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Andrew Lloyd Webber: ‘If you want to stop theatre, you’ll have to arrest us’

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Michael Ejercito

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9 jun 2021, 9:29:55 a.m.9/6/21
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http://archive.vn/kMmXM

http://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/nvpyku/andrew_lloyd_webber_youll_have_to_arrest_us_to/


Amid fears of more social distancing, Lloyd Webber insists his new
musical Cinderella will open on June 25 ‘come hell or high water’
By
Dominic Cavendish,
THEATRE CRITIC
8 June 2021 • 9:45pm
Andrew Lloyd Webber at the Gillian Lynne Theatre, London
Defiant: Andrew Lloyd Webber at the Gillian Lynne Theatre, London
CREDIT: Rii Schroer/Daily Telegraph
Andrew Lloyd Webber, the world’s most successful composer of musicals,
is putting the finishing touches to his first new West End show in five
years. He should be preparing to celebrate − the first preview is just
over two weeks away, with opening night set to follow on July 14 −
instead, he’s spoiling for a fight.
The world premiere of his £6 million Cinderella depends on social
distancing being lifted, in accordance with the Government’s “roadmap”,
on June 21, a promised milestone that looks increasingly in doubt. Yet,
Lloyd Webber tells me, his voice bristling with defiance, “We are going
to open, come hell or high water”. What if the Government demands a
postponement? “We will say: come to the theatre and arrest us.”
The buzz around Cinderella, Lloyd Webber’s 17th major musical since
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in 1968, is intense, not
least because its book is by Emerald Fennell, the Oscar-winning writer,
director and producer of Promising Young Woman. Lloyd Webber has known
35-year-old Fennell, who also appeared as Camilla Parker Bowles in The
Crown, since she was a child – he’s an old friend of her mother and
father, the jeweller Theo Fennell.
He seized on her scenario, dashed off in 48 hours back in 2018, when she
was still best known for playing Nurse Patsy in Call the Midwife. Her
sparky treatment upends the familiar telling of the fairy tale, instead
presenting, as Lloyd Webber puts it, “a world where people go to extreme
lengths to make themselves beautiful, and our Cinderella looks at it and
goes: this is weird”.
Lyrics by David Zippel stir stinging satire into the romance. “It’s
about being obsessed with changing yourself and being like the
Kardashians,” says Lloyd Webber. For Zippel, who also collaborated on
The Woman in White in 2004, the creative process was “joyful… Andrew
knew where he wanted it to go musically. There were times Emerald would
write a scene and I would musicalise it – it was a team effort.”
Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Emerald Fennell in rehearsals
Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Emerald Fennell in rehearsals
According to Nikolai Foster, artistic director of Leicester’s Curve
theatre, Lloyd Webber’s score marks “a return to A-game form… You’ve got
rock anthems that remind you of the excitement of Jesus Christ
Superstar, there are waltzes with nods to Rodgers and Hammerstein, and a
mind-blowing Bohemian Rhapsody-inspired segment in the second half. It’s
just what you want in a musical.”
We shall see. Or shall we? What should be the happy conclusion to a
creative journey that began in earnest in 2018, before being diverted by
the pandemic (Cinderella was originally due to open last August) is once
again in question. No show of this scale, with a bank-busting ensemble
of 34, is commercially viable while attendances remain capped at 50 per
cent of capacity.
Despite the success of the vaccine rollout, the mood music has suddenly
changed, and official caution is once again in the ascendant. Lloyd
Webber questions the justification for this. “I’ve seen the science from
the tests, don’t ask me how,” he says. “They all prove that theatres are
completely safe, the virus is not carried there. If the Government
ignore their own science, we have the mother of all legal cases against
