Broadway is on life support, warns Andrew Lloyd Webber.
After news broke that âCats: The Jellicle Ballâ â a reimagined version of his global phenomenon âCatsâ â will be closig after just four months, the musical theater impresario made a desperate plea online.
He urged âtheatre owners, unions and producersâ to work together to save the Great White Way.
âBroadway is in danger of rivaling Hollywoodâs empty soundstages,â he said, â[It] breaks my heart,â he wrote.
âOne of the last things [musical wizard] Hal Prince said to me was that it broke his heart that it was impossible for new or daring work to be originated on Broadway anymore,â he said.
âThe truth is that, for any show, it makes practically no financial sense to come to Broadway with things as they are,â he said.
âWould a show like West Side Story, a musical which changed musical theatre forever, have a remote chance to premiere on Broadway today?,â he wrote.
An insider told Page Six the catalyst for Webberâs post was âhis frustration with the cost of productions â especially a production he loves as much as this one.â
Webberâs latest iteration of his âlove-it-or-hate-it âCats,ââ as The Postâs theatre critic Johnny Oleksinski put it, started the season with rave reviews. (Oleksinski even gave it four stars and described it as a âeuphoric NYC reinvention of a Broadway classicâ).
The musical took home three Tony Awards out of its nine nominations last month.
Webber celebrated the nominations spinning a post-show set as his musical alter ego, DJ Webz, outside of the Broadhurst Theatre. (The moniker even followed him to the wedding of Taylor Swift â who starred in 2019 film adaption of âCatsâ â and Travis Kelce, wedding earlier this month. We hear paparazzi were calling him by his disco-spinning alter ego, as he exited the Madison Square Garden at nearly 1:00 a.m.).
Buzz alone, however, wasnât enough to keep the history-making musical on Broadway. Â âCreators, writers and directors have been forced to take minimal royalties from new shows, often surviving on a fixed weekly fee rather than a royalty,â he said.
âIt makes it impossible for young creatives to make a living from theatre alone⊠Of course, the established big hits are still profitable. But Broadway canât survive because of three old shows,â Webber said.
He concluded by begging âtheatre owners, unions and producers to come together urgently to address what is a crisis coming to a head.â
âBroadway is in dire danger of rivaling Hollywoodâs empty soundstages with incresingly dark theatres,â he signed off.
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