The SHOW WILL GO ON (AT LAST!)
He’s spent £1m a month keeping his theatres afloat. Yesterday, determined that his new blockbuster will open in July come what may, Andrew Lloyd Webber started rehearsals with an audience of one ...the Mail
BEHIND the deserted streets of london’s theatreland, with its dog-eared publicity posters and abandoned box offices, life is finally stirring at the Gillian lynne theatre.
mostly, it has to be said, in the diminutive form of Andrew lloyd Webber, who springs on to the stage with the bounce (and knees) of a man half his age.
‘I’m on stage. I’m in a theatre! Ah the joy!’ he cries, lifting his arms to the gods and beaming wide.
‘I can’t believe it! Welcome, welcome, welcome!’
Even better, Britain’s legendary composer and impresario is not alone. All around — at a Covidcompliant distance, and beaming almost as much as their hero — are technicians, lighting experts, half a dozen members of the chorus and a couple of principals, all here for the first day of rehearsals for Cinderella, his much-delayed new musical.
Which, Andrew says, after endless delays, will open on July 14 — whatever the Government says.
‘We’re absolutely going ahead. It’s time, and we’ll just open and if they arrest us all, well, fine. they’re going to have to get an army to stop us now!’ he says to the ecstatic crowd.
‘I’m not going to keep my theatres closed any more. We will open!’
He also insists — very firmly — that there will be no social distancing.
‘With a performance like this, we have to be over 80 per cent capacity to even break even,’ he tells me.
‘I want to see the science behind keeping us closed and all this nonsense about social distancing when people are allowed to eat without masks in marquees in pub gardens. I feel very, very strongly about this.’
Andrew — who, it turns out, feels strongly about a lot of things — owns seven london theatres, including the Palladium and the theatre Royal, Drury lane.
thanks to the success of his Really Useful theatre Group, he is worth around £820million, has won countless awards, dominated the musical theatre scene for decades and, until lockdown, was juggling 32 active productions worldwide.
At 72 and with five children, he is happily married to third wife madeleine, has battled back from prostate cancer, and, thanks to daily walks and swims, looks trim, wonderfully bouffant in the hair department — and surprisingly bouncy.
so, during lockdown, he could quite justifiably have put his feet up, tinkered about on the piano at his sumptuous country home and, well, slowed down a teeny bit.
HE looks appalled at the thought. ‘No one would suggest that to me!’ he cries. ‘they would know it would be a very pointless exercise. I can’t stop. No, no, no!
‘that’s why I went on the vaccine trial as soon as they said ancient people like me could,’ he continues, telling me that he recently had a blood test that showed him ‘absolutely teeming’ with antibodies.
‘so exciting! It was the oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine, the one macron and merkel were very rude about,’ he says. ‘Perhaps they could send back the millions of doses. or pass them on to Rwanda, or somewhere where they’ll be appreciated.’
Anyway . . . instead of pottering about at home, he has spent the past year doing everything possible to save london’s devastated theatre community.
He has lobbied the Government on behalf of the live arts sector and proffered the Palladium as a test lab for Covid-proofing techniques (such as chemical mist sprays and selfcleaning door handles).
FoR a while, he even embraced tiktok — a social media video-sharing platform loved by teens — until his daughter, Isabella, who is responsible for his online presence, reportedly banned him.
It cost him more than £1million a month just to keep his london theatres afloat during lockdown, but that hasn’t stopped him taking advantage of the performance hiatus to spend millions more on refurbishments — improving seating, bars, dressing rooms, remodelling auditoriums and adding 168 (mostly women’s) loos to his venues. ‘I just didn’t want to stop,’ he says. so now he is pushing forward relentlessly with the launch of Cinderella (co-created with killing Eve writer Emerald Fennell and starring Carrie Hope Fletcher), as well as the reopening of Phantom of the opera and Joseph And the Amazing technicolor Dreamcoat, all in July.
‘If we get a situation where, for serious medical reasons, we can’t carry on, then obviously we can’t,’ he says. ‘But this time I am not going to take it lying down.
‘We’ve got to get moving again. that is my top priority,’ he says. ‘the reality is there are sovereign wealth funds and maybe Chinese buyers who are circling around.’
Not that any of his theatres will ever be for sale, thankfully.
‘I’d have to be at the very end of the very last ditch before I sold one of my buildings,’ he says. ‘luckily, there aren’t many theatres they could buy at the moment.’ He credits Culture
Secretary Oliver Dowden with ‘fighting our corner as much as he can’, but says the whole industry is struggling in the wake of the Government’s stop-start Covid controls, the lack of support for commercial theatres and what he calls the ‘so-called scientists’ at SAGE.
‘Remember, they’re unpaid!’ he says. ‘So they are probably extremely annoyed that what was a nice honorary position is now something where you have to say and do something!’
And ‘doing something’ is something he could give a masterclass in as, towards the end of our chat, he whisks me off round the corner to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, to give me a taste of the extraordinary £45million refurbishment — the grand salons, the glorious remodelled auditorium with 300 fewer seats and a lush red velvet cosiness — due to be completed before he hands it over to Disney for Frozen later this year.
‘I’ve loved architecture since I was a boy!’ he says, lighting up like a little genie as he skips up and down the vast, sweeping staircases in his hard hat. ‘What better thing to get on with.’
Meanwhile, back at the newly refurbished Gillian Lynne, all dreams are firmly focused on July.
Carrie Hope Fletcher, who plays the lead, has been waiting in the wings for nearly two years already.
‘My first workshop for Cinderella was in May 2019!’ she says.
She, like the rest of the ensemble cast, has had a pretty rubbish lockdown, doing anything to fill the time as the goal posts have shifted once, twice, again. Lauren, 25, has been giving singing lessons on Zoom. Lydia has taught ballet. Andy, 38, has been shielding with his vulnerable partner and ‘generally going mad’. Will has worked as a labourer to pay the rent.
But, finally, they are back where they belong and they couldn’t look happier as the technical crew starts lowering sections of elaborate scenery to show them.
As a pair of ornate royal gates appear amid the sparkly lights, Andrew himself gazes up, his eyes looking suspiciously dewy, and says: ‘That’s what it’s all about.’
‘It’s incredible just to be here,’ says Andy from the ensemble. ‘We all know that, come hell or high water, this man is going to get the show on.’
And then, if things go to plan? What’s next for the patron saint of theatre — a holiday, perhaps?
Andrew Lloyd Webber looks bemused. ‘I need to get back to my day job and write a new show! After all, Cinderella should have started last year, so I’m very behind!’