Phantom's McGillin Critiques "American Idol" Lloyd Webber Performance
The April 22 broadcast of the FOX singing competition “American Idol” offered the show’s final six contestants the chance to perform songs by Tony and Olivier Award-winning composer Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The songs performed included “Think of Me” (sung by David Archuleta), “Memory” (Jason Castro), “One Rock & Roll Too Many” (Syesha Mercado), “Jesus Christ Superstar” (Carly Smithson), “You Must Love Me” (Brooke White) and “The Music of the Night,” the Phantom of the Opera anthem, which was sung by David Cook.
Howard McGillin, the Broadway actor who currently plays the title role in Lloyd Webber’s Phantom at Broadway’s Majestic Theatre, spoke with TV’s “Extra” about Cook’s rendition of “Music of the Night.” Said McGillin, “He nailed it . . . It’s such a difficult song to sing . . . He sings with such purity and such a beautiful sound, but he did great.” McGillin also told the TV program, “I love [’American Idol’ but] I don’t get to watch it much.”
The April 23 “Idol” results show will feature Lloyd Webber performing live with the contestants. The results show airs at 9 PM ET; check local listings.
Howard McGillin holds the record for the longest-running Phantom in the show’s history. A Tony Award nominee for his performances in Anything Goes and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, McGillin has also appeared on Broadway in Kiss of the Spider Woman, She Loves Me, The Secret Garden and Sunday in the Park with George. On the London stage he starred in Mack and Mabel, and his solo recording is titled “Howard McGillin: Where Time Stands Still.” McGillin also starred in the Chicago and D.C. productions of Sondheim and John Weidman’s Bounce.
McGillin’s “American Idol” critique will air on the April 23 broadcast of “Extra.” For more information visit www.extratv.com.
Tags: 22, american, april, idol
But that would not be the way to bet.There seems to be a huge instinct in humans, to assume the status quo is eternal. Given history and trends, that’s a completely irrational belief.
Liquor, speed and guns– a recipe for success!
That book should be required reading for every school curriculum.
Where have all the real reporters gone?
RIP Mr. Thompson. You and your unique perspective on our reality is greatly missed.
Great, a religious whack-job criticizing another religion which is just as ridiculous as his own.
Many who don’t understand him, dismiss his work as the rambling of a drug addled madman. The drugs were merely the backdrop, and unfortunately the ultimate demise of one of the greatest American writers. If you read everything he wrote skipping any drug references, the abridged version would be as brilliant for you as it is for the rest of us. Trust me on that one.
Bat country! Lawlz.EDITHehe…thanks for reminding me of that. Now I’m going to be giggling for the rest of the night.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
Brilliant man, Brilliant writer, flawed list.Missing the two greatest ones ever:2)Breakfast is the only meal of the day that I tend to view with the same kind of traditionalized reverence that most people associate with Lunch and Dinner. I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast. In Hong Kong, Dallas or at home — and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed — breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive: four Bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crepes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned beef hash with diced chiles, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of Key lime pie, two margaritas, and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert…. Right, and there should also be two or three newspapers, all mail and messages, a telephone, a notebook for planning the next twenty-four hours and at least one source of good music…. All of which should be dealt with outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked.1)It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant…History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ‘history’ it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happenedMy central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights — or very early mornings — when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour… booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turnoff to take when I got to the other end… but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: no doubt at all about that…There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda… You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning…And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
not really.
beat me to it.