Customer Reviews

The Beautiful Game (2000 Original London Cast)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I saw this show in London a few years back. At the time I wasn't as big a theater fan as I am now (in fact, living in London's West End is what really got me into theater in the first place), yet The Beautiful Game manages to be the first & only Andrew Lloyd Webber show I've ever seen. His other shows don't really appeal to me, so I'm by no means a fan of his. I am, however, very familiar with his other scores.

I was drawn to this show b/c of the offbeat subject matter: football (soccer), the IRA, etc. It's certainly not your typical musical. It's basically a coming of age tale centered around a local football team, all set amongst the political/religious turmoil of Northern Ireland during the 1970s. The teenagers are forced to live their lives against a backdrop of violence & rivalry. Some of the characters get involved in the conflict, others stand aside, wanting to get on with their lives in peace, etc. The show was a lot of fun, though at times quite dark & violent.

It's also very inconsistent. For the book & lyrics, Lloyd Webber teamed up with noted English humorist Ben Elton, his first foray into musical theater (Elton went on to write We Will Rock You). The songs teter from corny & campy to deeply morose & melancholy. Some are quite memorable, while others are laughable. Think of it as a guilty pleasure.

That said, some of the more silly songs include "Don't Like You" & "The First Time." The former is a rather juvenile song of flirtation with silly, simplistic lyrics ("Don't like you / Don't like you / I don't think I like you"... which segueways to, naturally, "I like you / I like you / I really like you."). The latter is sung on the two leads' honeymoon... Yes, it's about having sex for the first time ("Hope there's lead in my pencil when / I lose my cherry this very first time, / 'Cos my God I don't half fancy her."). With the help of Ben Elton, it seems that Mr. Lloyd Webber has come a long way from singing & dancing cats.

I do love the title track-- the love song to football with a strangely irresistible melody. It'll have you cheering.

But it's the ballads that fare better. Songs like "Let Us Love In Peace," "God's Own Country," & the heartbreaking "Our Kind Of Love" stand out as the best of the bunch. "Our Kind Of Love" (actually sung by a supporting character) is an absolute show-stopper & one of the best musical theater ballads in recent memory. It gives me chills each & every time I hear it.

The rest of the songs are just okay. They're rather bland & don't come close to the aforementioned tracks.

So all in all, this was a fun show. Like I said, a bit campy (half naked guys in football kits; shaggy 70's hair & gaudy costumes), but tremendously emotional. It got mixed reviews in London & never took off. It's nothing like Lloyd Webber's other shows, but I guess audiences couldn't help but compare it to his previous achievements. I'm glad Decca released the CD in the States, though. While the show would have definitely flopped here (too dark for Broadway tourists; also too Irish/European), the music deserves to be heard.

Lloyd Webber fans should definitely give it a shot. As should fans of offbeat musicals, like myself. There was a lot of ambition in this show, & it comes through with this CD. The booklet doesn't include a synopsis, but it does have all the [priceless] lyrics.

The CD is a recording of the songs in the play The Beautiful Game. It follows a Catholic boys soccor team in 1969 Ireland. The story has wonderful songs with lots of excitement surrounding a winning season of soccor and the turmoil of the day. The lyrics on the company songs are a bit hard to understand and the dialect is sometimes different, but the CD is wonderful! The album jacket can help with the storyline and it is well worth the effort. I highly recommend this CD,

I saw this show in London firsthand. The music amazed me with its beautiful sound and message. I thought the show could run for years, but unfortunately, it closed rather quickly. However, the music is still available and I encourage one to purchase this wonderful soundtrack, you will NOT regret it.

I can only guess that Lloyd Webber is trying to write the world's worst musical. He has taken good ideas and turned them into bad musicals - SUNSET BLVD being a prime example - and taken terrible ideas and turned them into bad musicals: STARLIGHT EXPRESS anyone?

What possessed him to collaborate with Ben Elton to write the word's first football musical, set in Belfast, 1969? If the intention was to make the rivalry on the playing field a metaphor for the on-going tensions between the Catholics and the Protestants, they miss the point. The football doesn't really figure in the plot. Instead we have a convoluted story, which doesn't cover much ground in Act One then tries frantically to cram all the action into Act Two.

Then there's the score. It is no secret to anyone who has read my reviews that Lloyd Webber is NOT my favourite composer, but usually ha can come up with one or two good tunes: Even the awful SUNSET BLVD has "With One Look" and "As If We Never Said Goodbye" which outside of the context are decent diva arias. There are no such bonbons in the score for THE BEAUTIFUL GAME. The orchestrations allow a proper Irish feel, but there are NO TUNES in this piece.

