber is drawing inventive directors now? “It’s not for nothing that these musicals became so important for so many people for such a long time,” he said. “There’s something very human there, even when it’s about cats.”NEW YORK‘Cats’The production of “Cats” planned for next June at the new Perelman Performing Arts Center is, at least at first blush, the most outlandish of this latest round of Lloyd Webber productions. Whereas the original concerned a group of cats (obviously) and was set in a junkyard, the characters in this production will be human beings, and it will be set in the Ballroom scene, a dance subculture closely associated with Black and Latino drag queens.“We are reimagining ‘Cats’ as a queer ball competition,” said Zhailon Levingston, one of the production’s two directors. Old Deuteronomy, an astute and admired character, will be head judge.The idea was the brainchild of the Perelman Center’s artistic director, Bill Rauch, who, by his own description, has been “obsessed with reinventing classics my whole career,” and who had previously directed a “queer ‘Oklahoma’” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. “Over the course of that process, I was thinking a lot about ‘Cats,’ and I just kept thinking about the song ‘Memory’ being done in a queer context,” Rauch said. “And I just found it very moving.”The cast of “Cats” in 1997; the show ran on Broadway from 1982 to 2000.Carol RoseggRauch, 61, saw the original Broadway production — albeit late in its long run, when he decided “it felt important to check that off on my cultural bucket list.” Levingston, 29, had a different point of entry: a direct-to-video film from 1998.“I’d be at the day care center, watching ‘Barney,’ and they kept showing the trailer for ‘Cats,’ and I didn’t know what they were doing — people were dressed provocatively, and it seemed like maybe we shouldn’t be watching, and one day my mom and I were at Blockbuster, and I saw the black box with the yellow eyes, and said, ‘We have to get that,’” he recalled. “For two years of my life, I would just watch ‘Cats.’”At one point, Levingston said, he even performed his own one-man (well, one-child) version of the show for his babysitters.Now Rauch and Levingston have hired choreographers with a connection to the Ballroom scene, and a gender consultant to help them navigate the complexities of a gender-nonconforming cast.“The more time we spend with the material,” Rauch said, “the deeper my respect grows for it.” More

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      Review: In ‘Aspects of Love,’ Some Problematic Attachments

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      A London revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s partner-swapping musical is a camp amoral romp. But is this obsession really the same as romance?For those who find regular love triangles too pedestrian, quadrangles and pentagons are also available. Unconventional arrangements are the order of the day in a dynamic revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Aspects of Love,” which opened on Thursday at the Lyric Theater in London. This two-act musical, inspired by a 1955 novel by David Garnett, pits a young man against his uncle in a tussle for the affections of a mercurial actress; it is a camp, unapologetically amoral romp featuring blithe betrayals, intrafamilial partner-swapping and questionable intergenerational flirtations. (It is a lot raunchier than Lloyd Webber’s most recent work, which invited the audience to “sing unto the Lord with the harp” during the coronation of King Charles III.)This “Aspects of Love” is exquisitely produced and superbly performed, but — like many a real-life libertine — it eventually buckles under the weight of its excesses.We begin in 1947, in rural southwestern France, where Rose (Laura Pitt-Pulford), a struggling actress, meets Alex (Jamie Bogyo), an adoring fan. Alex, 18, invites Rose to stay with him at a villa owned by George (Michael Ball), his rich uncle, and the two fall in love. But Rose then unceremoniously ditches Alex for his uncle, to the dismay of George’s partner, Giulietta (Danielle de Niese), an Italian sculptor.We check in with the four at intervals over the next 20 years, as the action moves to Paris, then to Venice, then back to the French countryside. Alex and Rose are never quite able to leave each other alone. To further complicate matters, both of them also get intimate with Giulietta. Cue jealousies, recriminations — and plenty of drama.Pitt-Pulford is charismatic and engaging as Rose. A vibrant stage presence, she is by turns imperious, flighty and needy — the quintessential histrionic thespian. Bogyo’s portrayal of a callow, love-struck young person is convincing; he is frequently exasperated, and we sympathize with his predicament because he is too inexperienced to know any better. Ball — who played Alex in the musical’s original production, in 1989 — is outstanding as George, a genial, urbane bon viveur who assures the teenage Alex that there are plenty more fish in the sea (“Life goes on. Love goes free.”) His serene sanguineness is the show’s beating heart.Members of the cast of “Aspects of Love” in London. The painted backdrops of John McFarlane’s set shift the action between rural France, Paris and Venice over a 20-year period.Johan PerssonThe production is immaculately put together, and John McFarlane’s luscious set design incorporates beautiful painted backdrops depicting Parisian street scenes and rural landscapes. A rotating stage is deployed to good effect during romantic scenes to evoke the head-spinning euphoria of early love.Though the show is practically flawless as an audiovisual spectacle, the story gradually wanes. Things take an unwholesome turn in the second act with the introduction of Jenny, George and Rose’s young daughter (played first, as a young child, by Indiana Ashworth and later, as a teenager, by Anna Unwin). Jenny develops an intense crush on Alex, and the ensuing will-they-won’t-they is skin crawling. The bawdy, pantomimic esprit of the first act gives way to awkwardness; an audience that had been positively purring at the intermission was palpably uneasy with this story line.To account for this somewhat jarring transition, we must turn to the novel on which the musical is based. Its author, David Garnett — known as “Bunny” to his