REVIEW: Time Rice: My Life in Musicals – Theatre Royal, Glasgow

The opening bars of the show that started it all ring out to signal the start of Tim Rice’s tour My Life in Musicals, and oh what musicals they are. The show charts his life from clerk in a lawyer’s office in 1965, through the highs, lows and everything in-between of a 60 year song-writing career.

The (almost unbelievable) stories are told with humour and modesty. Rice is a natural raconteur, who wears his phenomenal success lightly and who generously acknowledges the work of everyone who has contributed along the way.

Rice’s first love was the pop world to such an extent that he produced song demo that while rejected by the music world, but he did manage to get a song That’s My Story published and recorded by 60s band The Night Shift.

Next up, book publisher Desmond Elliott saw Rice’s potential as a writer after he submitted a book he had written, and introduced him to a 17 year old composer named Andrew Lloyd-Webber.

It was 1965 and Lloyd Webber was working on a musical The Likes of Us about Dr Thomas Barnardo. The show didn’t find backing for a West End production but the potential of the pairing was evident.

In 1967 Lloyd Webber’s family friend Alan Doggett, the music teacher at Colet Court School, commissioned the pair to write an end of term ‘pop cantata’ on a biblical theme for 20-30 seven to ten year olds in the school choir in just six weeks. On the 1st March 1968 the perennial favourite Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat was born. Such was the success of the 15 minute production that a further performance was arranged, and the show expanded to 20 minutes with the band The Mixed Bag accompanying. In the audience that night was one of the boys’ parents Derek Jewell, Sunday Times music critic who was inspired to write a glowing review. The success of the show led to a publishing deal for the book and a recording of the show, but most importantly a management deal for two years at £3000 a year that allowed the pair to work on their next project.

Rice then charts the less than straight path that next project took. From the cast album of Jesus Christ Superstar (a cast album of a show that at that time didn’t exist) to it becoming No.1 on the US charts, to its debut on Broadway before the West End and the technical problems it was plagued with. Rice tells and sings a country pop song called Kansas Morning, an attempt at chart success along the lines of The Bee Gees Massachusetts and its path to becoming on of JCS’s most famous songs I Don’t Know How to Love Him. He also tells with pride how he wrote a song for Elvis, It’s Easy For You, which appeared on his last album.

It was by chance that Rice, lost on the way to a dinner party, heard a radio programme on Eva Peron. Inspired, his peaked interest and subsequent research would eventually become, in 1978, the multi-award-winning Evita.

With Lloyd Webber pursuing other projects, Rice returned to is first love, the pop world and with Mike Batt wrote the Christmas hit A Winter’s Tale for David Essex.

Rice then turned to big screen song writing: the Bond Theme All Time High, before a return to the stage with ABBA’s Bjorn and Benny on Chess.

Act two bursts to life with Superstar before Rice shares the process of bringing Aida to life with Elton John. A hit for five years on Broadway, it has never had a full production in the UK. He then turns attention to the Disney years with Aladdin, and The Lion King (Hamlet with Fur) and the writing of an extra song for the Evita movie to make them eligible for an Oscar – the song You Must Love Me winning Rice his third Academy Award.

In more recent years Rice’s output has slowed a little with his last stage show From Here to Eternity in 2013 but he certainly hasn’t retired, recent writing credits including one with Gary Barlow.

Despite the sheer magnitude of his success, Rice is surprisingly unphased by it all, citing his Pointless trophy, won with fellow songwriter Don Black as his most proud, this from a man with a shed-load of silver ware including the coveted EGOT – Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony ( which he brings out on stage, much to the delight of the audience).

Accompanied by a top notch band and a quartet of phenomenal vocalists, this show is a piece of the utmost quality, a fantastic celebration of the amazing life of a true musical genius.