How ‘Evita’ and ‘Sunset Blvd.’ Made Andrew Lloyd Webber Hot Again

“We couldn’t allow things to just trundle along,” Andrew Lloyd Webber says. “We had to make a big change.”

He’s drumming his fingers on the dining room table of his Upper West Side apartment as he recounts the cascade of catastrophes that recently reshaped his life and career.

For so long Lloyd Webber, one of the most successful composers in history, had minted money, with his blockbuster musicals like “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Cats” playing for decades on Broadway and in the West End. But COVID changed that, shuttering theaters, including the six London venues that Lloyd Webber owns and operates. In an instant, the live entertainment juggernaut that he had built meticulously over five decades was struggling to survive.

“I became very aware that there was no alternative source of income in any other areas than live theater,” Lloyd Webber says.

Once the worst of the pandemic was over, things didn’t get much better. Audiences returned, but in fits and starts. Citing declining ticket sales, the owners of the Majestic Theatre announced in 2022 that they were closing “The Phantom of the Opera,” ending its 35-year run in New York, despite Lloyd Webber’s objections. Then “Bad Cinderella,” the Broadway transfer of his West End musical, opened in March 2023. In contrast to London, where it was warmly received, reviews here were scathing, with one critic warning, “Bring earplugs.” It closed just three months later. Much of this happened as Lloyd Webber was grieving an unimaginable loss. His son Nicholas had died at the age of 43 from gastric cancer two days after “Bad Cinderella” opened.

“Our family situation was absolutely horrendous,” says Madeleine Lloyd Webber, the composer’s wife and the group president of his companies. “We should have just drawn a line and said, ‘Right, we’re opting out of everything for a year.’ But we didn’t.”

Rather than breaking Lloyd Webber, this emotional gauntlet inspired him to overhaul the way he approached his business and his art, sparking a remarkable comeback that has made him the toast of the theater world again. Over the past two years, he’s partnered with a brilliant crop of iconoclastic directors who have reimagined many of his signature shows in radical ways. Last June, “Sunset Blvd.,” Jamie Lloyd’s stripped-down version of the classic story of Hollywood excess, won the Tony for best revival, the first time in 30 years that a Lloyd Webber show has received the top prize. In July, a Lloyd directed revival of “Evita,” which staged the life of Eva Perón as a pop concert worthy of Beyoncé, became the hottest ticket of the summer in London. And this month, Diane Paulus will debut “Masquerade,” an immersive production of “The Phantom of the Opera” that she says will give Broadway audiences a “more intimate” experience of the famous love story.

“Andrew has been incredibly open to all of this,” says Michael Harrison, the producer of “Sunset Blvd.” and “Evita.” “He wants this to be people’s interpretation of his work. He’s perfectly happy for them to approach these shows almost as a blank page.”

Two years removed from the closures of “Phantom” and “Bad Cinderella,” Lloyd Webber, who is in town to watch rehearsals of “Masquerade” before flying to Los Angeles to see Cynthia Erivo and Adam Lambert in his rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar” at the Hollywood Bowl, has never been busier or more relevant. And next year “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” which trades dancing kitties for the club kids and drag artists who defined ’80s ballroom culture, will transfer to Broadway after an extended run downtown at Perelman Performing Arts Center.

“The show hit a nerve,” Lloyd Webber says of “The Jellicle Ball.” “I didn’t understand it until I saw it, but it works very well. My contribution has been to let the work go and hand it over to these artists.”

At the same time that he started enlisting new collaborators, Lloyd Webber decided to overhaul The Really Useful Group, the licensing and production company that controls the rights to his music and shows. In 2023, he hired James McKnight, a veteran executive who had helped J.K. Rowling grow her Harry Potter empire beyond books, to transform his business as its CEO. (Lloyd Webber calls him “quite a catch.”) The goal is to evolve The Really Useful Group from a sleepy theater company into an entertainment powerhouse with a hand in everything from gaming to movies to consumer products.

