Last October, in these very pages, I wrote with what is now annoying prescience, ‘Like almost everyone else in the insane world of musical theatre, I don’t know how to create a hit.’ I am now facing up to the grim fact that my latest effort, From Here to Eternity, is folding after a six-month run at the Shaftesbury Theatre. The publicity has vastly exceeded the interest in the show when it opened last September. Never have the words of Bob Dylan seemed so relevant to me: ‘There’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all.’
The enthusiasm of the media to report gleefully on Eternity biting the dust has been boosted enormously by the simultaneous, weirdly coincidental, demise of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest effort, Stephen Ward. Both shows end on 29 March. Suddenly this is the end of an era, Webber and Rice are old hat and the musical theatre now looks to — er, who exactly? Well, one great talent that I believe will be fully recognised in the near future is Stuart Brayson, who wrote Eternity’s music; his tunes inspired me to contribute to a new show for the first time since 2000, when my extravaganza with Elton John, Aida, began a four-year run on Broadway. The West End desperately needs successors to the alleged washed-up giants of yesteryear — but I have worrying news for the end-of-an-era merchants; neither Andrew nor I have given up the ghost and I am confident that From Here to Eternity, going great guns in its final weeks, will rise again.
Perhaps it was a problem that I was the only known quantity in the Eternity team and, frankly, my admirers are getting on a bit. Nonetheless, plenty of them turned up and went out of their way to nab me and express enthusiasm.
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