There are lyrics by Ben Elton. (Who told this man he was qualified to write lyrics? Oh yes, Andrew Lloyd Webber - as if he would know a good lyric!!) Most of the lyrics are empty, but some are downright stupid. The booklet has the lyrics - not that you'll want to read them - but lacks any information about the show, including a synopsis.

It is quite possible that a winning cast and some solid production values may have overcome the weaknesses in the writing but judging from the reviews and the short run attained by THE BEAUTIFUL GAME that doesn't appear to be the case.

People - it's time to stop supporting shows just because Andrew Lloyd Webber plasters his name on the. Listen to his shows critically - ask yourself: is the story being told through the songs? Are the characters being developed through the songs? THAT is what good musical theatre writing is all about.

Even Andrew Lloyd Webber's lesser shows have an occasional song that is sweetly beautiful (even the rather dull Aspects of Love and the disjointed Whistle Down the Wind) but Beautiful Game seems to be lacking in even one song to grab on to. The lyrics by Ben Elton are pedestrian at best and far too repetitious (perhaps he was spurned on by the music). The performers themselves seem to be quite able, if not particularly distinctive. It does not seem the work of someone who has spent over three decades in the theatre. Lloyd Webber seems completely out of his territory with this material and only very briefly in the song If This is What We're Fighting For does the correct note of passion creep in but by then it is far too little and far too late as the listener's attention will have drifted by then. One can admire the composer's attempt to try new things but this should have been stopped before it reached this stage.

Sure this isn't the usual broadway musical. After all, it is actually done with Irish accents, which makes some of the music hard to understand, but it is still Beautiful music from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton. Most of the music on this album is great, however, "Let us Love in Peace," "Our Kind of Love" and the Overture stand out as new Webber classics. a MUST OWN FOR ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER FANS!!!!!!!!

Okay, so you either like him or hate him. But one thing for sure after listening to this recording. He is losing his touch with the very kind of music that made him popular. Andrew Lloyd Webber, well, let's face it, his music ain't that complicated. To me, he is a simple, yet catchy and memorable song writer. And yet it seems, everytime he tries to make a piece complicated, it becomes all disorganized. That is the case with this whole show. The performers are good, not great, on this CD and the plot for this show is unique and interesting. The music suffers and the lyrics, while amusing at times, don't stand out. The one song that I immediately liked was "Our Kind Of Love". "God's Own Country" is a likeable ballad as well. But somehow it is hard to believe that a guy who wrote the music to Evita and even Phantom of the Opera wrote this. There are some little musical phrases that are pure Webber, but they are far and few between. The only reason I can think of to get this CD is to hear his latest work. That's why I did.

I haven't actually seen this show so I can't comment on anything but this recording and my reactions from a few listens.

While this show, a dark parable of the Catholic-Protestant contentions in Ireland, has been touted as Andrew Lloyd Webber's "intimate" musical, the music is very little more than his usual tunes: derivative, repetitive, and often dull. There are a few great songs to be sure; there always are. The title track is catchy and triumphantly soaring, "I'd Rather Die On My Feet" has a great rock beat with an awesome Irish twist, "Dead Zone" is chilling, and "The First Time" is pretty (albeit pretty crass). The best song in the entire show, however, is "God's Own Country", and Andrew Lloyd Webber knows it (he not only reprises it once, but twice). It's a very beautiful tune and shows Lloyd Webber's talent for simple and pretty ballads.

Ben Elton's lyrics, overpraised for its "freshness" and "comedic value", fall flat. At best, they are serviceable. He never rises to the level of any of the previous lyricists for ALW shows, not even Richard Stilgoe (who penned such lines in "Starlight Express" as "Freight is great/We carry weight 'cos we are freight"). An example typical of Elton's lyrics could be this little selection from "Off To the Party": "We're just totally great/There's no debate/I'm telling you, mate". And on and on it goes.

The sound quality on the CD is all right. For some of the more rock-influenced songs, especially the title track, the words are completely lost and make the cast sound like a raucous bunch of drunkards singing the latest tavern ditty. I don't know whether or not this was the intention; if so, I'm afraid it just doesn't work.

All-in-all an average Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Not being a huge fan of the composer myself, I may be a bit biased, but I have to say that even "Cats" has a few more memorable musical moments than this CD. And that's saying a lot.

The Beautiful Game will certainly not count among Andrew Lloyd Webber's best contributions to the musical theatre and this recording doesn't improve that fact. There are several things that didn't come to place here. But first, something must be said about the development and the history of this show.

