Are we living through an Andrew Lloyd Webber renaissance?

By Scottie Andrew, CNN

(CNN) — Andrew Lloyd Webber is American theater’s favorite punching bag.

It’s easy to hate on the enormously rich British lord whose musicals, despite their commercial success, are frequently considered among the emptiest and most confounding shows in the canon. He’s written musicals about Jesus Christ, Cinderella and anthropomorphic trains, and they’ve all attracted some degree of critical hostility.

So when did Lloyd Webber get cool?

A string of new, drastically different revivals of Lloyd Webber’s most famous shows are dragging his work into the present — and inspiring his many detractors to reappraise the divisive composer.

On the West End, Rachel Zegler is leading a younger, sexier “Evita” whose Broadway transfer seems inevitable. A recent revival of “Cats” set in the downtown ballroom scene is rumored to return to New York soon. “Sunset Boulevard” just completed its celebrated run that won its Pussycat Doll leading lady a Tony. And earlier this month, Cynthia Erivo assumed the title role in a one-night-only performance of “Jesus Christ Superstar” that was lauded by the composer himself.

And the Phantom of the Opera is already haunting New York City again in “Masquerade,” an immersive new take on “Phantom,” formerly the longest-running Broadway show before its 2023 closure.

The recent revivals have succeeded artistically because they’re “fairly radical reimaginings from the original text,” said Amanda Eubanks Winkler, a professor and musicologist who leads Rutgers University’s department of music.

“It’s taking, weirdly, this avant-garde theatrical toolkit and applying it to the most mainstream popular theater,” said Eubanks Winkler, who’s also writing a book on Lloyd Webber’s work.

These revivals are challenging expectations of what depth a work from Andrew Lloyd Webber can achieve — even a piece about dancing cats — though, for the most part, the score and text remain unchanged. Maybe the striking profundity these new interpretations have uncovered has been there all along, suggested John Snelson, an associate lecturer in musical theater at Goldsmiths, University of London, who wrote a book on Lloyd Webber.

“What has changed is an understanding, or shall we say an appreciation, of the type of musical theater that Andrew Lloyd Webber has put together,” he said.

New productions trade spectacle for song

Tastemakers and theater snobs have long turned up their noses up at Lloyd Webber’s “megamusicals,” once a pejorative term for the composer’s massive productions and their lavish setpieces, operatic scores and a general disconnect from reality. Even in mostly positive reviews, critics reduced his work to “mindless fun” without an “idea in its head.”

With a Lloyd Webber musical, Snelson said, “what you get is sensory overload. It’s a big show that just throws the kitchen sink at it, and sometimes, your senses are left almost not able to take it all in.”

These new interpretations trim the excess, leaving only the scores intact. There was no grand staircase for Norma Desmond to descend in the new “Sunset Boulevard,” nor was there feline face paint to be found at “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.” The sparse staging of those productions is a far cry from the original “Phantom,” which famously opened with a massive chandelier swinging over its audience set to a pipe organ.

When the score is strong and its stars can successfully scale it, new Lloyd Webber revivals can soar. In “Evita,” Zegler delivers “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” from an actual outdoor balcony to a crowd of adoring, real-life Zegler fans. Nicole Scherzinger earned a nightly standing ovation by belting “As If We Never Said Goodbye” on an empty stage to an invisible Cecil B. DeMille.

“This music is eternal,” said Zhailon Levingston, who co-directed the acclaimed revival of “Cats” last year. “It can live through reimaginings, reinvention, new audiences, this new sociopolitical moment we’re in.”

The reinventions have even won over skeptical fans of Lloyd Webber’s originals. When Kathryn Yelinek, an author, librarian and devoted “phan” of the original “Phantom,” visited his new off-Broadway lair in “Masquerade,” she “wasn’t entirely convinced” it would work: “I just hope that this new production doesn’t ruin it in some way,” she remembered thinking.

It took two performances to sell her. Without spoiling too much about this very secretive show, which began previews last week, Yelinek interacted with a character she’s loved for decades in a way that would’ve been impossible in the original production.

“It had to have been one of the meaningful experiences in a theater that I have had,” she said. “It just blew me away.”

