Quotable Quotes: Lloyd Webber Returns to B'way with The Woman in White
WHERE: Press room at Tavern on the Green
WHEN: Thursday, November 17, 2005
"I think that Andrew is becoming increasingly courageous… And [he's] moving away from populism and toward musical expression that is increasingly demanding. It's hugely demanding on the orchestra, hugely demanding on the performers. It's not at all the territory of the simple, regular dance routine. It's much, much more the crossover into the operatic territory while remaining completely accessible. I'm full of praise for him moving in that direction. It's the music theater that I believe in." —Director Trevor Nunn on regular collaborator Andrew Lloyd Webber
"I think, for him, it's a drawing together of everything he's done over the last 20 years. If you wanted to categorize it, musically, it's the closest to Phantom. But it's arguably more sophisticated in terms of its structure, construction, it's through-song, and you know, Andrew is an innovator. He's a composer who does not allow himself to be put into a box. He just keeps evolving." —Producer Sonia Friedman
"Funny enough, I didn't know the book. I remembered it from school days. Vaguely. Three years ago, I was casting around to find something to write, and somebody said to me, 'Have you ever thought about The Woman in White?' and it sort of triggered something up there." —Andrew Lloyd Webber, composer extraordinaire
"It's a very well-respected novel in England. More people think they've read it than actually have read it, to be honest." —Sonia Friedman
"It's a great yarn, which is why the best Dickens books still exist, Jane Austen…the great literature is great literature. If you've got a great story, with good characters, that keeps an audience guessing, then it's always going to survive. There's a nostalgic element I think." —Michael Ball, who plays the dastardly Count Fosco
"I think this particular story's strength is in the transfer of the narration. It's infinitely more terrifying than, say, some kind of horror story, because the mystery surrounding this story is something that could happen to any of us, because it's about a doctor, and lawyers, and people who trick you." —Angela Christian, who plays the mysterious Anne Catherick, the woman in white
"So much of Broadway now is sort of dancing and glitz and glam, and ours has more a story-and a mystery-that you've got to listen to. So it is asking a lot of an audience, because they're just not used to it right now. But hopefully this'll bring about a change. Everything goes through phases, and maybe we're heading back to the more serious shows…" —Jill Paice, who plays Laura Fairlie
"It's very, very technical, so if you come through the wrong door, you're walking through a wall, or you're crashing through a tree. So, for somebody like me, who loves to actually be instinctive and feel everything, it was actually quite a thing to actually have to go, 'Ooo! Right: left door, open, shut, move three steps to the right to avoid coming out the horse's bottom.' But once you do it five thousand times, it actually gets into your body." —Maria Friedman, on navigating the video-projections-as-sets design of the show
"I normally get to be the romantic hero, until a show like this, I get to play the fat, evil bastard who only gets the rat at the end. And it's the best part! I love it!" —Michael Ball
"I believe in music theater being able to present real people in real situations with real feelings and real thought. That's what I care most about." —Director Trevor Nunn
Interviews by Paul Wontorek
Compiled by Lyssa Mandel