Maestro of musicals delivers squib
For 45 years, the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Sir Tim Rice have defined the genre and broken box-office records. But now, the theatre pioneers are united in failure, after the ambitious shows they launched apart have both been forced to close, mere months after opening, due to audience indifference. Lord Lloyd Webber’s much-hyped musical about the Profumo affair, Stephen Ward, is to close at the Aldwych Theatre after a run of four months. Producers have scrapped plans for a modest extension to the West End run and it will now end on 29 March. Fittingly, it is the same day that From Here to Eternity, Sir Tim’s latest production, comes to a premature close.
The lyricist’s Shaftesbury Theatre adaptation of James Jones’s wartime novel was due to run until the end of April but the house will go dark a month earlier, bringing the musical to a close after six months. Half-full houses did for the shows, which in Lord Lloyd Webber’s case is likely to mean a loss on the £2.5 million required to stage Stephen Ward.
Their failure may indicate that the musical- theatre baton has now passed from Lord Lloyd Webber, 65, and Sir Tim, 69, although Lord Lloyd Webber has announced he had begun work on new songs for his next theatre project, an adaptation of the hit film School of Rock. Tim Minchin, the composer of Matilda, which continues to play to packed houses on the West End and Broadway, has become the theatre world’s most soughtafter songsmith. Where once Lord Lloyd Webber and Sir Tim broke boundaries with Jesus Christ Superstar, the Tony-winning The Book of Mormon has added a contemporary, acerbic, satirical edge to the religious musical.
The most successful music and lyric-writing part- nership in musical theatre, Lord Lloyd Webber and Sir Tim first joined forces in 1965 and revitalised the form with the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. Parting ways after the huge success of Evita, which ran for four years on Broadway, their relationship has been strained during the intervening years. When Stephen Ward and Eternity opened within weeks of each other, it was perceived as a private boxoffice battle between the two ex-colleagues. Yet the challenge of launching two new, historically themed shows into a West End dominated by jukebox musicals and well-trodden revivals actually brought the duo together. THE INDEPENDENT