Andrew Lloyd Webber warns Broadway is in ‘dire danger’ after early closing of ‘Cats: The Jellicle Ball’
Broadway is on life support, warns Andrew Lloyd Webber.
After news broke that “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” — a reimagined version of his global phenomenon “Cats” — will be closig after just four months, the musical theater impresario made a desperate plea online.
He urged “theatre owners, unions and producers” to work together to save the Great White Way.
“Broadway is in danger of rivaling Hollywood’s empty soundstages,” he said, “[It] breaks my heart,” he wrote.
“One 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,” he said.
“The truth is that, for any show, it makes practically no financial sense to come to Broadway with things as they are,” he said.
“Would a show like West Side Story, a musical which changed musical theatre forever, have a remote chance to premiere on Broadway today?,” he wrote.
An insider told Page Six the catalyst for Webber’s post was “his frustration with the cost of productions — especially a production he loves as much as this one.”
Webber’s latest iteration of his “love-it-or-hate-it ‘Cats,’” as The Post’s theatre critic Johnny Oleksinski put it, started the season with rave reviews. (Oleksinski even gave it four stars and described it as a “euphoric NYC reinvention of a Broadway classic”).
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 — who starred in 2019 film adaption of “Cats” — 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, wasn’t enough to keep the history-making musical on Broadway. “Creators, writers and directors have been forced to take minimal royalties from new shows, often surviving on a fixed weekly fee rather than a royalty,” he said.
“It makes it impossible for young creatives to make a living from theatre alone… Of course, the established big hits are still profitable. But Broadway can’t survive because of three old shows,” Webber said.
He concluded by begging “theatre owners, unions and producers to come together urgently to address what is a crisis coming to a head.”
“Broadway is in dire danger of rivaling Hollywood’s empty soundstages with incresingly dark theatres,” he signed off.