friends — was a member of the Bloomsbury literary set notorious for their cavalier attitude in matters of romance. His parents had lived in a ménage à trois with a young actress, and eccentric sexual behavior was a recurring theme in his life. In 1942, he married Angelica Bell, his former lover’s daughter, whom, in a letter 24 years earlier, he identified as a potential spouse when she was just a baby.Garnett’s novel may have had a certain transgressive purchase in the mid-1950s, at the dawn of a revolution in sexual mores. But from a 21st-century perspective, the story feels, at best, a kitsch curio. There is something quaintly naïve about dignifying such flawed romantic entanglements — puppy love, infatuation, grooming — with the sentimental earnestness of the show’s soppy signature tune, “Love Changes Everything.” In truth, the ditty that best captures Garnett’s ethos is the “Hand Me the Wine and the Dice” from Act 2, an upbeat anthem to living in the moment.In both the novel and onstage, the characters are so thinly sketched that it is hard to take their emotions seriously, especially given the conspicuous discrepancy between their professed intensity of feeling and the fickleness of their affections. Maybe the real subject of this musical is not romance per se, but overweening egotism — what we would nowadays call narcissism. It is an enjoyable ride, and there is just about enough comeuppance to satisfy the moralists, but one is left wondering, to paraphrase Tina Turner, what love has to do with it.Aspects of LoveThrough Nov. 11 at the Lyric Theater in London; aspectsoflove.com. More

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      ‘Bad Cinderella’ to Close on Broadway, Ending Lloyd Webber’s Streak

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      When it concludes on June 4, an unbroken string of Andrew Lloyd Webber shows since 1979 will come to an end. His latest opened only in March.“Bad Cinderella,” a revisionist riff on the classic fairy tale, will close on June 4, bringing to an end, at least for the time being, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 43-year-long streak of shows on Broadway.The latest musical, which opened March 23, was not the pinnacle of that career — it was greeted on Broadway by hostile reviews, garnered zero Tony nominations and struggled at the box office. Last week it played to houses that were only 54 percent full and grossed just $326,303, which made it the lowest-grossing musical on Broadway.It had fared slightly better in London, and not just because “bad” was not part of the title there — critics had looked on it more favorably when it opened in the West End after multiple pandemic-related delays, but it had only a modest run and a closing clouded by the way the cast was informed and some of the words Lloyd Webber used to describe the turn of events.The musical is, like most Cinderella stories, about a shabbily treated young woman whose fortunes change when she meets a prince. The twists, in this production, are that the protagonist is rebellious, Prince Charming is gay, and beauty standards are oppressive.In addition to music by Lloyd Webber, who is best known as the wildly successful composer of hit musicals like “Cats,” “Evita” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” the musical features a book created by Emerald Fennell (the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “Promising Young Woman”) and then adapted by the playwright Alexis Scheer (“Our Dear Dead Drug Lord”), and lyrics by David Zippel (who won a Tony years ago for writing the lyrics for “City of Angels”). “Bad Cinderella” is directed by Laurence Connor, who previously enjoyed more success directing Lloyd Webber’s 2015 musical, “School of Rock.”“Bad Cinderella” was capitalized for up to $19 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; that money has not been recouped. The musical’s lead producer is Christine Schwarzman, a lawyer; together she and her husband, the Blackstone billionaire Stephen A. Schwarzman, are major players in New York financial and philanthropic circles. Christine Schwarzman has become increasingly active as a producer on Broadway through her production company, No Guarantees; she is also a lead producer of “Fat Ham,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in drama and is nominated for the best play Tony Award.At the time of its closing, “Bad Cinderella” will have played 33 preview performances and 85 regular performances. More

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      What Is an EGOT? A Detailed History of Its Origins and Winners.

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      Many people were introduced to the idea of an EGOT — winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony — through “30 Rock.” But it’s an actor from the 1980s who deserves the credit.Common would be the first to admit that he has an EGO — that is, an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award and an Oscar — making him just a Tony Award shy from securing the coveted EGOT, the achievement of winning all four major entertainment awards.Eighteen other people have done so, and the “Frozen” songwriter Robert Lopez is the only person to do it twice. The most recent addition was the actress Viola Davis, who earned a Grammy in February for the audiobook of her memoir, making her one of six women to have an EGOT.Now Common has a shot at joining this rather uncommon club. The Tony nominations will be announced on Tuesday, and he is eligible in the featured actor in a play category after making his Broadway debut in “Between Riverside and Crazy.”But where did the EGOT acronym come from, and what does it really take to earn the accolade?Why did we start talking about EGOTs?Many people who first heard of an EGOT assume it originated on the hit NBC sitcom “30 Rock,” which began airing in 2006. But it turns out the term dates back to 1984, when only three people had achieved EGOT-hood: the composer Richard Rodgers and the actresses Helen Hayes and Rita Moreno.It’s actually Philip Michael Thomas, Don Johnson’s partner on the police drama “Miami Vice,” who deserves the naming credit. The accomplishment was previously known as a “grand slam,” a term used for similar achievements in golf and tennis.Thomas has told reporters that his dream was to win an Emmy for his work