A strange match of composer and subject

When I learned that there was a musical version of the Richard Linklater movie School of Rock, I thought what I always think when I see there's a stage version of a popular movie: "Of course there is." Melbourne is being hit by a spate of them right now, with musical versions of a couple Aussie classics (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Muriel's Wedding) and some other popular Hollywood stuff (The Bodyguard) having recently played, now playing or soon to be playing the city's premier stage venues. That's in addition to School of Rock.

When I saw who composed the music, I thought something that I do not always think in these situations:

"Huh?"

When I think of Andrew Lloyd Webber -- the composer of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Phantom of the Opera, Cats and Evita, the latter of which is also having a local revival starring Tina Arena -- I think of someone who is gothic, dramatic, operatic in nature. All of those terms quite explicitly describe Phantom of the Opera, which I still think of as the most Webbery of Webber musicals.

They do not describe School of Rock.

The canvas on which he's painted has always been massive, whether it's Bible epics (two of them), a florid Beauty and the Beast story, a fantastic feline flight of fancy or a historical epic about the Argentinian first lady.

That is not the canvas of School of Rock.

If a single person may be the personification of a non-Webberian character, it might be Jack Black, an overgrown boy with his shirt untucked who relates to kids in a comedic manner that is only a few years removed from landing in Dad Joke territory. Sure, Black has an after hours gig as a singer in the band Tenacious D, which is plenty operatic in its own right. But the essential Black seems a bit anathema to Webber.

So how did Webber get on this project?

The internet is not being particularly forthcoming about that. But I will say that if it's a weird project for him to be doing generally, it's an even weirder project for him to be doing in his mid- to late-60s. (The show premiered in 2015, and Webber just turned 70 earlier this year.)

This quote highlights this odd disconnect between Webber and his material, in talking about what he wanted from this stage version of the movie:

"It has to be a bit more rounded. I'd like to know more about the children and their parents."

Huh?

This is not the Andrew Lloyd Webber I think I know.

The Wikipedia article on School of Rock also includes this funny, sort of obvious quote, in which Webber is apparently answering the question of whether they would just use the soundtrack from the movie:

"You can't do heavy metal for hours and ours in the theater. Everyone would be screaming. So there have to be theatrical songs too."

I would say this falls into the "duh" category. Besides, if you don't have original songs, you don't really need a composer, now do you?

If Webber's involvement in this project is not weird enough, consider also who wrote the stage treatment: Julian Fellowes. Name sound familiar? Yeah, he's the guy who wrote the Robert Altman movie Gosford Park, and probably more famously, Downton Abbey. What the hell is he doing here?

And yet I'm sure the show is good. It did well on Broadway, it did well in the West End, it toured the U.S. and now it's touring Australia, or at least coming to Melbourne.

I'm not going to see it -- I save my $150 theater tickets for genuine new classics like The Book of Mormon -- but I sure am curious about how the hell it all mashes together.