The book reads like dinner party tales: conquests, side stories and a few confessions. The tone? Puckish smile behind lifted wine glass ... Such jaunty 'making of' stories are the bulk of the book, and, veiled as it is, you get a sense of his temper under pressure, especially when cost-cutting or ineptitude threatened the quality of his complicated projects ... But the unworried Unmasked proves as readable as his hits are watchable.
Unmasked is Mr. Lloyd Webber’s charmingly idiosyncratic, surprisingly endearing and ruthlessly entertaining autobiography. It is customary to compare great musical autobiographies to the Memoirs of Berlioz, but Unmasked is much more fun ... Like the author’s music, his memoir is irresistible. Mr. Lloyd Webber sounds like himself on the page; this, like writing show tunes, is more difficult than it may appear. His love for the business is infectious, and his anecdotage polished ... The critics call Mr. Lloyd Webber a ham, and it clearly hurts. But the critics, Richard Rodgers once told him, are 'afraid of sentiment,' and are often musically illiterate. This is musical theater, after all.
Andrew Lloyd Webber has decided the time is right to share some memories (sorry). And yes, the story behind Memory, from Cats, or at least Barbra Streisand’s rendition of it, is one of the juicier tales in...Lloyd Webber’s meticulously rendered memoir of his life and fabulous career ... Some impatient readers may find Unmasked more of a door-stopper than a show-stopper.
As well as reinforcing his position as the leading light of musical theatre, Unmasked cements his status as king of the humblebrag ... his breakdown of each song as it appeared on the album [for Evita], specifically how it was conceived and its role in the narrative, is enough to make even the most ardent fan swear off musicals forever ... There are some juicy anecdotes here but the pacing is all over the place. Lloyd Webber may know a thing or two about theatrical narrative, but he’s yet to learn that, when telling his own story, less is definitely more.
'Autobiographies are by definition self-serving and mine is no exception,' [Webber] says, adding he was pressured to write it by friends and a literary agent, and finally agreed 'primarily to shut them up.' Not exactly the promise of a page-turner to come. Still, he soldiers on. And so must I ... in 1981, Milos Forman approached him about playing Mozart in his film version of Amadeus. Lloyd Webber was appalled, telling Forman that he was 'a hopeless actor' ... My suspicion is that Lloyd Webber might have had a similar conversation with his book editor, arguing that he really didn’t want to write a memoir. If so, readers may finish this book wishing the editor had agreed.
From a literary standpoint, Lloyd Webber’s memoir, published in connection with his seventieth birthday, is something of a mess. It is sprawling and overlong, formally inelegant, at once needlessly detailed and riddled with lacunae ... Unmasked mostly compensates for its self-indulgence with a sprightly tone, a high gossip quotient, and, best of all, a sense of authenticity. Readers gain entrée to Lloyd Webber’s sensibility — neuroses, obsessions, vanity, and all — and to a turbulent backstage world in which his perfectionism about sound quality sometimes collides with the practicalities of making theater ... This idiosyncratic memoir will delight his many fans, provide invaluable grist for theater historians — and perhaps inspire an even grittier and more revealing sequel.
Unmasked has the feeling of a reluctant autobiography, more a dutiful accounting under pressure to do so than an inspired one that comes from the heart ... the story behind Phantom, Lloyd Webber’s most successful product, does not unmask all that much at all. Which is true, really, of the whole book.
He has some dishy tidbits to share, but it is not always easy to catch hold of them in his torrent of anecdotes. He loves to reminisce as much about the business side of his career as about the art, and he regularly lists the sums he earned or disbursed over the years ... Sometimes these financial reports spool on for pages and pages without, ultimately, rewarding close attention. Other, far more diverting tales about his and other people’s love affairs could stand more fleshing out.
Restraint is not this composer’s forte, but there is something joyously shameless about his embrace of over-the-topness ... Despite its length and a title that would suggest frank tidbits, the introspection never goes all that deep and the book skirts some subjects.