on “Miami Vice,” a Grammy for his record albums, an Oscar for a play he wanted to adapt as a film, and a Tony for some musicals he had written.Thomas, who later claimed the acronym also stood for his career mantra — “Energy, Growth, Opportunity and Talent” — even wore a medallion with “EGOT” engraved on it. But he was never nominated for any of the awards he dreamed of winning.How did EGOT enter the popular lexicon?Despite Thomas’s efforts, it took a couple of decades before “EGOT” became a thing. Then Kay Cannon, a writer and producer on “30 Rock,” decided to incorporate the rare feat into a satirical story line that began in 2009. “You’d hear this red carpet commentary,” Cannon told The New York Times recently, “that they were one award away from EGOT-ing.”At the time, even some luminaries didn’t know about the distinction. The comedian Whoopi Goldberg first learned she had achieved EGOT status when she guest-starred on one of the four “30 Rock” episodes in which the character Tracy Jordan, played by Tracy Morgan, bought Thomas’s necklace and started strategizing to achieve his own EGOT. (“A good goal for a talented crazy person,” he says in the show.)“I watched ‘30 Rock’ and loved the concept,” Lopez said. “One doesn’t really ever think of themselves as a candidate for achieving something so ridiculous, but I realized that maybe I could do it one day.” Lopez got his wish in 2014, winning an Oscar for the song “Let It Go” from the Disney animated hit “Frozen.”The composer Andrew Lloyd Webber was more old school. “I wasn’t thinking, ‘If I get this Emmy, I’d be an EGOT,’” Lloyd Webber said about achieving the feat in 2018 for “Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert.” The lyricist Tim Rice and the singer John Legend, who played the title role, reached EGOT status at the same time.“It hadn’t really crossed my mind,” Lloyd Webber said. “I’m much more conscious of it now.”So, what is the best strategy for winning an EGOT?The not-so-quiet secret is that when you’re close to an EGOT, it is possible to game the system.Lloyd Webber said he was recently asked by a fellow artist — someone famous, he won’t say who — how to add a Tony to an awards collection that already included a Grammy and an Emmy. “I said, ‘Well, one way you could do that is become a producer, put some money into a few shows,’” he said. “Every show seems to have 20 producers these days.”That strategy worked for the singer and actress Jennifer Hudson, who achieved an EGOT in 2022 with her Tony win as a producer of “A Strange Loop.”Lloyd Webber thinks getting an Oscar is the most difficult. A Grammy is the easiest, he said, simply because there are more available categories: “You could be the best banjo player in Latin America.”And if Davis’s clinching Grammy win — in the best audio book, narration and storytelling category — revealed anything, it’s that nonmusical methods can be just as effective. “Do a comedy album or narrate your own audio book,” Cannon said. “Write a book, narrate that and then adapt it to the stage.”After considering her own track record (“I’m 0-for-4 right now”), Cannon said she thought her best bet could be a Broadway adaptation of “Pitch Perfect,” the 2012 musical comedy film that she co-wrote.Does it help to have an EGOT as your goal?Probably not. The renowned composer Alan Menken had already won 11 Grammys, eight Oscars and one Tony when his representatives realized he just needed an Emmy to complete the EGOT. “To be honest, it wasn’t something that was really on my wish list until it was brought up, and brought up, and brought up,” he said. “But you can’t will something like that into existence.”So about six years ago, Menken wrote a song about wanting to achieve an EGOT, soliciting assistance from comedy writers like Judd Apatow. The idea was that it would start off sounding sincere, and then would get more and more desperate with each section. Ultimately, he discarded the song (“It wasn’t any good, I can promise you”) and instead secured an Emmy for the animated series “Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure.”What is the value of an EGOT?An EGOT is a flattering distinction that ultimately means nothing, said Menken, who described it as a “random assortment of honors.”“Just do what you do, as well as you can, and don’t think about it,” he added. “If you get awards, great.”There is no organizing body that awards EGOTs, and no ceremony at which a trophy is handed out. But there are hazy areas of eligibility, such as lifetime achievement awards. There are also EGOT enhancements, like the PEGOT, for either a Peabody Award or a Pulitzer Prize. Some say the G should instead represent a Golden Globe, or that the EGOT should become an EGGOT.Menken is proud of the fact that he also has a REGOT — the four traditional awards, plus a Razzie, also known as a Golden Raspberry Award. The ignoble prize was for worst original song from the film “Newsies,” the same project for which he won a Tony. “The Razzie puts everything in perspective, frankly,” he said.At least with the Razzies, there is a ceremony and a physical award. Cannon thinks there should be a similar ceremony for EGOTs, if only a mock version. After all, even “Saturday Night Live” commemorates the occasion when someone hosts the show for a fifth time. “You become a member of the Five-Timers Club, they give you a jacket.”Who’s not throwing away their shot?Over the years, artists have become more comfortable expressing their EGOT dreams. In a segment for the 2015 BET Hip Hop Awards, the composer and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda rattled off his scorecard: “Got a Grammy, got a Tony, got an Emmy,” he rapped, adding, “Somebody show me the way to the Oscars.”Miranda’s dream could come true next awards season: He has written new songs for the live-action “The Little Mermaid” movie, which will be released in late May.Menken, Miranda’s collaborator on the three new “Little Mermaid” songs, mused about whether he should take his name off them to give Miranda a better shot. “I have eight Oscars,” he said. “They’re probably going to go, ‘Alan, man, no.’ So I feel guilty.”Lopez agreed that Manuel deserves it, but he’s also rooting for someone else: Kristen Anderson-Lopez, his collaborator and wife. She just needs a Tony to secure the EGOT. An added benefit, he said, is that it would bring “more peace to my household.”Wait, so who exactly is in the EGOT club?These are the 18 people who have won EGOTs, along with the year and award that secured the achievement:Mel Brooks (2001, Tony)Viola Davis (2023, Grammy)John Gielgud (1991, Emmy)Whoopi Goldberg (2002, Tony)Marvin Hamlisch (1995, Emmy)Helen Hayes (1977, Grammy)Audrey Hepburn (1994, Grammy)Jennifer Hudson (2022, Tony)John Legend (2018, Emmy)Andrew Lloyd Webber (2018, Emmy)Robert Lopez (2014, Oscar)Alan Menken (2020, Emmy)Rita Moreno (1977, Emmy)Mike Nichols (2001, Emmy)Tim Rice (2018, Emmy)Richard Rodgers (1962, Emmy)Scott Rudin (2012, Grammy)Jonathan Tunick (1997, Tony) More

