Andrew Lloyd Blogger Knows Best???

Andrew Lloyd Webber has been sharing his views about who could star in his revival of The Sound of Music - Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical about a nun-turned nanny, which opens at the London Palladium this autumn – with the World Wide Web. His online persona, which he has wittily named Andrew Lloyd Blogger, has been discussing the merits of casting a stage musical on television and media comparisons between himself and Simon Cowell, the famously acerbic judge on The X Factor, on his newly launched personal website www.andrewlloydwebber.com. He has already used the weblog as a tool to answer back to sceptics, including the Daily Mail columnist Baz Bamingboye (See The Goss, 25 Aug 2006). In a diary entry called “Setting the record straight”, he responded to allegations that he had little faith in the calibre of the contestants in How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? and was going to cast an established West End actress – namely Emma Williams (See The Goss, 28 Jul 2006) - in the role instead: “It was made clear from the outset that we would contract an alternate Maria to play two shows a week.... Casting an alternate in a major singing role of this kind has been the custom in many major West End musicals. I instigated this in 1978 for Evita and also for The Phantom of the Opera. Contrary to what Baz suggests, I have total confidence in the BBC television programme How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? which was my idea and I am loving being a part of it.”

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