Andrew Lloyd Webber insists Alan Parker’s 1996 Evita movie is the best film adaptation of his work thanks to Madonna’s performance: “To this day, I don’t think anybody else could have done it better.”
Ever since the chandelier first crashed in thunderous fashion, “” has been a fixture of Broadway, becoming as iconic a symbol of theatergoing as the celebrity caricatures that adorn the walls at Sardi’s. Its mixture of soaring romanticism and spectacle fueled the beloved musical’s history-making run. Since the show’s debut on Jan.
“It’s slightly overwhelming, and it’s very emotional,” says Lloyd Webber. “This is my life. And for the past 16 months or so, the thing that one loves most in the world was taken away.” At a time when the theater industry was decimated by the pandemic, leaving hundreds of thousands out of work and playhouses on the verge of financial ruin, Lloyd Webber became the business’s most outspoken advocate. For months, he threatened, cajoled and pressured the authorities to loosen restrictions when COVID was easing and bolstered the creative community’s spirits with his passionate belief that theaters had a vital role to play on a planet riven by division and disease.
Broadway may be hosting audiences again, and the marquees of the West End theaters that Lloyd Webber operates have been relit, but the reality is that the industry’s recovery will be halting. The delta variant has complicated the economic rebound around the world, and tourism, which fuels attendance at shows in both London and New York, is still at marginal levels, resulting in sluggish ticket sales.
“People think of ‘Phantom’ as this hugely great show to look at, but it’s not as expensive or extravagant as you might think because essentially it’s a black box but with impressionist scenery in it,” says Lloyd Webber. “It wasn’t a show that my father directed and then moved on from,” says Prince. “My father regularly rehearsed the cast and picked and put in every major replacement. He made sure the show was always in a terrific place. The original creators made sure the quality was always maintained. And that’s a Herculean task. This is a show with 230 costumes and 111 wigs. It’s a production that requires 125 people every night to mount it, from the cast and crew to the orchestra. It’s a beast.
“I cast all of these actors because they were really very, very good,” says Lloyd Webber. “That’s the way one should approach it. If you are trying to find the right people for the right roles, you must be as open, inclusive and diverse as possible.” “It’s an opportunity to have a bit of fun, and we certainly needed some of that during lockdown,” he says.
Lloyd Webber mounted his first Broadway show, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” in 1971, and thanks to hits like “Evita,” “Cats” and “Phantom,” he has had a production running there continuously since 1979. In the ’80s and ’90s no one loomed larger in the theater business, and he was richly rewarded, nabbing those seven Tonys for “Phantom,” three Grammys and an Oscar, as well as a fortune estimated to eclipse 525 million pounds .
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