STAGE REVIEW : Lloyd Webber’s ‘Aspects’ Premieres in London

Can reviews spoil things for Andrew Lloyd Webber? Not bloody likely. His new show, “Aspects of Love,” which opened Monday at the Prince of Wales Theatre preceded by enormous hoopla in the press, is already sold out through Christmas (the advance is about 4.5 million or about $7.7 million). And that’s before a single review has been printed.

The show that opened Monday will surprise many. Gone are the high-tech excesses of “Starlight Express,” the furry fantastics of “Cats,” the bread and circuses of “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Evita” or the heroics of “The Phantom of the Opera.” In their place is a much smaller, more straightforward musical, heavy on plot and sentiment, based on a 1955 novel by David Garnett that traces the Byzantine relationships within an arty circle of free-loving friends.

The work is opera--small, yes, but not quite chamber size or even “Mozartean,” as Lloyd Webber has called it. Its leitmotifs are still closer to the romantic gesture of Verdi or Puccini than to anything more cannily dreamed up by Wolfgang Amadeus.

“Aspects’ ” swirling, Italianate score is more lightly orchestrated than Lloyd Webber’s other works, but still rich in crashing climaxes. It is threaded through with at least two memorable and repeating melodies that twine and intertwine with the same tangled passions as those of the protagonists.

Young Alex Dillingham (Michael Ball) falls in love with older actress Rose Vibert (Ann Crumb), sweeping her off her feet before she even has a chance to learn his name. After two passionate weeks spent at his Uncle George’s country estate in Pau (this is a very English libretto set entirely in France), Uncle George barges in. And for reasons that are never really made clear, Rose, presumably still in love with Alex, runs off with his older and wealthier relative (played by Kevin Colson, replacing Roger Moore who left the show several weeks ago).

Chalking Rose’s action up to fortune-hunting doesn’t get you far. While sharing his life with Rose (by any other name part Camille or Marguerite or Scarlett or Sondheim’s Desiree Armfeldt), George has no trouble sharing it with other women as well. Among them is Venetian sculptress Giulietta (Kathleen Rowe McAllen) whom Rose chooses to confront and to whom she finds herself instantly attracted.

Still with me? The plot’s ramifications go on in this vein and don’t get much better. Sooner or later, everyone has been in love with everyone else once or twice. George and Rose eventually have a daughter Jenny (played at age 12 by Zoe Hart and age 14 by Diana Morrison) who in turn grows up to love . . . but enough of that.

You get the drift. “Aspects of Love” is not “La Ronde” (though its postwar denizens feel oddly antiquated in style). Arthur Schnitzler’s characters recognized their affairs for the brief encounters that they were. Lloyd Webber’s beautiful people form alliances that don’t entirely bind and pledge allegiances they always half-intend to break. The libretto confuses melodrama with drama. It’s “Days of Our Lives” crossed with “Gone With the Wind.” In a show as intimately scaled as “Aspects,” such soap-operatic excess (which works fine in “Evita” or “Phantom”) remains merely excessive.

And yet. Musically, it’s a different story. Lloyd Webber’s undeniable mastery of the melodic phrase and his unabashed theatricality invest the second (and stronger) half of “Aspects” with some memorable moments.

George’s rueful “Other Pleasures,” sung when he has surrendered the joy of sex for the more sedentary one of fatherhood, is an aging man’s anthem of resignation and peace. Jenny’s first dance (fox trot replaces rock in this composition) in the enfolding arms of the father she’s leaving behind and the embracing ones of the older Alex, the first man to awaken her sexuality (“The Very First”), is a transfixing rite of passage. And “Falling,” a chorus for four voices at emotional cross purposes (Rose, Alex, Jenny and George), is Lloyd Webber at his best. No pyrotechnics, no overkill--just full-throated song.

In this sense, “Aspects” is a curious contradiction, as rich in melodic intricacy as its text is rife with platitudes. Don Black (who did lyrics for Lloyd Webber’s “Tell Me on a Sunday”) and Charles Hart (“Phantom”) have collaborated on words that range from the silly and self-evident to the mildly self-respecting. Nothing more. The actor-singers are excellent, with Crumb and Ball particularly well chosen. Trevor Nunn has directed, apparently impervious to the sentimental foolishness of the libretto.

Does it matter? Yes, but no. Artistically speaking, yes, but clearly not at the box office. Maria Bjornson, who did the fantastic “Phantom” sets, has again designed beautifully evocative ones here that become active players in the drama. Or melodrama.

Will the public buy it? It seems it already has. This is one time when reviews may well be irrelevant. Lloyd Webber, superstar, must be laughing all the way to the bank.