them. If Cinderella couldn’t open, we’d go, ‘Look, either we go to law
about it or you’ll have to compensate us’.”
Carrie Hope Fletcher, in costume for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cinderella
Carrie Hope Fletcher as Cinderella, in costume
The stakes could hardly be higher. It costs Lloyd Webber £1 million a
month just to keep his six theatres dark. He has remortgaged his London
home – a townhouse in Belgravia, which he shares with his third wife,
Madeleine, mother to three of his five children – and has reportedly
borrowed more than £50 million, although he refuses to confirm that
figure today. According to The Sunday Times Rich List his personal net
worth has tumbled by £275 million in a year, to £525 million.
More challenges lie ahead. He has two other shows waiting in the wings:
a new production of The Phantom of the Opera, the West End’s second
longest-running show after Les Misérables, is set to take over the
refurbished Her Majesty’s Theatre from July 27; while a revival of
Joseph is also due at the Palladium that month. Then, as owner of the
Theatre Royal Drury Lane, London’s oldest playhouse, he’s also poised to
unveil a £60 million renovation in time for the UK stage premiere of
Disney’s Frozen in August. All of which leaves Lloyd Webber in a
position he describes as “acute financial stress. I don’t think [the
Government] understand it. We’ve never taken any profit out of the
theatres. I’ve always tried to put back in, which is why we’re in a
muddle now because we never had a big reserve.”
When we meet, early in the morning, at his (again, newly refurbished)
Gillian Lynne Theatre, Lloyd Webber’s usual, endearing air of eccentric
distraction has given way to twitchiness. Having shown tireless
leadership throughout the crisis, he seems a bit on edge. News has come
in of a government adviser counselling delay to the roadmap and his
office has just been contacted by Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden.
“They’ve said can we have a call at 5pm? No! I’m doing the day job now.
I will talk to him later.” The implication? Theatre is a serious
business, not to be treated lightly.
For months, he has been a proactive but pliable collaborator with
officialdom, on the inside track before news spilled out. Last year, he
says, he “knew on February 2 from a source in Government that it was
very likely there would be a lockdown. I got a coded message sent to me
– ‘Happy birthday!’ – from someone at a meeting.” So Lloyd Webber
gathered his staff and said: “‘OK, folks, we are going to have to close
down, we have to get a doomsday scenario in place.’ And people said,
‘You’re off your trolley!’” Six weeks later, the Prime Minister advised
the nation to “avoid pubs, clubs, theatres and other such social
venues”, effectively bringing down the curtain on live entertainment.
Andrew Lloyd Webber with his dog Mojito
'Theatres are completely safe': Andrew Lloyd Webber with his dog Mojito
CREDIT: Rii Schroer/Daily Telegraph
Now, Lloyd Webber’s patience is being stretched to breaking point.
“Unfortunately,” he says, “the Government regards theatre as a nice
thing to have rather than a necessity.” Aside from Dowden, he has had no
dealings with the top brass. “I don’t know Boris at all,” he remarks,
with some acidity. “He has shown no interest in getting in touch.”
Doubt over the wisdom of opening the West End’s first major new musical
in over a year is etched on his face. “I jumped the gun and all the
bigger shows have followed suit. I just hope I’m right. I took what I
thought was an informed decision on what I knew the Government wanted.”
If the goalposts keep moving, his worst-case scenario – being forced to
sell off his playhouses – will become a reality. “There is a real risk
of that,” he says. “I will fight to the last ditch to prevent that
happening but no one can deny that there are foreign buyers sniffing
around who would quite love to have these [theatres] as trophy assets.
They call them bottom-feeders, don’t they?”
The licence for the Gillian Lynne “is for a music venue til three in the
morning. If I lost it there’d be nothing I could do to stop someone
