Webber is contemporary off securing EGOT standing together with his Emmy Award for “Jesus Christ Superstar.”
There’s a gorgeous symmetry, as Andrew Lloyd Webber factors out, in the truth that he is following his current EGOT milestone by embarking on a brand new musical remedy of the identical traditional fairy story as soon as tailored by Richard Rodgers, a fellow composer he calls his idol. Rodgers additionally occurs to be the unique EGOT, the primary individual in historical past to have secured wins in all 4 main American leisure awards — Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tonys — again in 1962.
Along with lead actor John Legend and lyricist Tim Rice, each of whom served as fellow producers on NBC’s Jesus Christ Superstar: Live in Concert, Lloyd Webber joined the elite EGOT membership at Sunday’s Creative Arts Emmys after they took residence the honors for Outstanding Live Variety Special.
Lloyd Webber has stayed on in Los Angeles this week to dig into work on his subsequent main challenge, an all-new stage model of Cinderella with a up to date twist.
“I’m working with younger writers whose mixed ages add as much as lower than mine,” Lloyd Webber advised The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s pleasant to have such younger collaborators and I’m fully captivated by what they’ve achieved with the story. Now that I’ve mentioned I’m going to do it, I’ve to get to my piano.”
Those collaborators are L.A.-based British writers Tom MacRae and Emerald Fennell.
MacRae is a screenwriter, writer and playwright who wrote the e book and lyrics for the hit musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, which tells the story of a 16-year-old homosexual schoolboy who generates shockwaves by insisting on going to his promenade in drag. The present has been taking part in a sellout prolonged run on London’s West End since Nov. 2017. Fennell is an actress and writer who starred within the standard BBC collection Call the Midwife and can take over from Phoebe Waller-Bridge as lead author on the second season of the BBC America cult hit, Killing Eve.
“They have remade Cinderella into a very fashionable, feisty lady,” mentioned Lloyd Webber of the inventive workforce’s non-traditional strategy to the fabric. “Every piece of the story is adopted, however it will likely be rotated so it is in no way what you anticipate it to be. It simply turns the entire thing round on itself.”
Lloyd Webber says the writing course of is transferring swiftly because the three collaborators work collectively to storyboard the musical and work out the place songs will go. The composer shall be becoming in work on the challenge across the begin of taking pictures on the movie model of his blockbuster musical Cats in November, however nonetheless expects to have a Cinderella rating accomplished by the top of the yr.
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella was written for tv as a automobile for Julie Andrews and premiered on CBS in 1957 to a record-breaking viewership of greater than 100 million folks. Given that historical past and his current success with Jesus Christ Superstar on NBC, Lloyd Webber does not solely rule out a TV or streaming platform launch for the brand new challenge.
“But I’m a theater animal, so my feeling is that it will likely be for the stage,” he mentioned. “In any case that is the place it would find yourself.”
The composer mentioned whereas no timeline has but been set, he expects the present, which shall be produced by his Really Useful Group, to comply with the same old improvement trajectory for a musical of 18 months-two years minimal. He added that whereas it is at too early a stage to enter better element, the setting shall be neither a conventional fairy story kingdom nor a recognizable up to date location.
“It takes it away from the world of magic and fairy godmothers, nevertheless it’s not going to be anyplace practically as fashionable as, say, Los Angeles in 2023,” he defined. “I can not actually say extra about it at this level.”
Lloyd Webber is essentially the most commercially profitable musical-theater composer in historical past, with titles together with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Evita, The Phantom of the Opera and Sunset Boulevard, in addition to Superstar and Cats. His 21 exhibits have been produced in 148 international locations and have offered 300 million tickets globally and 40 million albums. Phantom alone has grossed over $6 billion worldwide and is the longest-running present in Broadway historical past by a large margin, at the moment celebrating its 30th anniversary.
His most up-to-date musical, School of Rock, will wrap its worthwhile run of simply over three years on Broadway in January and can proceed to play in London and on tour.
This article was initially printed by The Hollywood Reporter.
