Broadway is on life help, warns Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Following information that “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” — a reimagined model of his international phenomenon “Cats” — was closing after simply 4 months, the musical theater impresario made a determined plea on-line.
He urged “theater house owners, unions and producers” to work collectively to save lots of the Nice White Means.
“Broadway dangers competing with the empty soundstages of Hollywood,” he stated.[It] It breaks my coronary heart,” he wrote.
“One of many final issues [musical wizard] Hal Prince instructed me it broke his coronary heart that it was now unattainable to create new or daring works on Broadway,” he stated.
“The reality is, for any present, it makes nearly no monetary sense to come back to Broadway with issues as they’re,” he stated.
“Would a present like West Facet Story, a musical that modified musical theater endlessly, have a slim likelihood of premiering on Broadway as we speak?,” he wrote.
An insider instructed Web page Six that the catalyst for Webber’s message was “his frustration with the price of productions — particularly a manufacturing he loves as a lot as this one.”
Webber’s newest iteration of his love-it-or-hate-it “Cats,” as Put up theater critic Johnny Oleksinski put it, started the season with rave critiques. (Oleksinski even gave it 4 stars and described it as a “euphoric New York reimagining of a Broadway traditional”).
The musical gained three Tony Awards from 9 nominations final month.
Webber celebrated the nominations by filming a post-show as his musical alter ego, DJ Webz, exterior the Broadhurst Theatre. (The nickname even adopted him to the marriage of Taylor Swift — who starred within the 2019 movie adaptation of “Cats” — and Travis Kelce’s wedding ceremony earlier this month. We heard paparazzi calling him by his disco alter ego as he left Madison Sq. Backyard at almost 1 a.m.).
Buzz alone, nonetheless, wasn’t sufficient to maintain the landmark musical on Broadway. “Creators, writers and administrators have been pressured to gather minimal royalties from new reveals, typically surviving on a flat weekly charge fairly than a royalty,” he stated.
“It is unattainable for younger creatives to make a residing from theater alone…After all, the large established hits stay worthwhile. However Broadway cannot survive due to three outdated reveals,” Webber stated.
He concluded by imploring “theater house owners, unions and producers to urgently come collectively to confront this disaster which is reaching its climax”.
“Broadway is in grave hazard of competing with Hollywood’s empty soundstages and its more and more darkish theaters,” he concluded.