doing that.” He trails off, shudders. “In the end, it’s unthinkable.”
If Lloyd Webber’s London theatre empire crumbles, his life’s work, the
shows, can hardly be dismantled, even if they are sometimes glibly and
wrongly disparaged. He says he pays little heed to his detractors;
negative reviews don’t deter him from continuing, nor do flattering
appraisals persuade him that he’s a national treasure. “I never think
about what my profile is. I like to get on and do what I want to do.” He
notes, all the same, with some satisfaction that shows such as Jesus
Christ Superstar and Evita “were not greatly considered at the time, at
least by quite a number of people, and I think they’re now classics”.
His biggest flop of the past decade – Stephen Ward, about the socialite
osteopath at the heart of the Profumo scandal – lasted just a few months
in the winter of 2013-14. He concedes that it wasn’t up to scratch but
pleads illness: “I was on morphine!” (After prostate cancer, he had a
number of back operations.) He redeemed himself with School of Rock in
2015, an uproarious hit on both sides of the Atlantic.
The West End cast of Andrew Lloyd Webber's School of Rock in 2016
Uproarious: the West End cast of Andrew Lloyd Webber's School of Rock in
2016 CREDIT: Alastair Muir
That show, based on Richard Linklater’s 2003 film, was about Dewey Finn,
a slacker who inveigles his way into a private school and turns prim
classical music lessons into wild rock sessions. At the time, Lloyd
Webber – the elder son of composer and organist William Lloyd Webber and
violinist and pianist Jean (and, of course, elder brother of cellist
Julian) – told me how he identified with Finn’s anti-establishment
spirit, saying, “There was a day I was down to play piano at the school
concert and I got up and said, ‘I’m changing the agenda, I want to play
songs I’ve written’ – it was when the real me came out”. Whether it’s
Finn, or the Phantom, or for that matter Cinderella, Judas, Norma
Desmond, or even Evita, he’s drawn to outsiders.
Quite why, though, he hesitates to articulate. “I do relate to that
misfit [Finn] and I love stories that involve somebody who doesn’t
conform to convention but I never quite analyse it. It’s probably for
others to say.” That’s a classic bit of Lloyd Webberian deflection, done
with a brisk politesse as though there were much more important things
to do than clamber onto the analyst’s couch.
He’s less circumspect about his true feelings on the debacle of the Cats
film: “I wrote to the head of Universal and said, ‘You’ve got a car
crash on your hands unless you get a grip on this thing’, a year before
they made [it]. I didn’t even get a reply.”
By this point he is exiting the Gillian Lynne, and ushering me into his
own personal chauffeur-driven London taxi, to pop round the corner to
see the opulent goings-on at “The Lane”, as he calls the Theatre Royal,
brightening as he walks, workmen parting at his approach, like the Red
Sea before Moses; he’s so speedy it’s hard to keep up.
Raring to go: the cast of Cinderella
Raring to go: the cast of Cinderella
His biographer, Michael Coveney, finds that restlessness fascinating.
“What is appealing is this permanent sense of insecurity and I don’t
think it has ever changed. He’s the biggest thing in musical theatre
since Ivor Novello, in fact there’s no one comparable but he’s never
quite happy.”
Perhaps it’s worth taking him at face value too, though: a face that
lights up when he talks about returning Drury Lane to its palatial
former glory, or the way the front section of the Gillian Lynne
auditorium will magically spin on a revolve, so that some of Cinderella
can be performed in the round.
“I don’t know when or where or how I began to love musicals but I can’t
remember a time when I didn’t,” he says, 73 going on seven. “I think of
music all the time. I must have 30 to 40 melodies in my head that
haven’t found a home yet.”
The prosaic, wondrous truth may be that Andrew Lloyd Webber is a
once-in-a-generation gift to British theatre. It’s incumbent upon the
Government to handle that gift with utmost care.
Cinderella is at the Gillian Lynne Theatre, London WC2
(andrewlloydwebberscinderella.com) from June 25

