Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cinderella will close next month less than a year after its West End premiere.

And so to how the day unfolded. The Stage ran a Sunday ‘Exclusive’ – on a Bank Holiday weekend – that the doomed musical was closing in June, as the creative team prepare to launch the musical on Broadway, where it will supposedly preview from February 2023. 
To recap, the current cast were told at 5.45pm — a statement was released at 6.30pm on Sunday.

LW Management wrote to the cast and crew: 

Dear Cinderella Family,

It is with regret that we’re writing to let you know that the Really Useful Group’s production of Cinderella will perform its final show at the Gillian Lynne theatre on Sunday June 12th…. Thank you for your immeasurable contribution to the show. We should all be very proud of Cinderella and all that we have achieved together, and we look forward to our paths crossing again before too long.

Having made his peace with losing out on Employer of the Year 2022, Lloyd Webber said: “I am incredibly proud of Cinderella. Not only did it get some of the best reviews of my career, but we led the charge to reopen the West End, ensuring that theatre and live entertainment remained relevant and in the news.”

He added: “mounting a new show in the midst of Covid has been an unbelievable challenge”.  

I can tell you that a mere four months ago, I attempted to discuss the beleaguered Cinderella with Lloyd Webber at the Palladium and he literally ran off down a corridor.

Anyway, In a 164-minute video on Instagram, actress Summer Strallen (who was due to join the cast as the Queen in July) discussed the situation in detail, saying that, while her agent received an email, she “basically got fired by social media, which is just not OK”.

Needless to say, we’ve been here before with School of Rock closing and a broken-hearted cast finding out on Twitter. The way present and future creative teams, crew and casual front of house staff continue to be discarded is completely unacceptable. 

Lloyd Webber is believed to have been making escalating losses, LW Theatres suffered pre-tax losses of £28.1 million in the 12 months to June 2021, with box office revenues down 97% on the same period the year before. 

Furthermore, company’s annual accounts show the company’s staffing reduction as a result of the pandemic, with LW Theatres employing a monthly average of 418 people in the year ending June 2020 and 217 in 2021, a reduction of almost half. If Cinderella, backed with Lloyd Webber’s millions, can fail, so can many others.

A spokesperson for the Really Useful Group said on Monday: “Everyone involved in Cinderella was contacted by call, email or in person (some through agents) before the news went live in the evening. Every effort was made to ensure people were notified before it went live, while trying to manage how quickly it would move on social media once people were informed.”

Which seems a little on the nose, even by the debased standards of the age. Like they weren’t in control of the timing of this announcement? Despicable.

In the meantime, what we really need now is systemic change so this can never happen again. In theatre, few creative freelancers and performers speak out for fear of losing work or being labelled ‘difficult to work with’. Change is overdue and every employer has the legal duty to ensure that their staff are treated with dignity. Until then there can be no happy ever after – for anyone. 

I admired Lloyd Webber for keeping theatre in the news during the darkest moments of the Covid lockdowns; The 74-year-old even said that he was prepared to be arrested if authorities tried to intervene in his reopening plans.

He also volunteered to personally take part in an early Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine trial.

In the end, though, bungling the closure of Cinderella after a global pandemic is the ultimate measure of failure from Lord Lloyd Webber.