A report on Really Useful Group, West End theatre and The Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical)

The Palace Theatre, in the City of Westminster, London, built in 1891

The London Palladium in Soho opened in 1910. While the Theatre has a resident show, it also has one-off performances such as concerts. Since 1930 it has hosted the Royal Variety Performance 43 times.

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Opened in May 1663, it is the oldest theatre in London.

Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman performing the title song

Original interior of Savoy Theatre in 1881, the year it became the first public building in the world to be lit entirely by electricity.

Steve Barton and Sarah Brightman in the final scene

The Lyceum Theatre, home to Disney's The Lion King.

Queen's Theatre showing Les Misérables, running in London since October 1985

The restored facade of the Dominion Theatre, as seen in 2017

The St Martin's Theatre, home to The Mousetrap, the world's longest-running play.

The Royal Court Theatre. Upstairs is used as an experimental space for new projects—The Rocky Horror Show premiered here in 1973.

West End theatres on Shaftesbury Avenue in 2016

Gilbert and Sullivan play at the Savoy in 1881

Victoria Palace Theatre (showing Billy Elliot in 2012) was refurbished in 2017.

The musical opened in London's West End in 1986 and on Broadway in New York in 1988, in a production directed by Harold Prince and starring English classical soprano Sarah Brightman (Lloyd Webber's then-wife) as Christine Daaé, and Michael Crawford as the Phantom.

- The Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical)

The majority of West End theatres are owned by the Ambassador Theatre Group, Delfont Mackintosh Theatres, Nimax Theatres, LW Theatres, and the Nederlander Organization.

- West End theatre

The Phantom of the Opera – Lloyd Webber/Charles Hart/Stilgoe – London, Broadway, worldwide

- Really Useful Group

Lee Mead, who won the lead role in 2007's West End revival of Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat by taking part in BBC One's Any Dream Will Do! recorded a single of the song "Any Dream Will Do".

- Really Useful Group

In November 2019, the co-producers of Phantom, Cameron Mackintosh and Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group (RUG), announced that the show would again tour the UK and Ireland, but this time with a return to the original production rather than the 2012 production.

- The Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical)

Other long-runners include Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera and Willy Russell's Blood Brothers which have also subsequently overtaken Cats.

- West End theatre

3 related topics with Alpha

Andrew Lloyd Webber

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English composer and impresario of musical theatre.

Lloyd Webber studied at the Royal College of Music in London. In 2014, he was honoured for his "contribution to musical life" with an honorary doctorate from the college.

Jesus Christ Superstar, starring Paul Nicholas, at the Palace Theatre, London in 1972. Its success saw Lloyd Webber and Rice expand and release their previous biblical-based musical Joseph.

Evita at the West End's Adelphi Theatre. Lloyd Webber purchased the theatre in 1993. The 1998 video of Lloyd Webber's Cats was filmed at the venue.

The Phantom of the Opera at the Princess of Wales Theatre, Toronto

Lloyd Webber was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1993 for his contribution to live theatre

U.S. President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush stand with the Kennedy Center honourees in the Blue Room of the White House during a reception Sunday, 3 December 2006. From left, they are: singer and songwriter William "Smokey" Robinson; Andrew Lloyd Webber; country singer Dolly Parton; film director Steven Spielberg; and conductor Zubin Mehta.

Lloyd Webber and the UK's Eurovision entrant Jade Ewen

Lloyd Webber and Russian President Vladimir Putin prior to the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow

After the 2016 English National Opera's revival of Sunset Boulevard at the London Coliseum was well-received, in 2017 the production transferred to the Palace Theatre on Broadway (pictured) in New York City

Cinderella at the West End's Gillian Lynne Theatre in July 2021

Lloyd Webber (middle) with his then-wife Sarah Brightman (right) in 1985. He would cast her as Christine in The Phantom of the Opera which debuted in London the following year.

Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway.

Several of his songs have been widely recorded and were successful outside of their parent musicals, such as "Memory" from Cats, "The Music of the Night" and "All I Ask of You" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" from Evita, and "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. In 2001, The New York Times referred to him as "the most commercially successful composer in history".

His company, the Really Useful Group, is one of the largest theatre operators in London.

Cats (musical)

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Sung-through musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the 1939 poetry collection Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot.

T. S. Eliot's poetry provided most of the lyrics for Cats

The Jellicle cats gather every year to make the "Jellicle choice" and decide which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new life.

From left to right: Old Deuteronomy, Jemima, Grizabella and Victoria during an event in Germany, 2011.

Broadway revival of Cats at the Neil Simon Theatre

The CATS Theatre in Shinagawa, Tokyo (2008)

The Operettenhaus where Cats played for 15 years

The first non-replica production of Cats was staged at the Teatr Muzyczny Roma in Warsaw, Poland (2007).

A school production of Cats in Bangalore, India (2014)

Radio microphones have become the norm in live theatre since Cats.

Cats opened to positive reviews at the New London Theatre in the West End in 1981 and then to mixed reviews at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway in 1982.

Lloyd Webber thus decided to turn Practical Cats into a musical, co-produced by Mackintosh and the Really Useful Group's Brian Brolly.

Its Broadway-run record was surpassed on 9 January 2006 by The Phantom of the Opera, and Cats remains Broadway's fourth-longest-running show of all time.

Her Majesty's Theatre

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Sir John Vanbrugh painted by Godfrey Kneller

King's (previously Queen's) Theatre, Haymarket, the 18th-century predecessor of the present theatre; watercolour by William Capon (V&A)

Actor-manager Richard Brinsley Sheridan, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds

Interior of second theatre on the site, c. 1808. Drawing by Auguste Pugin and Thomas Rowlandson for Ackermann's Microcosm of London

Drawing of the theatre by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd, 1827–28

Jenny Lind, The Swedish Nightingale, 1850

Carl Rosa's opera company performed at the third theatre.

Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Cardinal Wolsey at the theatre, in a 1910 photograph

Shaw's Pygmalion ran at the theatre in 1914, starring Mrs Patrick Campbell as Eliza.

Oscar Asche in Chu Chin Chow. Its record-breaking run of 2,235 performances at the theatre began in 1916.

The 'boat scene' in Phantom is achieved using surviving Victorian stage machinery.

Society of London Theatre plaque commemorating Her Majesty's Theatre

Her Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre situated on Haymarket in the City of Westminster, London.

The theatre has been home to record-setting musical theatre runs, notably the First World War sensation Chu Chin Chow and the current (June 2022) production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, which previously played continuously at Her Majesty's between 1986 and March 2020.

LW Theatres has owned the building since 2000.