The Andrew Lloyd Webber GiftDay Story

GiftDay is an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan and we’ve seen most of his musicals including “Jesus Christ Superstar”, “Cats”, “Evita” and “The Phantom of the Opera”.  So we were absolutely ecstatic when the Shubert Organization called to order a GiftDay gift to be presented to Sir Andrew at his 60th birthday bash in London.

For us,

the gift was almost a foregone conclusion.  We merely needed to find and purchase a Playbill magazine that released on Lloyd Webber’s March 22, 1948 birthdate.  Playbill, if you don’t already know is a well-regarded magazine that, since 1884, has been printed to accompany every play on Broadway.  The Playbill, though, once we purchased and received it, surprised us when we inspected it more closely...

In the magazine’s feature article, writer Eugene Barr imagined what theater would look like in the late 20th century.  He premised his article on something that he had recently read in another theater magazine.  ßBarr quoted his colleague thus:

“Today, there are not on the American stage half a dozen players who could bear the test of comparison with any one of fifty who were flourishing forty years ago. Why this is so is no mystery.  It is the inevitable result of the prevailing system of purely commercial management that has obliterated the old stock companies.”

Barr went on to note that the article was not written in 1948... but in 1916!   Barr makes the point that every generation of writers and critics and the general theater-going public complains about the theater of the day and looks back with longing to the “good old days” when acting was better and plays were uncommercial.  Yet that’s what many of us invariably do; recall the “good old day” when theater was more interesting and not one big product placement ad for a Disney product?  Even now, many bemoan Webber’s plays because they are written for the “least common denominator”; our grandparents’ lament that the golden age of theater died when television was invented!  (Of course, the last nail in the coffin was the Internet....)

Barr writes in the 1948 magazine presented as a gift to Andrew Lloyd Webber in 2008:

“30 or 40 years from now, commentators will be looking back with longing at the magnificent performances that studded the season of 1948.  They’ll be right about it, too. But there will also be magnificent performances in 1988 and 1998, even though they’ll somehow hate to admit it…”

The Shubert loved our gift and so did Webber, according to his assistant to whom we sent the gift to in London.

GiftDay endeavors to find meaning and poetry in gifts - so that they can be used to tell the gift recipient that they are unique and special and that they have been thought about, considered and fussed over.

Because everyone likes to be treated like a celebrity on their birthday.  Even celebrities.