AMERICAN IDOL went all Broadway last night dedicating the evening to the world’s most successful musical theatre composer Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber [ALW]. What an interesting night it was as the contestants had to sing a song out of the Lloyd Webber song book.
ALW has been the best IDOL coach yet. He is an expert at this reality show game with the British hits HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE MARIA [SOUND OF MUSIC], YOU’RE THE ONE THAT I WANT [GREASE], ANY DREAM WILL DO [JOSEPH] and now I’D DO ANYTHING [OLIVER]. He didn’t gush over each contestant choosing instead to be enormously constructive and really helpful with making them better singers and stronger performers. With his cheeky British humour ALW gave one of the best performances of the night. The same can’t be said of all the contestants.
Syesha Mercado scored the best performance of the evening. She took an uptempo song not well known, One Rock & Roll Too Many from STARLIGHT EXPRESS, and radiated personality and talent. She performed like a true contender and should have had greater praise heaped upon her by the judges. You could hear Broadway producers drafting offers prior to her belting out her last note.
I can’t waste too much time writing about Jason Castro. I don’t get him and can’t stand him. Somehow I always smell stale bong water when he takes the stage. Google your fu*#ing song. Yes a musical called CATS is all about cats and people singing and dancing as cats.
Brooke White provided the water cooler moment of the night stopping her song to start over. She later confessed she lost the lyrics but the whole performance was tense and awkward for all involved, however it was memorable and may get the sympathy vote.
Kudos to ALW for making Carly Smithson sing JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR. She rocked out and dusted off her insecurities.
Now onto the two Davids. David Archuleta poped up All I Ask of You and made it sound more contemporary than ever. However performing note perfect week after week becomes, rather unfairly, tiresome. He has to give his performances an infusion of charisma and maybe a Joseph song would have been the better option.
The same can be said of David Cook, Music of the Night is a dreary ballad that out of context and not sung with musical theatre flair is just plain boring. I do appreciate that he was well educated about ALW and takes his business seriously but I wish he would have done Close Every Door To Me if this was the direction he was choosing. Can you imagine the key change. He would have killed with
that song.
I look forward to watching the final six butcher an ALW medley on the results show tonight and hope that somewhere out there some kid will actually be inspired to embrace Broadway and musical theatre. 
