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Sarah Freeman: Is Lloyd Webber really a risk-taker when his shows are a safe bet?
When you think of enfants terribles of the art world, Andrew Lloyd Webber is a name that rarely crops up.
Together with Tim Rice, the man who always looks like he needs a good night's sleep, he has been responsible for a glut of hits, if not necessarily hard-hitting musicals. Jesus Christ Superstar and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat aren't exactly up there with Look Back in Anger and The Crucible when it comes to unnerving the establishment, but according to Lord Webber, neither would have been made today due to the political correctness which has invaded its way into the theatre.
"I'm lucky to have had such a successful career. I'm actually lucky enough to have always done as I want," he told a glossy magazine. "I look back at when I was younger and ask myself: would I have written an opera with Tim Rice? So many people nowadays are obsessed with things offending people.
"Today people say you can't do this because it will offend that community, and then you can't say this because the Muslims will be offended by it and we'll end up being talked out of it. Talked out of ideas. Whereas when I was 20 I didn't think about those things – you could just do it."
So is Lloyd Webber right?
The decision by the Birmingham Repertory Theatre to pull Gurpreet Bhatti's play Behtzi (Dishonour) three years ago would seem on the surface to suggest so. The furore began when members of the Sikh community claimed its depiction of murder and sex abuse mocked their faith and when Bhatti received her first death threats, the venue said it had no option but to cancel performances.
However, not everyone was moved to distance themselves from the play and it went on to win numerous awards, including America's Susan Smith Blackburn Prize made annually to the best English language play by a woman. Hardly a sign theatre is running scared.
Despite what Lloyd Webber might like to think, theatre – which finally broke free of censorship by the Lord Chamberlain in 1968 – is the one place where political correctness hasn't yet set up home.
In the last few years we've had the premieres of Jerry Springer: The Opera packed with profanity and a troupe of tap-dancing Ku Klux Klan members, and My Name is Rachel Corrie based on the American peace activist killed by a military bulldozer in Gaza. While the former faced accusations of blasphemy and the latter was branded a piece of Palestinian propaganda, both made it to the stage, with Jerry Springer later embraced by the BBC in a television adaptation.
Add to that Edward Albee's The Goat featuring incest, infidelity and bestiality and the previously wholesome Daniel Radcliffe doing the rounds as the boy with a pathological and sexual fascination with horses in Equus and Lloyd Webber seems to be on rather shaky ground. Let's not forget that when theatres need to play safe, the one thing they can rely on to fill seats and not upset the sensibilities of the paying public is more often than not a good
old-fashioned Webber/Rice musical.
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