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      With Cheers and Tears, ‘Phantom of the Opera’ Ends Record Broadway Run

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      The show’s record-breaking 35-year Broadway run came to an end on Sunday night. Its famous chandelier got a bow, and its composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, spoke after its emotional final performance.“The Phantom of the Opera” concluded the longest run in Broadway history Sunday night with a glittery final performance at which even the production’s signature chandelier, which had just crashed onto the stage of the Majestic Theater for the 13,981st time, got its own curtain call.The invitation-only crowd was filled with Broadway lovers, including actors who had performed in the show over its 35-year run, as well as numerous other artists (including Lin-Manuel Miranda and Glenn Close) and fans who won a special ticket lottery. Some dressed in Phantom regalia; one man came dressed in the character’s sumptuous Red Death costume.The final performance, which ran from 5:22 to 7:56 p.m., was interrupted repeatedly by applause, not only for the main actors, but also for beloved props, including a monkey music box, and scenic elements such as a gondola being rowed through a candelabra-adorned underground lake. After the final curtain, the stagehands who made the show’s elaborate spectacle happen night after night, were invited onstage for a resounding round of applause.“It’s just amazing, really, what has happened,” the composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, who wrote the show’s soaring score, said after the final curtain, as he dedicated the performance to his son Nicholas, who died three weeks ago.Lloyd Webber spoke alongside his longtime collaborator and the show’s lead producer, Cameron Mackintosh. They invited alumni of the original Broadway production to join them onstage, and projected onto the theater’s back wall pictures of deceased members of the original creative team, including its director, Hal Prince, as well as every actor who played the two lead roles (the Phantom as well as Christine, the young soprano who is his obsession).Andrew Lloyd Webber, center left, with Cameron Mackintosh during the curtain speech at the Majestic Theater after the final performance of the musical “Phantom of the Opera.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesToward the end of the evening, Mackintosh acknowledged the one-ton chandelier, which was lowered from the ceiling to a round of applause, and the crowd was showered with gold and silver metallic confetti, some of which dangled in ribbons from the chandelier.Hours before the curtain, fans gathered across the street, waving and taking pictures and hoping somehow to score a spare ticket. Among them was Lexie Luhrs, 25, of Washington, in a Phantom get-up: black cape, homemade mask, plus fedora, vest and bow tie, as well as mask earrings and a mask necklace. “I’m here to celebrate the show that means so much to us,” Luhrs said.On Broadway “Phantom” was, obviously, enormously successful, playing to 20 million people and grossing $1.36 billion since its opening in January 1988. And the show has become an international phenomenon, playing in 17 languages in 45 countries and grossing more than $6 billion globally. But the Broadway run ultimately succumbed to the twin effects of inflation and dwindled tourism following the coronavirus pandemic shutdown.Carlton Moe, obscured, hugs Raquel Suarez Groen before they go on the red carpet. They are both cast members in the musicalSara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt closed on an unexpectedly high note — and not just the high E that Christine sings in the title song. As soon as the closing was announced last September, sales spiked, as those who already loved the musical flocked to see it, and procrastinators realized it could be their last chance; the original February closing date was delayed by two months to accommodate demand, and the show has once again become the highest-grossing on Broadway, playing to exuberant audiences, enjoying a burnished reputation, and bringing in more than $3 million a week.“For a show to go out this triumphantly is almost unheard-of,” said Mackintosh.Jaime Samson at the theater in a Red Death costume he made himself.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAfter the final performance, the show’s company and its alumni gathered for an invitation-only celebration at the Metropolitan Club, with the show’s iconic mask projected onto a wall next to a marble staircase.The show, with music by Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Charles Hart, is still running in London, where the orchestra size was cut and the set was altered during the pandemic shutdown to reduce running costs, and it is also currently running in the Czech Republic, Japan, South Korea and Sweden. New productions are scheduled to open in China next month, in Italy in July and in Spain in October.And will it ever return to New York? “Of course, at some point,” Mackintosh said in an interview. “But it is time for the show to have a rest.” More

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      ‘Phantom of the Opera’ Fans Mourn the Record-Breaking Show’s End