“Andrew set up this company 50 years ago to manage his work, but the world has changed so much over those decades,” McKnight says. “It’s time for a new vision. We see it as setting us up for the next 50 years.”

The new era will start with a different name — The Really Useful Group has been rechristened LW Entertainment, which more explicitly reflects the company’s focus on different types of media.

McKnight, an ebullient personality with a slight Scottish brogue, believes “The Phantom of the Opera,” which has earned more than $6 billion globally, should serve as the fulcrum of the new enterprise.

“It’s the most globally produced show in the world, but I still feel like it could be so much more,” McKnight says. “There’s more to do in fashion, in gaming, in interactive, in consumer products. There’s lots of opportunities.”

McKnight sees great potential for Lloyd Webber’s work in the publishing world and in Hollywood. LW Entertainment has signed a multibook deal with Penguin Random House, which will kick off with “Our Strange Duet,” a YA novel based on “Phantom” that will be written by bestselling author Erin A. Craig. And it has enlisted Justin Leach, an executive producer on “Star Wars: Visions,” to create an anime series based on the Phantom’s obsession with Christine. The company is also talking to studios about making films adapted from some of Lloyd Webber’s most-loved shows. Joel Schumacher’s “The Phantom of the Opera” was a box office hit, but Lloyd Webber felt that Gerard Butler was miscast as the Phantom in the 2004 film. “It’s an open secret that I wanted Antonio Banderas,” he says.

He and McKnight are trying to mount a new movie adaptation, one that will have the Phantom played by an actor who is much older than the actress playing Christine. “The whole point of the story is the confusion Christine feels about whether the Phantom is a romantic interest or a father figure,” Lloyd Webber says. “The first film cast the Phantom too young.”

McKnight also mentions “Jesus Christ Superstar,” which was adapted by Norman Jewison into a 1973 film, as ripe for a fresh cinematic take. And Nicole Scherzinger, who drew raves and won a Tony playing Norma Desmond, hopes that “Sunset Blvd.” can lead to a movie.

“I’m trying to manifest it,” she says. “I keep putting it out there in the universe. There are only so many people who could see it in the theater, so making a film would let us share it with the world.”

The Lloyd Webber family credits McKnight with launching the composer’s official fan community, The Box Five Club (a reference to the Phantom’s seat of choice), which provides subscribers with early access to ticketing, as well as behind-the-scenes footage and interviews. The company expects the fan service, which debuted in October, to have a million signups by the end of the year.

“James grew this from absolutely zero,” Madeline Lloyd Webber says. “James understood that we have fans all over the world. They’re fragmented and we need to bring them together in one place.” 

All this activity is dramatically shifting the focus of Lloyd Webber’s company, treating the legendary composer and his work as a brand like Star Wars, Marvel, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. It’s an interesting moment to enact such sweeping changes, because Lloyd Webber is 77, an age when many of his contemporaries, from Bob Dylan to Sting, have sold their catalogs for hundreds of millions of dollars. The Lloyd Webbers say that the composer’s four surviving children all play a central role in the family business and want to grow it instead of cashing in.

“All these people who sell their copyrights are idiots,” Lloyd Webber says. “They’re waving goodbye to one’s birthright. They just get passed along the line by private equity, and they exploit them without any engagement with the creators. It’s ridiculous.”

Lloyd Webber isn’t done creating new shows either. He spent much of the summer working on “The Illusionist,” an adaptation of the 2006 Edward Norton film about a magician in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century, that he hopes will open in London in 2027.

“These changes at the company have left me able to get on and do the new work,” he says. “I’m pretty much finished with ‘The Illusionist,’ and I have a plan in place for what I’d like to do next. This is what I enjoy doing and what I’m best at doing.”

To that end, Lloyd Webber decided to step back from producing his own work. Instead, he formed a joint venture with Harrison, who now handles both his new productions and the revivals of his older shows. It was Harrison who introduced Lloyd Webber a new generation of directors.

“Michael is much more in touch with what’s going on,” Lloyd Webber says. “Historically, my collaborators have all been older than me. This is the first time I am working with younger people.”

