The night Lloyd Webber became a panto villain
As curtain falls on Cinderella, cast winces and audience boos when director reads out letter from tycoon branding it ‘costly mistake’
THE cast of Cinderella was left wincing after Andrew Lloyd Webber was booed by the audience for branding the musical a ‘costly mistake’.
The stage show, which was running at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in London’s Covent Garden and suffered a number of Covid-related setbacks, finished on Sunday night – less than a year after it opened.
Lord Lloyd-Webber came under fire last month after the cast and crew were gathered for a meeting and told the show would be cancelled after racking up ‘unsustainable’ losses.
But some cast members hit out
‘Lost £700,000 overnight’
after claiming they only found out the news through social media.
On stage at Sunday night’s show, director Laurence Connor read out a letter from Lord Lloyd-Webber, who was notably absent from the performance. Mention of the theatre boss’s name provoked boos.
In the letter, the composer, 74, said he was ‘immensely proud’ of the production, which opened last August, but added: ‘I keep thinking if only we had opened three months later, we wouldn’t have had to postpone our opening twice because of Covid.
‘If only we hadn’t had to close for a month over Christmas and New Year once again thanks to Covid. And if only we had had help from the recovery fund, I promise you we would have been here for a very long time to come.’ He continued: ‘It might have been a costly mistake but I am proud of what we did and will forever be grateful to everyone who supported me.’
Cinderella opened with an audience capacity of 50 per cent and closed hours before the premiere last July after a cast member tested positive for Covid. Performances were then suspended from late December to early February.
Sources indicated it had been losing up to £50,000 a week for the entirety of the run.
In November Lord Lloyd-Webber launched a broadside against the Government over arts funding: ‘When we had to cancel Cinderella in July we lost overnight £700,000, and the fact of the matter is, whatever the Government thinks, if this all happened again certainly we would go under.’
Lord Lloyd-Webber has said a new production of Cinderella will open on Broadway next year.
Last night the composer said he is ‘devastated’ by reports of him saying the show was a ‘costly mistake’. On Twitter, he said: ‘I am devastated to have been reported to have said that my beloved production of Cinderella was a “costly mistake”.
Nothing could be further from the truth and I am very sorry if my words have been misunderstood. I adore this production and I am incredibly, incredibly proud of Cinderella and everyone who has been involved in our show.’
A spokesman for his Really Useful Group said: ‘The reference to a “costly mistake”... related to the early opening of the show and the myriad challenges faced because of the Covid-19 pandemic, which the full text makes clear’.