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      “The Phantom of the Opera,” the longest running show in Broadway history, will give its final performance on Sunday, bringing its glittering chandelier crashing down on the stage of the Majestic Theater for the 13,981st and final time.Its success was powered by all kinds of engines, perhaps none more striking than the group of die-hard patrons who call themselves Phans. They come from all over the world, drawn by its soaring Andrew Lloyd Webber score and Gothic love story, and have devoted themselves to the show, seeing it as often as possible, of course, but also collecting memorabilia, dressing up as characters, and conversing about it online.Frank Radice, a Long Island call center operator, proposed to his wife at a “Phantom” installation inside a Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, and Tracy O’Neill of Connecticut used the show’s “All I Ask of You” as her wedding song. Elizabeth Dellario, a New York City tech worker, named her cats Christine and Erik after characters in the show. Erin Castro, a Los Angeles office assistant, makes Lego figurines of the cast. Katie Yelinek, a Pennsylvania librarian who has seen it 69 times, said, “I can honestly say I’ve shaped my adult life around going to see Phantom.”So many Phans. Meet six:Body ArtAlice DychesAlice Dyches, a singer-songwriter who fell for “Phantom” while growing up in South Carolina, expresses her love for the show with tattoos. Lucia Buricelli for The New York TimesPlenty of Phans have “Phantom” tattoos, but Alice Dyches has gotten specific with hers. Inked on her wrist are the first three notes of “Think of Me,” a beloved song in the show, and her midriff shows an address for the Majestic Theater: “245 W 44th.”Growing up in South Carolina, she fell in love with the music by watching the film; when she was six, she saw it for the first time on Broadway, on a trip with her grandparents.“The Phantom was Hugh Panaro, and he terrified me, and I kept wanting to go back,” she said.Now Dyches, 22, is a singer-songwriter, living in New York and working at a cat sanctuary on the Lower East Side. Throughout the pandemic, she worried about whether “Phantom” would survive, but once it reopened, she felt reassured.“I’m real sad — I thought I had more time to see it,” she said. “I’ve not lived a life without ‘Phantom’ being on Broadway, and there’s always been the notion that if I’m having a really crap day, I can go.”And, with that address inscribed on her abdomen, she is wryly watching what happens next.“I hope something good goes into the Majestic,” she said, “because otherwise I’m going to be screwed.”Phan ArtWallace PhillipsWallace Phillips, who said he had seen “Phantom” 140 times, creates artworks inspired by the show, and dreams of making an animated film of the musical.Lucia Buricelli for The New York TimesWallace Phillips didn’t even know what “The Phantom of the Opera” was when he dressed as the Phantom one Halloween. He was 10 years old, growing up in Silver Spring, Md.; he just thought the costume was cool.His mother gave him a cast recording and then, in 2010, brought him and his sister to see the show on Broadway.“It was eye-opening, and awe-inspiring,” he said. “I was enthralled.”Phillips is now 27, living in New York City, where he moved to study animation at the School of Visual Arts. He’s making his way as a freelance filmmaker, while working as an usher at “Hamilton.”How much does he love “Phantom”? At last count, he had seen it 140 times.Phillips expresses his Phandom through his artistry — he hopes one day to make an animated film of the musical, and meanwhile, he does concept art and drawings, some of which he signs and gives to cast members.“Despite all the times I’ve seen it, I’m always surprised, every time I’m there,” he said. “That overture! That chandelier rising! The theater transforming! It keeps me awed every time.”The NamesakeChristine SmithChristine Smith, of Bountiful, Utah, was named after Christine Daaé, a character in “Phantom.”Taylor SmithShe became a Phan.Chrisitne SmithIn elementary school in Kaysville, Utah, Christine Smith had to write a paper about where her name came from. When she asked her mom, she learned that she had been named for Christine Daaé, the young soprano at the heart of “The Phantom of the Opera.”“I wrote that I was named after some dumb opera singer,” Smith recalled.Her father, who worked graveyard shifts stocking shelves in grocery stores, listened to “Phantom” to pass the time. She didn’t understand the appeal until she saw the movie.“I know it sounds silly, but I just could tell, that was going to be my life,” she said. “I really learned to love my name.”She picked up a cast album at Walmart, started performing in school shows, and dreamed of playing Christine. Her family couldn’t afford to travel to New York, but they made it to a production in Las Vegas, which she eventually saw six times.Smith, 31, who now lives in Bountiful, Utah, finally got to see it on Broadway — twice — after the show’s closing was announced. In October, she and her husband arranged a flight layover in New York so they could see “Phantom,” and then, in January, she won a contest to see its 35th anniversary performance.“It made my ‘Phantom’ heart so happy,” she said.The GlobetrotterAlessandro BertolottiAlessandro Bertolotti, who lives south of Milan, has seen “Phantom” all over the world.Alessandro BertolottiHe has programs in many languages.Alessandro BertolottiAlessandro Bertolotti, who lives in Codogno, a small town south of Milan, has seen “Phantom” roughly 100 times: not just on Broadway and in London’s West End, but also in Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Spain and Sweden.“The most memorable evenings are those where you feel an energy in the public — something created by a fusion between the audience and the cast,” he said. “And then there are shows, like the one in Sweden, where I really enjoyed seeing a completely new staging of ‘Phantom.’”Musical theater did not initially interest Bertolotti, 67. Opera was his thing — both as a fan and a director. But two decades ago, while in the United States to work on a production of “Otello,” Bertolotti saw “Phantom” on the recommendation of a colleague.“It was a revelation,” he said. “I was fascinated by the music, by the sets, and this vortex of costumes and fast scene changes.”He is planning this summer to see a version in Trieste — the first in his native Italy — that will star the Iranian-Canadian “Phantom” veteran Ramin Karimloo.