Were Critics Thrilled by The Woman in White?
by Broadway Staff • Sep 16, 2004
Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White immediately became the talk of the town when it opened on September 15. The new musical, which is playing at the West End's Palace Theatre, stars Michael Crawford and Maria Friedman and is directed by Trevor Nunn. It is an adaptation of the Victorian spine-tingler by Wilkie Collins and features music by Lloyd Webber, lyrics by David Zippel and a book by Charlotte Jones. Were London critics thrilled by the production?
Here's a sampling of what they had to say:
Michael Billington of The Guardian: "'You can get away with anything,' sings Michael Crawford's Count Fosco in The Woman in White. But, although musicals get away with murder, not even Andrew Lloyd Webber's best score in years and Trevor Nunn's visually vibrant production can disguise the fact that this show is saddled with an impossible book… You can't expect a musical to reproduce the novel's innovative narrative technique in which the story is told from multiple perspectives. But what you can expect is a musical to respect its source."
Paul Taylor of The Independent: "Lloyd Webber's score is at its best when most in the spirit of the story's weird Gothic overtones. At Laura's wedding to the caddish Sir Perceval insipid Oliver Darley, there's a creepily atonal setting of 'The Holly and the Ivy' while images of the church reel round. But we're a long way here from the brilliance of Sondheim's Victorian musical Sweeney Todd. Too many of the songs emit the generic pop-opera sound of Lloyd Webber-land. And for all Crawford's efforts to frisk up Fosco, the lyrics don't have enough comic lift, the cod-Italianate 'You Can Get Away With Anything' being the nearest to something truly funny. That said, Lloyd Webber seems more in his element here than in his last two comparative failures. I suspect The Woman In White will be haunting the West End for some time to come."
Here's a sampling of what they had to say:
Michael Billington of The Guardian: "'You can get away with anything,' sings Michael Crawford's Count Fosco in The Woman in White. But, although musicals get away with murder, not even Andrew Lloyd Webber's best score in years and Trevor Nunn's visually vibrant production can disguise the fact that this show is saddled with an impossible book… You can't expect a musical to reproduce the novel's innovative narrative technique in which the story is told from multiple perspectives. But what you can expect is a musical to respect its source."
Paul Taylor of The Independent: "Lloyd Webber's score is at its best when most in the spirit of the story's weird Gothic overtones. At Laura's wedding to the caddish Sir Perceval insipid Oliver Darley, there's a creepily atonal setting of 'The Holly and the Ivy' while images of the church reel round. But we're a long way here from the brilliance of Sondheim's Victorian musical Sweeney Todd. Too many of the songs emit the generic pop-opera sound of Lloyd Webber-land. And for all Crawford's efforts to frisk up Fosco, the lyrics don't have enough comic lift, the cod-Italianate 'You Can Get Away With Anything' being the nearest to something truly funny. That said, Lloyd Webber seems more in his element here than in his last two comparative failures. I suspect The Woman In White will be haunting the West End for some time to come."