Picture: Roy Tan
Just hours after Cameron Mackintosh announced the Covid-curtain had fallen on the record-breaking West End and UK and Ireland touring productions of The Phantom of the Opera, Andrew Lloyd Webber took to Twitter to insist that “as far he was concerned the original London production would be reopening as soon as possible”.
The composer’s comment was echoed by the Really Useful Group’s president Jessica Koravos who told The Stage, the musical would definitely return to its London home, insisting the team would use the current closedown to renovate the three decade-old production.
A statement posted on the RUG website today (30 July 2020) reads: “When Andrew and Cameron re-launch Phantom in London it will be with a brand new physical production of Maria Bjornson’s original design, in a refurbished theatre. LWT have just taken a 50-year lease extension on Her Majesty’s and will do everything in their power to re-launch, better than ever, once the work is completed. We wish that we could put a date on it – but at this stage there are just too many variables. In summary, we can’t tell you exactly when the Phantom will be back but we can tell you that he will be back.”
Writing in the London Evening Standard newspaper, Mackintosh had revealed the production which was due to celebrate its 34th birthday at Her Majesty’s Theatre in October could not reopen while current social distancing measures remained in place. Headline writers focused on Mackintosh’s comment that both the London staging and touring production – which had only played its first dates before lockdown – were “permanently closed”.
Describing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s recent socially-distanced performance at the London Palladium as “Alice in Wonderland in its ridiculousness”, Mackintosh revealed the pair had been forced to accept the only show in history to have celebrated three decades on both sides of the Atlantic could not return to either the West End stage or touring theatres until Government guidelines were relaxed.
While insisting that both he and Lloyd Webber were “determined” to bring Phantom back in the future Mackintosh described the guidelines on social distancing in theatres as an “act of artistic and commercial bankruptcy”.
In a personal plea to Boris Johnson, Mackintosh pointed to the fact that in the last 400 years theatres have only been closed once for just over a year during the Great Plague in 1665 and during the Second World War theatre closed for a few weeks before ‘Churchill ordered them to reopen and help keep the spirits of the British people flying high through a terrible war — the show did go on and so did the British people.
“As a staunch Conservative, I have always admired Boris’s Churchillian spirit, so it would be a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions if history was to mark him down as the Prime Minister who presided over the closing down one of Britain’s greatest cultural and economic treasures for longer than the Black Death.
‘Theatres aren’t meant to be dark, so please, Boris: ‘Curtain up, light the lights, we have nothing to hit but the heights.’ We are all raring to go back to work. But we need the money to survive and a realistic period of time to plan wisely so that the curtain stays up once we reopen. We are fed up of no business, we want to be back in show business.”
Expressing his hope that “by Easter next year most of my productions and some of our theatres can reopen, so I can start re-employing most of the staff I’ve had to let go’, Mackintosh insisted theatre owners and producers would need ‘at least four months to remount our productions, rebuild our advance bookings and public confidence and bring our artists back to performance pitch”.
Referring to his recent ‘awful and distressing downsizing of his staff’ which has led to all actors, musicians, stage staff and freelancers losing their jobs and production and management being cut by 60%, Mackintosh went on to warn that: ‘If the Government is unable to support (the reopening of box offices by November at the latest), we’re likely to have to push back our reopening to next summer, causing further devastating losses to both the theatre industry and London’s economy, to which I have already contributed more than £1 billion in tax.’
Mackintosh also warned that with Broadway likely to be closed until next summer, “for the first time ever there are very few new shows waiting in the wings to replace the shows that fail. The creative supply line has been ruptured for at least 18 months. London and New York can’t properly function until theatres reopen”.
Angela Thomas
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