“Among all the musicals I’ve seen, ‘Phantom’ will always be the most fascinating and the most engaging,” he said. “It’s part of me now.”Phandom FROM AFARYixuan WuYixuan Wu, who grew up in Changsha, China, watching a DVD of “Phantom,” has seen it on Broadway 61 times since she moved to New York in 2021. Lucia Buricelli for The New York TimesYixuan Wu was just 11 when she stumbled across a “Phantom” DVD in a video store. She was about as far from Broadway as can be — in her hometown, Changsha, China — but the packaging caught her eye, so she rented it.She watched it over and over, and nurtured her Phandom online, streaming bootleg recordings from around the world.“I just feel like this story was calling to me,” she said.Flash forward to 2021. Wu had finished art school in China, and moved to New York to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She bought a ticket at the TKTS booth in Times Square, and finally saw “Phantom” from the right rear orchestra.“I was amazed and surprised by all the colors onstage,” she said. “You have to see it with your own eyes.”Wu, 25, has now seen the show 61 times, sometimes with a $29 standing room ticket, sometimes by winning a lottery, and once in a while by springing for a full-price seat. She collects merch (including teddy bears from the Japanese production), writes fan fiction and makes fan art (illustrations of cast members, many of which she gives to them).“Every time I go into the Majestic,” she said, “I feel like I’m home.”CosplayingPatrick ComptonPatrick Compton had not heard the term “cosplay” when he first showed up at “Phantom” in a costume.Greg MillsHe performed a scene from “Phantom” for a fundraiser at his church in Frankfort, Ky.Charlie BaglanThe first time Patrick Compton dressed as the Phantom was at a church event. His congregation in his hometown, Frankfort, Ky., was raising money with an evening of scenes from Broadway shows, and he decided to sing something from the musical.Compton, a duty officer at Kentucky’s Division of Emergency Management, had loved “Phantom” since his parents took him to see it in Louisville, and this was his moment.In the years since, Compton, 47, has taken voice lessons, recorded his own versions of “Phantom” songs, taken a weeklong workshop with “Phantom” alums and auditioned for a number of shows. He has seen “Phantom” 20 times in New York, and five times on tour.He had never heard the word “cosplay” when he started showing up to the show wearing a mask, cape, vest and fedora — he just thought it was fun. Now he’s done it several times.“To this day I have yet to figure out how a show like that can just emotionally affect you — from the very first note of the overture, you get goose bumps, and your hair stands on end,” he said. “You can’t help it. It’s addictive.”Elisabetta Povoledo More

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      ‘The Phantom of the Opera’: Thinking of a Spectacle Fondly

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      As the longest-running musical in Broadway history closes, Times critics with a lasting affection for the show take stock of its legacy.With “The Phantom of the Opera” set to play its final performance on Sunday — yes, it’s actually happening — Broadway’s longest-running show, a spectacle in residence at the Majestic Theater since 1988, still resonates with fans. The closing date was delayed by eight weeks after a surge in ticket sales.Joshua Barone, the assistant classical music and dance editor and a contributing classical music critic, was joined by the critics Alexis Soloski and Elisabeth Vincentelli in a discussion about the show’s legacy. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.ALEXIS SOLOSKI I first saw “Phantom” in Los Angeles, at the Ahmanson Theater, sometime in the late ’80s during its first North American tour. My friends and I were obsessed. We wore the T-shirts, we wore out the cassettes, we watched every Michael Crawford movie. (He also did the “Phantom” tour.) When you’re a preteen girl just on the cusp of sexuality and sexuality seems a little scary, the idea of being in thrall to some powerful man is awfully compelling. That this genius is also a murderer with some very strong incel vibes didn’t occur to me till a lot later. It remains a foundational text for me — as a critic, as a woman — but one I’m wildly ambivalent about. I love it. I love the big feelings. I can sing (badly) every tortured line. But it’s rape apology with a fog machine.ELISABETH VINCENTELLI The first and only time I saw the show was on Broadway in May 2011. I had not paid much attention to it before but loved it so much that I seriously questioned my entire life before that: Why had it taken me so long, considering that the show checks a lot of my taste boxes — bombast, over-the-top melodrama, histrionics? What’s especially surprising about my late discovery is that I had actually read the 1910 novel it’s based on, by the French pulp-fiction auteur Gaston Leroux.JOSHUA BARONE I didn’t see “Phantom” until a high school trip to New York in the mid-2000s. By then, I had read the Leroux novel, heard the cast albums and seen the 2004 Joel Schumacher film adaptation. Unfortunately, I fell asleep at the show; I was tired from a long day of sightseeing. The spectacle didn’t quite reach me at the rear mezzanine, and I was asleep by the end of “The Music of the Night.” But I’ve since gone several times — with, for better or worse, increasing affection for it.SOLOSKI That’s the thing, right? It’s in terrible taste — histrionics all the way down — but it works.The chandelier in “Phantom” is emblematic of the mega-musicals that emerged in the same period, our critic writes: the “Miss Saigon” helicopter, the “Les Miz” revolve, the absolute commitment to spectacle.