Have Lloyd Webber’s musicals always been this deep?

These new productions dare to ask a question, posed by Levingston, that would see some of Lloyd Webber’s harshest critics sooner ascend to the Heaviside Layer than dare to answer it: “What does an Andrew Lloyd Webber score have to say about who we are right now?”

Beneath the bombast, political and social themes are “very much built into Lloyd Webber shows,” Snelson said.

The new “Cats” cast was entirely composed of queer and trans people of color and ballroom legends whose unflappable joy and resilience felt especially poignant in a less literal interpretation of the material, Eubanks Winkler said.

“The material is speaking to the times today differently,” Levingston said.

And “Evita” was already about a quasi-fascist first lady so charming she’s able to win people over even as she’s squashing them. The timing of this “Evita,” which is “commenting on celebrity culture, the cult of personality and how that’s used to promote authoritarian leaders,” makes it upsettingly relevant, Eubanks Winkler said.

“I’ve never thought of him as a less intellectual composer,” Yelinek said. “I’ve certainly heard other people say that. I’ve heard the critics say it.”

Many of Lloyd Webber’s detractors believe his musicals have about the same depth as a scrape. That supposed vacancy may attract directors, Eubanks Winkler said, who see holes in plot or character development as opportunities to show off their style or mine for new relevance.

“There’s an openness to them that allows for his own creative interventions,” she said.

Perhaps that’s what motivated British director Jamie Lloyd, who helmed the new “Sunset Boulevard” and “Evita.” He’s dusted off the musicals for the 21st century by leaning heavily on giant screens and meta celebrity casting: Scherzinger may have been an unlikely choice to play has-been Desmond, but after years spent judging fellow B- and C-listers on “The Masked Singer,” her casting felt inspired. And Zegler, at only 24, has already starred in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” remake, a “Hunger Games” prequel and a Disney tentpole. Like the scheming Eva Perón, she’s accomplished a headspinning amount in her short life, becoming an idol in the process.

“There’s this interesting slippage between the character and the person playing the role,” Eubanks Winkler said.

Have we underestimated him all along?

Even without the favor of critics, Lloyd Webber is one of the most successful composers of his era. “Sunset,” “Phantom,” “Evita” and “Cats” have all won the Tony for best musical. “Phantom” and “Cats” have both held the title for the longest-running show on Broadway, and they’re both among the highest-grossing musicals of all time.

But when “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” opened last year, Lloyd Webber needed the stateside win. His last new musical, “Bad Cinderella,” closed less than three months after it opened, marking the first time in 44 years that his name was missing from a Broadway marquee. The 2019 film adaptation of “Cats,” despite its Taylor Swift cameo, was widely considered a crime against humanity and feline-kind. His stock, critically and commercially, was low.

With the critical and commercial success of “Sunset Boulevard,” there’s a clear appetite for remixed Lloyd Webber onstage. Now there are murmurs that “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” which earned raves last year, could return to New York. And “Masquerade’s” initial run is limited, but hardcore phans have already bought up almost all the tickets for its first two months.

It only took a few revivals for the Lloyd Webber holdouts to be convinced that maybe there’s something to his success.

“There’s this perception that ‘Cats’ is crappy, schlocky, commercial — or ‘Sunset,’ or ‘Phantom,’ or ‘Evita,’ maybe,” Eubanks Winkler said. “But then this director comes along and proves us wrong. Is it Jamie Lloyd’s fabulosity? Is it Lloyd Webber’s fabulosity? Is there a special alchemy that makes it transcend these notions of being schlocky?”

Maybe “Cats” resonates more deeply when its stars feel like humans (“And who doesn’t want a second chance at life?” Yelinek wondered). Maybe “Evita” makes more sense now that authoritarianism is not so much creeping as it is flooding everyday life.

But the powerful music was always there, and so was something of a soul.

“He wears several hearts on his sleeve,” Snelson said of Lloyd Webber. “It does produce quirks, and it does produce oddities, and it does produce some unfortunate things. But hey, when it works, it really does have that extra integrated something.”

And for that, his critics must give the composer some credit.

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