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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/IrinadeFrance on 2025-02-17 02:58:33+00:00.

For the record: this is a post I made on Tumblr a while ago, which I edited and revamped for Reddit. If it sounds oddly familiar to you, I'm basically crossposting my own work here. I can provide proof that the Tumblr account who initially wrote it up is mine, if necessary.

Content warning: I use the g-slur further in to reference a character's name. Just so you know.

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Picture this: it was March 2023. A few months before, in September 2022, the world had received news of an event many never thought would happen: The Phantom of the Opera, with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, the longest running show in Broadway history, was to close on February 18, 2023, after running for 35 years, interrupted only by the COVID-19 pandemic. As soon as the announcement was made, however, the demand for tickets to see the show one last time became so overwhelming that the closing performance was set to April 16, 2023 instead.

For months, people mourned. Such a musical had gathered quite a fandom throughout the years, with its ups and its downs (ups and downs varying depending on who you ask, as the 2004 movie adaptation, the filmed 25th anniversary concert at Royal Albert Hall, The Sequel That Shall Not Be Named For Now, the sheer existence of Raoul, vicomte de Chagny, are still topics of fierce debate to this day). As a silver lining, the news outlet BroadwayWorld released short clips of the original Broadway cast (nicknamed amongst connaisseurs "the OBC"), namely Michael Crawford, Sarah Brightman, and Steve Barton. And yours truly, ever the clown, reblogged one of these clips to my humble Tumblr, with the following tags:

#RELEASE THE OBC PRO SHOT ANDREW #I WILL PLEAD YOUR CASE TO PATTI LUPONE IF YOU DO

I doubted, of course, that Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber would ever see my humble plea, busy as he was at the time attempting to transfer his Cinderella musical adaptation from the West End in London to Broadway, with mixed success (but more on that later). But there was an innocent soul, nay, a sweet summer child, who saw my tags, and became impressed and frightened all at once of my gutso, which amply made up for my terrible sense of humour. This sweet summer child, hiding behind anonymity in my askbox, asked me the following question: what did Andrew Lloyd Webber do to make Patti LuPone so upset?

And lo, I was summoned from my bog, cackling in sheer bliss, that I was about to tell my favourite musical theatre drama story of all time: one of the most infamous showdowns in all musical theatre history, starring the man behind the straightest musicals on Broadway (derogatory) and the one and only, the matriarch, the queen, three-time Tony award winner Patti LuPone.

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Part 1: The Boy Genius and Perón's Flame(s)

The Right Honourable Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber, or, simply, ALW, for those unaware, is arguably the most famous British musical theatre composer of all time, if not outright the most commercially successful composer in history, according to the New York Times. Now, let's give credit where credit is due: he was, for all intents and purposes, a boy genius of sorts in his prime - he met his future collaborator, Tim Rice, when they were 17 and 20 respectively. He then went on to compose his first big musical hit, Jesus Christ Superstar (referred to from now on as JCS), at 22, with Tim Rice writing the lyrics.

JCS was a big deal at the time due to its controversial topic (namely, the Passion with rock music), drawing protests and even outright bans. It's also worth mentioning Broadway wasn't that far off from its golden age, and let's just say the music and style were very different from, say, My Fair Lady. Or The Sound of Music. Or Funny Girl. Or Hello Dolly!. It was basically the RENT, or, for those of you who are younger, the Hamilton of its time. (And before anyone runs off to the comment section: yes, Stephen Sondheim was around at that time, he worked on West Side Story which was revolutionary in of itself, but he's kind of an oddball in this case. You'll understand why later.)

Their real follow up (I'm not counting Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for a variety of reasons, not having to do with its overall quality, but because I could honestly describe it as JCS for kids) was a little musical called Evita, which you might know mainly because of a song called "Don't Cry For Me Argentina". Or at least, your mom has probably heard it once at the very least. It's that song that's oversung from a musical while being out of context along with "I Dreamed a Dream" for Les Misérables. Or "Memory" from Cats.

Evita tells the story of Eva Perón, the wife of an Argentinian dictator. Throughout the first act, she basically screws her way to the top and ends up becoming the mistress of Juan Perón and the most beloved woman in her country through guile and deceit. Yes, I know the historical accuracy is very much debated but I know jackshit about Argentina's history except the bare basics so don't come at me. After being released as a concept album, it was first produced in the West End in London, with Elaine Paige in the role, but because of issues with the Actors' Equity Association, she couldn't reprise her role for the Broadway production. So a Julliard graduate who was mostly starring in David Mamet plays back when people still liked him got the part instead, and that was Patti LuPone, over more than 200 auditionees, which included the likes of Meryl Streep, Raquel Welch, and Ann-Margret.

Patti... did not have a good time during Evita, since the part is basically the kind of score where you can tell the composer is used to writing male parts. Most female singers have a two-octave range, but Patti LuPone's Vocal Chords are blessed with a three-octave range, which she still has to this day, at the age of 75. She's one of the greatest Broadway divas alive for a reason. Nevertheless, she struggled a lot, because the role of Eva Perón, with its many octave jumps, is, along with that of Elphaba in Wicked, one of the hardest to perform 8 times a week. That being said, if you listen to live recordings of her, you wouldn't be able to tell, and the score got a lot easier to sing through later on. But she had this to say:

"Evita was the worst experience of my life. I was screaming my way through a part that could only have been written by a man who hates women*. And I had no support from the producers, who wanted a star performance onstage but treated me as an unknown backstage. It was like Beirut, and I fought like a banshee."*

This is from Patti's autobiography, which she published in 2010 - 15 years after shit with ALW went down. Nevertheless, she won a Tony Award (the Broadway equivalent of the Oscars) for Evita, and she pretty much became a musical theatre household name from then on. She played Fantine in Les Misérables, Nancy in Oliver!, Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes. Meanwhile, ALW's next big hits were Cats (I'm not even kidding, Cats was a hit, although the 2019 film is a MUCH worse product), and, you guessed it, The Phantom of the Opera, which he wrote in part to showcase his then wife Sarah Brightman's triple threat talents.

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Part 2: Look, I Made a Mask

So, you need to understand before I continue that ALW, from my perspective, has always had a bit of an inferiority complex. He has written some classical music pieces, including a Latin Requiem Mass no one really cares about, because ultimately, he is associated to writing these commercially successful musicals that are all about showcasing a big spectacle, but aren't ultimately substantial. To be fair, I'm not sure I entirely agree with that, but I do think that if he didn't have Hal Prince, Maria Bjornson, Charles Hart and Gillian Lynne backing him up for The Phantom of the Opera (from now on referred to as POTO), it would have probably been a Rocky Horror Picture Show knockoff people would have forgotten about pretty quickly.

I'm not being unkind. See for yourselves.

Yep, that was POTO before any of the people I mentioned above (and the guy from the picture in Chad's mom's fridge) were really involved.

So, remember how I said in the previous part that Stephen Sondheim was an oddball? The thing with him is that his musicals weren't always commercially successful, but in general, in part thanks to being Leonard Bernstein's protégé, he was generally pretty well-respected and it was considered that his work wa...

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