Andrew Lloyd Webber, Don Black, and Charles Hart, Aspects of Love, “Love Changes Everything”
Amanda Castro, Gavin Creel, Nikki Renée Daniels, Jenn Gambatese, Jo Lampert, Norm Lewis, Heath Saunders
Aspects of Love comes right in the middle of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s output — the twelfth of his twenty-one shows to date. Collaborating with lyricists Don Black and Charles Hart, the composer was adapting a novel by David Garnett that had appeared in 1955. The show premiered in London’s West End in 1989, a year prior to the Broadway production. It offered a considerable surprise to audiences used to the much grander scale of Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Starlight Express, and Phantom of the Opera. The New York Times review of the show’s Broadway debut noted with astonishment that “[Lloyd Webber] has written a musical about people” and that the show was “the most high-minded of his musicals.”
The show begins in 1964, at a Paris train station. It’s there that the audience first encounters the leading male character, Alex, who reflects on how every aspect of one’s life can be altered by the experience of love. The rest of the show covers the period of 1947 to 1964, in which the romantic travails of Alex and the other principal characters are examined in depth. The show is almost totally sung, and “Love Changes Everything” remains its most popular number, enrapturing audiences more than 40 years after Lloyd Webber composed it.
*Lyric debut
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Photos: Kyle Flubacker
