‘Please refrain from kissing in the corridors’, says Lloyd Webber at Cinderella’s first night
Andrew Lloyd Webber was in combative mood as he gave a pre-show speech at the first preview performance of his new musical Cinderella on Friday night. He thanked the assembled audience for not demanding refunds when the production was delayed, but instead leaving their ticket money with the show until it could finally open. Just by doing that, quipped Lord Lloyd-Webber, “you’ve given us more money than the government has”. That would be his last political statement, he added, although he couldn’t resist a dig at Matt Hancock: “I will just say we can take the Health Secretary’s advice, and [have] no kissing in corridors.”
Lloyd Webber compared the “bizarre experience” of mounting a musical during a pandemic to another fraught opening, 40 years ago, in the same venue: the West End’s Gillian Lynne (previously New London) Theatre. “I was standing where I’ve just been,” he recalled, indicating the wings, “with the company there, and they were all dressed in cat costumes. We all said ‘What are we doing here?’.” Cats would go on to run for 21 years.
The composer noted it was still “early days” for Cinderella – and director Laurence Connor, who also spoke, admitted that they hadn’t yet run the show from start to finish without stops before this preview performance – but Lloyd Webber was upbeat, saying that he, too, was “rather looking forward to seeing the show tonight”.
It wasn’t the opening that he had planned for. Due to the Step Four delay, in which the lifting of Covid restrictions has been pushed back from June 21 to July 19, the theatre was only at 50 per cent capacity. The composer had previously told the Telegraph he would defy government rules and open with a full audience as first planned should the delay take place – even if this meant getting arrested – but he relented on this when it became clear theatre staff risked individual ￡500 fines for breaking the rules.
At a production cost of ￡6 million, Cinderella is both the most expensive and most high profile theatrical opening so far this year. The audience on Friday night were so enthusiastic they stopped the show several times with their roars and applause. Audience members expressed bafflement at the restrictions that have hamstrung commercial productions. “Why’s it a different rule for theatre than football?” asked one. Another praised Lloyd Webber for “challenging this madness and going out on a limb for us”.
Cinderella is now a symbol of the resistance, supported by a wide cross-section of the general public if Friday was an indicator: all ages were represented, and many children were present. About 200 keen theatre-goers were already queuing round the block an hour before curtain up, and later swarmed like socially distanced locusts round the bars and merchandise stand.
The show itself is lavish family entertainment, the book written by Emerald Fennell, who in April won an Oscar for her screenplay for the film Promising Young Woman, and lyrics by David Zippel, who also collaborated with Lloyd Webber on his 2004 musical The Woman in White. Fennell has retained many of the familiar elements of the fairytale, while adding a few modern quirks of her own. Contemporary elements include a critique of surgically enhanced bodies, like those we see on Love Island, as well as a statue controversy and a younger prince struggling to fulfil his royal duties.
The cast ranges from assured leading ladies Carrie Hope Fletcher, Rebecca Trehearn and Victoria Hamilton-Barritt to newcomer Ivano Turco, who graduated from drama school just last year, as the Prince.
Lloyd Webber’s last West End show, School of Rock, was a hit, running for three and a half years, also at the Gillian Lynne Theatre. Can Cinderella repeat the feat? Quite possibly. Lloyd Webber just needs the government to grant his wish and let the crowds in.