"Whistle down the wind", was ALW previous musical and it returned him to his rock and roll roots of Jesus Christ Superstar. It was never much accepted by the critics and it never made it to Broadway, although it ran for 4 years in London and the audiences liked it. Therefore, the composer chose to do something different for his next project. It happened before: in 1981 with "Cats" and in 1989 with "Aspects of love". He admitted he felt he was repeating himself and therefore decided to do something unusual for his reputation of a creator of blockbuster and flashy musicals. That's why he chose Ben Elton as his next collaborator and lyricist. It was an uncommon partnership: Elton had a reputation of a comedian and a play writer very close to the English political Left; that is the Labour Party, while Lloyd Webber had a knighthood and was commonly associated with the Tories. The important thing was that Elton conceived a completely new story to be put on stage. It was a new direction for ALW, since the rest of his musicals are based on the lives of the historical characters (Jesus, Eva Peron); movies (Sunset Blvd) or books (Cats, The Phantom of the opera or, more recently The Woman in White). The story of The Beautiful game is actually genuine enough. It is set in the Northern Ireland of the late 1960-is and 70-is and we follow a group of young teenagers who are connected by the local football club as they try to overcome the religious divisions, violence and hatred, together with the challenge of becoming adults. More specifically, the main characters, John and Mary, fall in love, but because of the problems mentioned above, their love story hasn't got a happy ending.

This was much different from the shows we were accustomed to have from ALW. There were no big spectacles and lush stage sets; no star name in the cast; no apotheosis of a character (such as Grizabella in "Cats" or Eva Peron in "Evita"). It was all too simple and common to be made by him, and that's probably why the show lasted only a year in London's West End: from September 2000 to September 2001.

This cast recording suffers from a few other problems. First, when you listen to it all the way through, you cannot form a clear story in your head. All you get is bits and pieces: Ireland; football, catholic-protestant antagonism, several boys and girls falling in love and an unhappy ending for the main couple. Without a good synopsis, which is, by the way, nowhere to be found in the booklet, you can't figure out what exactly is going on. Thus it seems that a lot of the dialogue, essential to understand the story, was cut from this recording. The booklet does contain the lyrics and production photos, however, there is no information about what is going on the stage, so in the end it's hard to follow or imagine what exactly is going on.

Then there is the problem with the orchestrations. Lloyd Webber turned to the minimalism unlike any of his other shows. The orchestra has only 9 instruments and it all sounds like they are using a synthesizer and the pipes to create an Irish atmosphere. That is why this recording sounds like an amateur school production rather than the theatre piece. I'm sure that the better orchestrations with a bigger orchestra would work much better. There is an example of "The Aspects of love". That too had a smaller orchestra, but it still sounded very much like one, and the melodies were nicely done as a smaller, intimate chamber piece. Here, that is not the case.

Besides this drawback, the musical numbers also suffer from the lack of big songs that would sweep you away and stay in your head. At times, there pops out a song you can grow to like with the repeated listening (like, "God's own country", "Clean the kit", "Don't like you"), but it's way below ALW's standard. The song I consider the best of the lot is "Our kind of love", a nice ballad with a catching tune. However, it's not a new piece of music. That melody was first presented at ALW's 50th birthday celebration at London's Royal Albert Hall in 1998, which can be found here on DVD. It had a different title ("The heart is slow to learn"), and a much better and fuller operettic orchestration, and the lyrics were written by Don Black. The song itself was on that occasion beautifully sung by the famous New Zealand's soprano, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. On this recording, the lyrics are different and they used pipes to play the melody, which is not so good. But, on the whole, this is the best song.

The cast here is comprised of young and unknown individuals. No real complaint abot them, since they have fine voices and did their best with this material. Josie Walker, who plays Mary, is especially good. The lyrics are nothing special, and they can sound awkward at times. Some of the riming is very unusual, to say the least!

So my overall opinion is that this is not Lloyd Webber's most satisfying work, but it also isn't the rock bottom. We should view it as the composer's attempt to do something different than the big, mega-musicals he is best known for. Luckily, in the last year he presented his newest piece, "The Woman in white", which seemed to get him back on the track. I would therefore, recommend this to ALW's aficionados that are eager to have the complete collection of his work. Those of you, however, who are just getting acquainted with his music, skip this and buy one of his compilations and then start with his different shows, like "Superstar", "Evita", "Sunset Blvd" with Patti LuPone playing the lead or "The Phantom of the opera". Only when you get a certain insight into Lloyd Webber's music, you might consider getting this.