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times BARONE It works, I’d say, better than most shows of terrible taste and histrionics from its time. There is, for all its historical specificity — those synths! — timelessness in its subject matter and score. It’s solidly middlebrow, and that’s a large part of its appeal. Your best bet, should you find yourself in the audience, is to just sit back and surrender to it.SOLOSKI But that’s what the Phantom wants, Josh! Fight it!VINCENTELLI I was headbanging in my seat when I saw it. I distinctly remember cackling at the insanity of it all. I love when art throws any regard for logic, taste, story to the window and goes for broke. I was also stunned by the way the score integrates rock and electronics in a way that still feels bracing. The rock energy is indisputable.SOLOSKI It does have an undeniable pull. When I hear that synthesizer launch into that descending scale, I still get literal chills.VINCENTELLI Roger Waters of Pink Floyd thought Lloyd Webber had stolen from the 1971 Pink Floyd song “Echoes” and then dissed him in “It’s a Miracle”: “We cower in our shelters with our hands over our ears/Lloyd-Webber’s awful stuff runs for years and years and years.” I live for feuds like this.SOLOSKI That’s where the music lives, right? In some unholy space between prog rock and grand opera.BARONE That’s one of the reasons we get chills. “Phantom” is often derided as a product of the big-hair, Neo-Gilded Age days of Cameron Mackintosh’s Broadway, but I think it’s just as much an artifact of 1980s postmodernism. You hear Puccini’s lush orchestration and lyricism — literally, in the case of “The Music of the Night” quoting “La Fanciulla del West” — but also rock-pop, 18th-century opera buffa and what is clearly stylized melodrama.SOLOSKI And some really dumb ballads. “Think of Me.” Ugh.VINCENTELLI Lloyd Webber had approached Tom Stoppard and Jim Steinman as potential collaborators for “Phantom.” That says a lot. (I still want to see that show!)BARONE And don’t forget that Alan Jay Lerner, before he died, was on as the lyricist! Imagine that show — perhaps one in which the ballads wouldn’t have been as banal (“Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again,” yikes) as they are as written by Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe.In the foreground, from left: the Broadway producer Cameron Mackintosh, Andrew Lloyd Webber and the director Hal Prince at the end of a 2006 performance.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSOLOSKI For me, the most perverse element is that Lloyd Webber began this show “because I was trying to write a major romantic story, and I had been trying to do that ever since I started my career. Then with the Phantom, it was there!” Let’s be clear: This. Is. Not. Romance. Even in the initial Times review, Frank Rich wrote that “Music of the Night” “proves as much a rape as a seduction.”BARONE One of the many dramaturgical question marks that hang over this show. But, strangely, that perversity is kind of what makes it an inheritor of the theatrical traditions it tries to emulate. And only because it is indebted to opera does it get away with as much as it does. Other composers — including him — have tried to copy the gothic romanticism of “Phantom,” but few have come close to his success. Opera is a medium that thrives in extremity, and Lloyd Webber follows that to a logical, undeniably entertaining degree. He found a cousin in “Sunset Boulevard,” in which he adopted a lavish Golden Age Hollywood sound in the score. But “The Woman in White”? The dead-on-arrival “Phantom” sequel “Love Never Dies”?VINCENTELLI Common wisdom has it that the show was trounced by critics when it opened, just like most mega-musicals are assumed to have been pilloried. But that’s not the case: Most of those shows have had at least mixed reviews, and most have earned tons of Tony Awards — regardless of what one thinks of the Tonys as critical arbiters, they do suggest a level of institutional and industry support. “Phantom” won seven Tonys, including best musical.SOLOSKI I think Rich was extremely fair-minded, acknowledging the deficits, and yet daring you not to enjoy it.BARONE Another favorite line from that review is, “If you don’t leave the theater humming the songs, you’ve got a hearing disability.”VINCENTELLI There was a really fascinating article in The Times in 1988 where people from the classical-music world weighed in on “Phantom.” William Bolcom, Frederica von Stade and Beverly Sills liked it a lot; Ned Rorem, not so much.BARONE Ned Rorem was witty as always, but I do think that to dismiss this music is to risk a kind of affected snobbery. It’s like saying Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky are too sentimental; in some ways that’s true, and you don’t see the same level of craft in their music as with some of their peers, but at the same time it has staying power simply because it continues to move audiences. SOLOSKI We’ve concentrated mostly on the music, but a lot of the power of “Phantom” is its visual splendor. I remember when we first saw it my mother sniffed that the Los Angeles audience applauded the set changes and chattered through the arias, but honestly, Maria Björnson’s sets and costumes are spectacular. Several of them were on display at the Museum of Broadway and the intricacy of the stitching and beading was glorious. I challenge anyone to watch “Masquerade” and not wallow in its excess.VINCENTELLI And at least they are genuinely exciting. I’ve seen people applaud massive, opulently appointed living-room sets at Manhattan Theater Club productions, and my reaction is “Oh, so we clap at Crate & Barrel showrooms now?” In his memoir, “Unmasked,” Lloyd Webber talks about how the sets actually are less grand than most people remember them. They are just very smartly designed.BARONE I was struck by this the last time I saw the show. The gilded proscenium masks — sorry to use that word — the fact that most of the scenic design is made from curtains. Draping black ones, ornately patterned ones with tassels, but curtains nevertheless.SOLOSKI Should we talk about the chandelier?BARONE Lot 666.SOLOSKI It falls … slowly, but it is definitive of the mega-musicals of this period, the “Miss Saigon” helicopter, the “Les Miz” revolve, the absolute commitment to spectacle. Spectacle gets a bad rap, but I wish more shows had the commitments and the budgets to deliver extravaganzas like these.Top 200 Broadway Shows by All-Time Sales More

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      ‘Bad Cinderella’ Review: The Title Warned Us

