This is the most amazing story, as told by Richard Ouzounian in Thursday's Toronto Star: How Adam Brazier, on a tryout for The Woman in White in New York was chosen by Andrew Lloyd Webber to star in The Likes of Us, the new (old) musical that is re-uniting Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. What a great business!

Show about Dr. Barnardo reunites feuding partners

By RICHARD OUZOUNIAN
THEATRE CRITIC

From buffed boy-toy to Victorian social reformer in one short year.

It was only 12 months ago that Unionville-born Adam Brazier was playing the naughty title role in the Shaw Festival's hit Pal Joey. And on Monday he started rehearsals in London for The Likes of Us by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.

The musical about Dr. Thomas Barnardo is actually the first show ever written by the world-famous team behind Jesus Christ, Superstar and Evita. It was never produced, but the duo is revisiting it now, nearly 40 years later, to help mark the centenary of Barnardo's death.

Barnardo is the man who attempted to improve the lot of nearly 60,000 impoverished street children in 19th century London by sending them off to homes he established around the world -- including one in Peterborough.

"My head is still reeling," says the 30-year-old Brazier from his hotel in Covent Garden. "Two weeks ago, I would have thought this was impossible. Whose life did I steal?"

It started on June 15, when Brazier flew down to New York to audition for the romantic lead in the Broadway version of The Woman in White, Lloyd Webber's current London hit.

He obviously made an impression because a few days later, he got a call from the Really Useful Group, Lloyd Webber's producing company, asking if he was free to play the central role in The Likes of Us.

"This was a Monday," recalls Brazier, "and I asked them when I had to leave. They said Sunday, and I was like, 'Why not?'"

Brazier will be taking part in the central event of the annual Sydmonton Festival, a private arts festival that Lloyd Webber holds each summer at his country estate 85 kilometres southwest of London, where he is officially known as Baron Lloyd Webber of Sydmonton.

Workshops here have launched such shows as The Phantom of the Opera, Aspects of Love and Sunset Boulevard. Lloyd Webber invites an audience made up of the élite of the British theatrical profession, and their opinions of the production often determine whether or not it will continue.

The festival always attracts major interest, but it will be higher than usual this year, because this marks the first time in over 25 years that Lloyd Webber and Rice have worked on a show together.

After their trio of initial amazing successes (Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ, Superstar and Evita), they parted acrimoniously.

An attempt to reconcile them during Cats ended even more bitterly when Rice submitted a lyric for "Memory," only to have it rejected.

The show business world is wondering how the two former chums and partners will get along after all this time.

All of this is pretty heady stuff for Brazier, whose first performing memories centre around entertaining the crowds at the CNE who flocked to his father's Tiny Tom Donuts stand.

Brazier graduated from George Brown theatre school in 1996 and went straight into the Stratford Festival for two seasons. After that, he dabbled in film and TV before landing the highly coveted role of Sky, the young bridegroom, in Mamma Mia!

Brazier starred in the show's original Toronto production in 2000 and then went on tour across North America.

A stint on Broadway in the Tony Award-winning revival of Into the Woods followed, as well as starring roles in the last two Ross Petty Christmas pantomimes.

Brazier and the company will rehearse in London for two weeks before moving on to Sydmonton and the gala performances on the weekend of July 8.

After that, nothing is set, but Brazier will admit that the casting people for The Woman in White have ordered him to take no other jobs until they make their final decision.

"I'm sitting here in my hotel room," says Brazier, "listening on my tape recorder to a few of the songs I get to sing being banged out on a piano. These are songs no one has ever heard, written by two of the most important figures in the world of modern musicals. I am bewildered by my good fortune and every night I count my many blessings."

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