‘Keep your paws off Cats when I’m gone’
Cameron Mackintosh ensures his blockbuster musicals are staged unaltered in years to come
HE HAS been one of the greatest innovators of the West End, one of a handful of impresarios behind the modern blockbuster musical.
Now Cameron Mackintosh – the producer behind Cats, Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables and Miss Saigon – has said he does not want anyone adapting or altering any aspect of his shows when he dies.
Mackintosh, who has no children and turns 70 this year, has set up a foundation to take over the running of his theatre businesses, rather than leaving them to his relations.
The foundation already works behind the scenes in the industry, and last year it gave £679,000 to theatrical and medical causes.
But on Mackintosh’s death, it will be entrusted with preserving his vision of how the shows should be staged.
He said: “I’ve been successful beyond any of my dreams and I realise my foundation is going to be worth an absolute fortune. But it can’t create any new productions. I don’t want anyone getting their hands on it and using the money to make new versions of my shows.”
Should Mackintosh’s stipulations be followed – and no doubt they will – it means in effect the version of, for example, Les Misérables that the public sees in 2036 will be exactly the same as the one enjoyed by thousands of theatregoers since it premiered in 1985.
It is a singular ambition in the theatre world. After all, ever since Greek dramatists first devised staged plays that tell a story, each new generation has taken works and recreated them in its own image. From new productions of the classical tragedies to re-adaptations of Shakespeare in modern dress, theatre has changed constantly with the times.
But Mackintosh wants none of that. Instead, he seeks to fulfil a promise to audiences that what they see in the future will be as good as if he were still here, in charge.
“When I did Les Mis, I said, I’m not going to take this on the road unless it’s as good as what people have read about, with the same lighting and the same sound,” he said, explaining the rationale behind the foundations’ strict stipulations.
“I think that’s my biggest bequest – that I impose my standards. It’s sensible, actually, because the real thing will last longer than something shoddy.”
Indeed, Mackintosh, who lives in Somerset with Michael Le Poer Trench, a theatre photographer, is famous for refusing to allow anything shoddy past his all-controlling gaze.
Richard Johnston, who manages the eight West End theatres owned by Mackintosh, said: “I was in one meeting when he talked about the design of the loo-roll holders for half an hour. He’s incredibly curious. If he comes into a room for the first time, he looks in every cupboard to see what could be done with it.”
Mackintosh appears to be relying on his ownership of the performance rights to his musicals to stipulate that they can be staged only as he intended.
As a result, nobody would be able to stage his works without his permission, or in future that of the foundation, for the duration of his copyright – currently at least 70 years.
Mackintosh’s success has its roots in a boozy lunch in 1980 with his great creative partner and rival, Andrew Lloyd Webber, during which the pair developed an idea Lloyd Webber had been kicking around of a musical based on some of T S Eliot’s poems.
“We went back to his flat and he played me some of his settings of Old
Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” said Mackintosh. Soon – after the small matter of Lloyd Webber taking out a second mortgage towards the £450,000 production costs – Cats was born.
At the time such a show seemed a fanciful idea.
“The idea of the British doing any musical was fairly risible, but doing a dance musical was considered total lunacy. Only the Americans did that,” Mackintosh told the FT Weekend Magazine.
But the gamble paid off. Cats made a 60-fold return for investors, with the 240 backers receiving £26.8 million over its 21-year run, while Les Mis has made £47 million for its 68 original “angels”, 78 times the money they put in.
Mackintosh’s other shows all became global phenomena, playing year after year on stages from San Francisco to Shanghai and all points in between.
Little wonder he wants to ensure his successors don’t change a single note (or, for that matter, stage direction).