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      Andrew Lloyd Webber hopes to extend an unbroken 43-year streak on Broadway. But his 13th new musical may not be the charm.First: Bring earplugs.Not just because the songs in “Bad Cinderella,” the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that opened on Thursday at the Imperial Theater, are so crushingly loud. The dialogue, too, would benefit from inaudibility.For that matter, bring eye plugs: The sets and costumes are as loud as the songs. If there were such a thing as soul plugs, I’d recommend them as well.That’s because “Bad Cinderella” is not the clever, high-spirited revamp you might have expected, casting contemporary fairy dust on the classic story of love and slippers. It has none of the grit of the Grimm tale, the sweetness of the Disney movie or the grace (let alone the melodic delight) of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Instead, it’s surprisingly vulgar, sexed-up and dumbed-down: a parade of hustling women in bustiers and shirtless pec-rippling hunks.Finally, a Cinderella for streetwalkers and gym rats!That this is the supposedly improved version of the musical that opened in London in August 2021 beggars the imagination. Then simply called “Cinderella,” and welcomed with indulgent warmth by critics who were perhaps rusty after more than a year of lockdown, it has here acquired the adjective “Bad,” as if to dare headline writers with an easy mark. A more accurate adjective might have been “Unnecessary” — except perhaps for Lloyd Webber himself, whose unbroken 43-year streak of shows on Broadway, beginning with “Evita” in 1979, would otherwise end with the closing of “The Phantom of the Opera” in April.Yet if there was no good reason for “Bad Cinderella,” that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been good. Quite a few recent and incoming musicals — “& Juliet,” “Once Upon a One More Time” and “Six” among them — have more or less reasonably applied a feminist spin to pre-feminist tales and history.Grace McLean as the Queen with a bevy of shirtless pec-rippling hunks.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Bad Cinderella” seems as if it could have been in the same league. Emerald Fennell (original story and book) and Alexis Scheer (book adaptation) have rejiggered the traditional plot to give Cinderella (Linedy Genao) a better motive for marrying Prince Sebastian (Jordan Dobson) than mere infatuation; he’s already her friend instead of a stranger she meets at a ball. Her transformation from a “gutter rose” and a “rebel” to a silver-leafed stunner, with the help of a godmother (Christina Acosta Robinson) who’s more of a mad aesthetician than a fairy, is not for him, we are told, but herself.Despite that, and a series of effortful numbers Genao sings bravely, her story, which is almost entirely internal, recedes. Sebastian’s is more interesting. An unassuming, enlightened type, he has been dragooned into choosing a bride only because his brawnier and better-loved brother, Prince Charming, is presumed dead after disappearing at war. With both his mother (Grace McLean) and Cinderella’s stepmother (Carolee Carmello) devising other plans for him — the dreaded stepsisters, here hideous Valley Girls — Sebastian’s problem isn’t figuring out whom to marry (he wants Cinderella) but how.Those changes are hardly groundbreaking, especially coming from Fennell, who won an Oscar for writing the feminist revenge thriller “Promising Young Woman,” and Scheer, whose play “Our Dear Dead Drug Lord” took a cudgel to stereotypes of innocent girlhood. Still, they ought to have been sufficient to make “Bad Cinderella” at least a winky hoot.One reason it isn’t is the unrelievedly pompous direction by Laurence Connor. Aside from those strident sets and costumes (by Gabriela Tylesova) and that aggressive sound (by Gareth Owen), there is a fundamental mismatch between the flippant fairy tale tone of the book, which wants the lightest possible treatment, and the exhaustingly one-note insistence of the staging. (The choreography is by JoAnn M. Hunter.) As in his work on the Broadway revivals of “Les Misèrables” in 2014 and “Miss Saigon” in 2017, Connor seems to favor busy, murky, late-Reagan-era oversell, not necessarily inappropriate to those late-Reagan-era shows but lacking the delicacy necessary for much that came after.Carolee Carmello, center, as Cinderella’s stepmother, with the dreaded stepsisters, played by Morgan Higgins, far left, and Sami Gayle. Genao is at right.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlso lacking delicacy: the songs, with workmanlike lyrics by David Zippel, and music by Lloyd Webber that often sounds like it escaped from “Phantom.” The prettiest, if most bombastic, is “Only You, Lonely You” for Sebastian, which has the engine-in-overdrive feeling of “The Music of the Night,” complete with triple-crème melody and sludgy orchestrations (also by Lloyd Webber).But “Phantom” was a show about obsession, so its richness and hysteria made sense. If anything, “Bad Cinderella” is about plotting how to “marry for love” (the title of a song in the second act) and thus requires a much lighter touch. In only one number, “I Know You,” which McLean and especially Carmello turn into the show’s comic highlight, do Lloyd Webber and Zippel hit the mark.Whether the mark is worth hitting is another matter; a comic duet that pits aging, carping viragos against each other in the manner of “Bosom Buddies” from “Mame” is not perhaps a feminist anthem. At least there are jokes to land: “I must admit I never quite forget a face/Though every feature’s in a slightly different place.” But mostly when aiming for drollery, the songwriters overshoot and wind up at operetta.Well, “Phantom” was at bottom an operetta too, yet even in an obsolete genre has run on Broadway for 35 years. If “Bad Cinderella” does not seem likely to match that success, its virtues, however invisible to me, may yet be measurable by other means.Keep in mind that Lloyd Webber’s 12 previous Broadway musicals, starting with “Jesus Christ Superstar” in 1971, have run up a total of 30,000 performances, nearly 75 years’ worth. (And he has just turned 75 himself.) What the shows have grossed in New York City — $1.4 billion for “Phantom” alone — could finance a moon mission, or pay off thousands of mortgages for employees and send their children to college.Lloyd Webber, not only British but a Lord, has been, in that sense, America’s most successful theater composer. We can argue that “Evita” wasn’t good for the culture — and “Cats” not good for anything — but somehow, he and Broadway made a match that’s lasted like no other. Even without the blessing of critics, and just like “Bad Cinderella,” it’s an implausible story about a real marriage of love.Bad CinderellaAt Imperial Theater, Manhattan; badcinderellabroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes. More