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For Lloyd Webber, Pittsburgh will be a test
Thursday, February 01, 2001 By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Editor
Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber breezed into town Tuesday night to check up on one small franchise in the theater empire that recently saw him and his Really Useful Group enthroned as the No. 1 power in British theater, according to the industry paper, The Stage.
Lloyd Webber's current Pittsburgh interest is "By Jeeves," a musical farce that opens for previews tonight at the Pittsburgh Public Theater. Joining the composer at a press conference yesterday afternoon at the O'Reilly Theater were the librettist, lyricist and director, Sir Alan Ayckbourn, the most prolific major playwright in the English-speaking world; Michael Price of Connecticut's Goodspeed Opera House, which first produced "By Jeeves" in America; and Public artistic director Ted Pappas, who secured it for his first season here.
Based on the Bertie Wooster and Jeeves stories of humorist P.G. Wodehouse, the first version of the show was a failure in 1975, "when we were far too young to know better," Ayckbourn said. Largely rewritten ("only three or four of the songs survived," Lloyd Webber said), in 1996 it played to positive response in England and three cities in the United States. But it didn't go to New York, so this revival is partly motivated by hopes that it will make the transfer.
"After 25 years, I think we've got it right, though the press can contradict us if it will," Ayckbourn said. When asked if it would go to New York, Lloyd Webber said, "We'll have to see how it goes here."
"By Jeeves" needs a small theater. There are fewer Broadway theaters than projected shows this spring, but Price was hopeful. If it goes to New York, he said, "it will go under the auspices of Goodspeed and the Pittsburgh Public -- I think it would be wonderful to have the Public represented on Broadway." Price called Pappas and Public managing director Stephen Klein "the most professional producers I've worked with for years in regional theater."
Noting that he has directed "By Jeeves" a half-dozen times and normally does a show only twice, Ayckbourn said it was because "it's such a joy to do. This is less of a production and more a great party."
"If I told you the whole story, it would take longer than the play," Ayckbourn joked. "It's very complicated -- a farce of mistaken identity and love and confusion ... [which] I wrote for no other reason than to make you laugh and come out feeling better than when you came in."
Lloyd Webber saw a run-through Tuesday and was working with the cast yesterday before watching a benefit performance last night. "It looks very good in this theater," he said. Though he is famous for gargantuan musical epics, he noted that "all my shows have started in a small space."
He cited his long association with Pittsburgh, starting with the first live performance anywhere of "Jesus Christ Superstar" at the Civic Arena on July 12, 1971. "I remember it was received in a sort of reverential silence until King Herod's song." He returned in 1996 to receive the Richard Rodgers Award given by the Pittsburgh CLO.
Thursday, February 01, 2001
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