Lawrence of Arabia--the new Broadway musical

The opening line of one of Joe Queenan's culture commentaries is, “CATS is very, very, very, very, very bad.” And he's being generous. I saw Les Miserables in London and it was very, very miserable. I know better than to see Phantom of the Opera, Aspects of Love, Stardust Express and CATS no matter how much money they make for Andrew Paine Webber, I mean Andrew Lloyd Webber, I was thinking of his bank account. Phantom has done $5.6 billion, with a B. I can't object to Sir Andrew's golden touch, I just think the source of these musicals is wrong. They are built on a financial model. There are no “stars”, no memorable score, just high-priced tickets and buses unloading the middle-aged groups from the burbs. They're beautiful and dead, certainly joyless.These sort of pretentious productions were spoofed wonderfully by Mel Smith in his film “The Tall Guy” where, if you can believe it, they put on a musical of the poor crippled Elephant Man. Someone asked Stephen Sondheim if he didn't approve of these more operatic musicals and he said, “no, I don't, all that recitative with a song stitched in every now and then isn't the kind of musical I like...a song has to appear at precisely the right time with memorable music and lyrics.” By the way, it was Sir Andrew who called “My Fair Lady” the perfect musical. Now we have a London production of Lawrence of Arabia*. It's about an American girl, Sarah Lawrence who ventures into the desert to find her long lost lover Sandy Hill. It has a love song “Dancing Sheik to Sheik”; a light number “Put on a happy fez”and a rousing show stopper: “The camels are coming, hooray, hooray”. How stuff like Billy Elliott made lt in America I'll never know. It's about a foul-mouthed brat who wants to show off in dancing shoes. Nothing from over there can match the witty lyrics of Larry Hart or Ira Gershwin or the brilliant score of “West Side Story” or the score and lyrics of Frank Loesser.. While I'm at it I'll relate an incident from a toney Manhattan salon recital. I volunteered a story about Irving Berlin sending a note to Cole Porter on the opening of “Kiss Me Kate”. Turning one of his hit songs from “Annie Get Your Gun” inside out he wrote “Anything I can do you can do better”. The lady across the table from me smiled and said, “yes, daddy used to tell us about that”. It was one of Berlin's daughters echoing the immortal voice of the true Broadway. *At least in my mind.