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HeartDoc Andrew

no leída,
9 jun 2021, 9:46:15 a.m.9/6/21
para
MichaelE wrote:

>http://archive.vn/kMmXM
>
>http://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/nvpyku/andrew_lloyd_webber_youll_have_to_arrest_us_to/
>
>
>Amid fears of more social distancing, Lloyd Webber insists his new
>musical Cinderella will open on June 25 ‘come hell or high water’
>By
>Dominic Cavendish,
> THEATRE CRITIC
>8 June 2021 • 9:45pm
>Andrew Lloyd Webber at the Gillian Lynne Theatre, London
>Defiant: Andrew Lloyd Webber at the Gillian Lynne Theatre, London
>CREDIT: Rii Schroer/Daily Telegraph
>Andrew Lloyd Webber, the world’s most successful composer of musicals,
>is putting the finishing touches to his first new West End show in five
>years. He should be preparing to celebrate ? the first preview is just
>over two weeks away, with opening night set to follow on July 14 ?
>instead, he’s spoiling for a fight.
>The world premiere of his £6?million Cinderella depends on social
>The stakes could hardly be higher. It costs Lloyd Webber £1?million a
>month just to keep his six theatres dark. He has remortgaged his London
>home – a townhouse in Belgravia, which he shares with his third wife,
>Madeleine, mother to three of his five children – and has reportedly
>borrowed more than £50?million, although he refuses to confirm that
>figure today. According to The Sunday Times Rich List his personal net
>worth has tumbled by £275?million in a year, to £525?million.
>More challenges lie ahead. He has two other shows waiting in the wings:
>a new production of The Phantom of the Opera, the West End’s second
>longest-running show after Les Misérables, is set to take over the
>refurbished Her Majesty’s Theatre from July 27; while a revival of
>Joseph is also due at the Palladium that month. Then, as owner of the
>Theatre Royal Drury Lane, London’s oldest playhouse, he’s also poised to
>unveil a £60?million renovation in time for the UK stage premiere of
The only healthy way to stop the pandemic, thereby saving lives, in
the U.K. & elsewhere is by rapidly ( http://bit.ly/RapidTestCOVID-19 )
finding out at any given moment, including even while on-line, who
among us are unwittingly contagious (i.e pre-symptomatic or
asymptomatic) in order to http://bit.ly/convince_it_forward (John
15:12) for them to call their doctor and self-quarantine per their
doctor in hopes of stopping this pandemic. Thus, we're hoping for the
best while preparing for the worse-case scenario of the Alpha lineage
mutations and others like the Gamma, Beta, Epsilon, Iota, & Delta
lineage mutations combining to form hybrids that render current COVID
vaccines no longer effective.

Indeed, I am wonderfully hungry ( http://bit.ly/RapidTestCOVID-19 )
and hope you, Michael, also have a healthy appetite too.

So how are you ?








...because we mindfully choose to openly care with our heart,

HeartDoc Andrew <><
--
Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD
Cardiologist with an http://bit.ly/EternalMedicalLicense
2016 & upwards non-partisan candidate for U.S. President:
http://bit.ly/WonderfullyHungryPresident
and author of the 2PD-OMER Approach:
http://bit.ly/HeartDocAndrewCare
which is the only **healthy** cure for the U.S. healthcare crisis

Michael Ejercito

no leída,
9 jun 2021, 9:49:35 a.m.9/6/21
para
I am wonderfully hungry!


Michael

HeartDoc Andrew

no leída,
9 jun 2021, 9:55:20 a.m.9/6/21
para
MichaelE wrote:
> I am wonderfully hungry!


While wonderfully hungry in the Holy Spirit, Who causes (Deuteronomy
8:3) us to hunger, I note that you, Michael, not only don't have
COVID-19 but are rapture (Luke 17:37) ready and pray (2 Chronicles
7:14) that our Everlasting (Isaiah 9:6) Father in Heaven continues to
give us "much more" (Luke 11:13) Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) so
that we'd have much more of His Help to always say/write that we're
"wonderfully hungry" in **all** ways including especially caring to
http://bit.ly/convince_it_forward (John 15:12 as shown by
http://bit.ly/RapidTestCOVID-19 ) with all glory (
http://bit.ly/Psalm117_ ) to GOD (aka HaShem, Elohim, Abba, DEO), in
the name (John 16:23) of LORD Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Amen.

Laus DEO !

Be hungrier, which really is wonderfully healthier especially for
diabetics and other heart disease patients:

http://bit.ly/HeartDocAndrewToutsHunger (Luke 6:21a) with all glory to
GOD, Who causes us to hunger (Deuteronomy 8:3) when He blesses us
right now (Luke 6:21a) thereby removing the http://HeartMDPhD.com/VAT
from around the heart

...because we mindfully choose to openly care with our heart,

HeartDoc Andrew <><
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