Andrew Lloyd Webber is speaking out against the untenable costs of Broadway after the early closure of Cats: The Jellicle Ball.
“The painful truth is that, with things as they are, bringing almost any new show to Broadway makes little financial sense,” the Cats composer wrote on X Tuesday. “The costs are immense. Creators, writers and directors are often forced to accept minimal royalties simply to get work staged.”
“Without action, Broadway risks rivalling Hollywood’s empty soundstages: increasingly dark theatres where bold new work once lived,” he warned.
Cats: The Jellicle Ball, a reimagined revival of Lloyd Webber’s ‘80s classic in the style of a ballroom competition, announced Monday that it would play its final performance Aug. 8, after only about five months on Broadway. The news has sparked outcry among cast and company members and across the industry, as the show was well-reviewed and appeared to be healthy on paper, with high attendance and weekly grosses around $1 million. But this could not compete with the high weekly running costs of Broadway musicals, which have been increasing in the past years.
“One of the last things the great Hal Prince said to me was that it broke his heart to see what Broadway was becoming,” Lloyd Webber wrote of the late ‘Phantom of the Opera’ and ‘Evita’ director. “Hal believed it had become almost impossible for genuinely new, daring work to originate on Broadway. I fear he was right.”
