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“It does look as if people are a bit nervous about coming back to the theater, particularly in America,” says Lloyd Webber. 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. The inconsistency bothered me.”īroadway 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. In the meantime, 100,000 football fans were singing their hearts out completely uncontrolled at Wembley Stadium. At the time if you were in an amateur choir, you were not allowed to gather with more than six people. “You can’t perform a musical of any scale to 50% of your audience because you’re just losing money left, right and center. “It was slightly taken out of context, but there comes a point where if the law’s an ass, you just have to say that it’s an ass,” says Lloyd Webber. His point, he argues, was that the science suggested the vaccines were effective, and authorities were already allowing sports events to play to packed arenas. Months later and with “Cinderella” opened (to great reviews), Lloyd Webber downplays his willingness to exchange capacity crowds for jail time. “Come to the theater and arrest us,” he challenged.
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His campaign reached its apex last summer when he vowed to move forward with debuting his musical “Cinderella” to full houses in June whether or not Boris Johnson’s government eased restrictions. 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. Instead, he went to war.”Īt 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. He could have sat back and seen what happened. He was a champion for the community, and he didn’t have to be. “It’s pretty universally acknowledged that he was there for us. “He was the hero we all needed,” says Sammi Cannold, a theater director who chronicled Lloyd Webber’s advocacy in the recent documentary “The Show Must Go On.” It also meant overhauling some of the spaces that Lloyd Webber owned by updating their ventilation systems, adding restrooms so people would not be on top of each other and installing sanitizing door handles and thermal-imaging cameras at certain venues. These included instituting strict COVID protocols among cast and crew - mandating social distancing, mask-wearing and vaccinations, when the latter became available.
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after seeing how successfully touring productions of “Phantom” and “ Cats” were mounted in Australia and South Korea during the darkest days of the virus. At the same time, he worked to integrate a new set of best practices at the five theaters he owns in the U.K.
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He is fully aware of the dangers that the pandemic poses, and he’s embraced the science, signing up to be part of the Oxford vaccine trial in summer 2020. And for the past 16 months or so, the thing that one loves most in the world was taken away.” “It’s slightly overwhelming, and it’s very emotional,” says Lloyd Webber. Now, finally, London’s theater district is humming with activity and New York’s is welcoming back audiences. Throughout the pandemic he has waged a ceaseless campaign on both sides of the Atlantic to get theaters reopened, even vowing to defy authorities and risk imprisonment if the British government prevented his West End venues from operating at full capacity. There is a reason that Lloyd Webber is feeling so jocular. The mask, of course, is a reference to the crescent-shaped facial covering that the Phantom sports in a show that remains the longest running in Broadway history. “Why not give him a hat? Or better yet, a mask.” “We really must dress him up,” Lloyd Webber jokes to an associate during his interview with Variety at the New York theater, where “Phantom” will have its grand reopening on Oct. At the center of the action is Andrew Lloyd Webber, the mega-selling musical impresario who has made his first trip across the pond since lockdown and is now staring quizzically at a bust of Julius Caesar that was taken out of storage and placed in the lobby at some point over the past year and a half.