These young directors have helped make Lloyd Webber cool to the TikTok generation, attracting stars like Rachel Zegler (“Evita”) and Scherzinger to their revivals and restaging shows that were once seen as lumbering and fusty as something sleeker and sexier. But they’ve also revealed something that’s often overlooked: Much of Lloyd Webber’s early work was subversive when it premiered. He created a concept album of “Jesus Christ Superstar” to prove that it could function as a stage show; he pioneered cutting-edge special effects with “Phantom” and he found unlikely subjects for the musicals he wrote.

“He has always had a huge theatrical imagination,” says Paulus. “He made musicals about Jesus Christ and Eva Perón and T.S. Eliot’s poems. He’s always been interested in breaking boundaries.”

Many of the directors who have embraced Lloyd Webber’s musicals were kids when he dominated the theater scene in the 1980s and early ’90s, marrying a sense of spectacle (crashing chandeliers, ornate Hollywood mansions) with ravishing melodies. “Memory,” “The Music of the Night” and “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” formed the soundtrack of their young lives and inspired them as artists.

“‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ came out in the 1970s, but the second you hear that first guitar lick, you feel excited,” says Zhailon Levingston, co-director of “The Jellicle Ball.” “And the same is true about the opening chords of ‘Memory’ or ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.’ They may have been written long ago, but they still hold up.”

Lloyd Webber’s collaborators can strip away elaborate sets and costumes — even change the setting of his shows — but the composer requires them to remain true to his scores. The Really Useful Group, for instance, nixed one idea for “The Jellicle Ball” that would have had Lloyd Webber’s original music overlaid with ballroom beats. But he has been willing to cut songs, permitting Lloyd to lose two numbers from “Sunset Blvd.” that he deemed “old-fashioned.” Lloyd Webber also composed new music for the new production and hours of additional material for “Masquerade” that will play as audiences move from one setup to another.

Of course, Lloyd Webber, who likens the “Cats” film to a “horror movie,” isn’t shy about voicing his opinions and disagreements. He praises the London production of “Evita” — particularly Zegler’s handling of the famously difficult central role, calling her “extraordinary.” However, he felt the show was initially “too loud,” and he pushed Lloyd to lower the volume. He also has clearly absorbed some of the criticism of that production as favoring style over substance.

“The feedback that I am getting is that the young are absolutely loving it,” Lloyd Webber says, “but they like the overall feel of the evening — they don’t really follow the story.”

If “Evita” transfers to Broadway, does Lloyd Webber want the production to make the story of Perón’s dramatic rise to power clearer? “Jamie Lloyd is Jamie Lloyd,” he answers with a flicker of annoyance.

Lloyd was originally announced as the director of “The Illusionist.” However, Lloyd Webber now says that “it’s much too early” to decide who will direct the show. “With a new work, it needs to be someone I’m comfortable with,” he says.

Their close collaboration seems to have become strained, at least temporarily. Still, Lloyd’s version of “Evita” was such a smash that the original plan was to bring it to Broadway in 2027, and there was also talk of taking “The Illusionist” to New York after it debuts in London. That may no longer be possible, Lloyd Webber says, because of the high cost of mounting Broadway musicals. Audiences, especially tourists, aren’t always open to checking out shows that aren’t based on popular movies. Moreover, news broke recently that a tax credit program that helped Broadway come back from COVID by providing shows with millions of dollars in subsidies is running out of funding. Lloyd Webber now thinks transferring productions to Broadway may be untenable.

“These aren’t cheap shows to do, and I think the tax credit might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for quite a lot of people,” he says. “I’ve been worried about Broadway for a very long time, because people are not really able to get their money back and most of these shows have limited runs. It’s a brave person who brings something to Broadway now.”

Lloyd Webber pauses and seems to reconsider, clearly concerned that he’s been too dismissive of an art form he’s devoted his life to popularizing.

“I’m not gloating about it,” he says, his voice softening. “Because I love it, you know, I love Broadway.”