Editor Reviews:

Album Details:
2005 Digitally Remastered (At Abbey Road Studios) of the Original London Cast of the Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber Musical. Includes Full Libretto and Deluxe Packaging.

Amazon.com:
At the beginning of this two-disc CD, recorded live at England's Sydmonton Festival, the Narrator (a droll Stephen Fry) welcomes the audience "to the 40th-anniversary performance and yet world premiere" of The Likes of Us. The show was the first collaboration between composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice, back in 1966, but it was never produced, and the duo went on to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Interestingly, The Likes of Us displays embryonic elements of both aspects of Webber's work: the early pop- and rock- tinged offerings ("You Can Never Make It Alone") and the latter neoclassical strains ("How Am I to Know," which can easily be imagined as a Phantom-type aria) with little hints of operetta ("Strange and Lovely Song"). Based on the story of the Victorian philanthropist, Dr. Thomas Barnardo, the show also incorporates a children's chorus, making it all sound at times--quite often, really—-like a slightly haphazard version of Oliver. It's a fascinating piece of juvenilia, but as such is of interest mostly to Webberheads. --Elisabeth Vincentelli

Rating : - Prototype Andrew Lloyd Webber
Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber were once so young that nobody would take them seriously enough to stage their early work.

Undaunted, they cobbled together a first effort, and when nobody was interested quickly pressed on with something completely different. The result - like so many musicals and operas that didn't quite make it - was partially lost - in particular the original "book". All that is left were the songs.

So this is a concert version, with connecting comment from a narrator, rather than either a record of a "real" (staged) performance, or a conventional "original cast recording" with the songs extracted from their context.

It has to be said, even by someone who on the whole admires ALW, that this is well short of being a forgotten "Evita". None the less - we have to be grateful that the songs have at last been recorded. I agree with another reviewer's opinion of the "staying power" of the commentary - which sounds as if it has been more or less ad-libbed and does not improve with repeated hearings - it is indeed a shame it is not on separate tracks so it can be "programmed out".

But yes, if you take your musicals seriously you will obviously want this one for your collection. I doubt if it will ever be on anyone's list as their favourite Andrew Lloyd Webber, but who can tell?

One exercise that will be found amusing by people who know Webber's work is tracing bits of music he later re-cycled in other works. The composer commented on looking at the score again after so many years that he had always felt that he had re-used so much that this alone would have precluded a production - and was surprised to find so little he was aware of reusing.