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Sirena Bergman
Dec 22, 2019
This weekend, Cats (the film) opened to much fanfare.
Big budget, Taylor Swift, famous director, an adaptation of a musical everyone has heard of... it was either going to go very well or very badly wrong.
Unfortunately, the reviews have been... well, "scathing" is putting it mildly. But over on the internet - where the real people have much more sway than culture critics - the narrative has turned away from the film itself and onto the story's creator: Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The composer and Tory peer is one of the most prolific musical theatre creators of all time, at the helm of, obviously, Cats, but also The Phantom of the Opera, Starlight Express, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat among many others.
He has always been a divisive figure - for his politics if nothing else - but the new adaptation seems to have made people realise that actually the original Cats just... isn't that good.
And that seems to have woken a lot of people up to the fact that Andrew Lloys Webber musicals in general just... aren't that good, either.
While commercial success and artistic integrity can often go hand-in-hand, this obviously isn't always the case, and when it comes to theatre, that fact seems to have been hitherto overlooked.
But perhaps the most incredible, in-depth deep-dive out there is this incredible thread about Starlight Express, from which the standout quotes include:
It’s exactly 'Cats', but everyone is a train.
And:
It’s his magnum opus. About agnostic trains that want to fuck.
We won't embed the whole thread, but it starts here. Drop everything and go and read it now.
In summary, Twitter has spoken and therefore it's official - "Andrew Lloyd Webber is actually rubbish" is the hot take of late-2019. Bring that one up at the Christmas lunch for lolz.
MORE: Director Tom Hooper literally finished 'Cats' the day before the screening and everyone can relate
MORE:Andrew Lloyd Webber really did fly back from New York and vote for tax credit cuts