Today is the 40th anniversary of the first cash withdrawal from a bank money dispenser – from a Barclays Bank branch in Enfield. And yesterday saw producer Cameron Mackintosh – himself coincidentally also born in Enfield – also marking his an important milestone in his becoming a theatre producer with a big private lunchtime bash at the Prince of Wales Theatre. Yesterday was 40 years, to the day, since he made his producing debut – sharing the producers’ billing with Hubert Woodward and Robin Alexander – for the Kenton Theatre Summer Season’s opening production of William Douglas Home’s The Reluctant Debutante.
But there was nothing reluctant about this debutante, as the 40 years since have gone on to prove, and though there have been missteps, as there are in any producing career, he’s turned musicals into his own private cash dispensers. Globalisation has, of course, become the buzzword of the age; but Cameron cleverly spotted its potential early on for musical theatre, exporting his products on a global scale and turning musicals like Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables and Miss Saigon into a worldwide cultural currency.
But if globalisation suggests a lack of the personal touch, the difference with Cameron is that he’s always been meticulous about overseeing his operations personally. When he first set about bringing Mary Poppins to the stage, he told me he identified with the title character – a meddler perfectionist (who sings about herself that she “perfectly perfect”) – and he said, ““I try to make my shows perfect, and have driven people mad for 30 years doing so, so she entirely has my ethos as a producer.”
Yesterday, a collection of friends, family, staff, colleagues, rival producers and even a critic (me!) who have been variously driven mad (and with whom “I’ve had some fantastic rows”, he said) were gathered together to mark the anniversary in the perfectly perfect surroundings of the Delfont Room at the Prince of Wales Theatre – one of a stable of theatres he now, of course, owns, and has spent vast amounts of money bringing into the 21st century (a rolling programme of refurbishment that has now reached the Gielgud which is currently being made-over).
But aside from his own productions and now the theatres, Cameron has always been a life force in the lifeblood of British theatre, too – a nurturer of talent offstage and on, whose Mackintosh Foundation gives money to many good causes. He doesn’t just make money – he spends it, too. It’s not a one-way traffic from the public pocket into his; nor – apart from an early heads-up when he persuaded the Arts Council to co-fund touring revivals of Oliver!, Oklahoma! and My Fair Lady to major regional theatres in the late 70s and early 80s – has he claimed money from the public funding purse to do so. In fact, he’s probably paid that back many times over in his support now for the National Theatre.
Theatrical love-ins can be excessive – but the modest gathering of around 150 of Mackintosh’s peers (and a few peers of the realm, including Lord Lloyd-Webber and Lord Melvyn Bragg) was actually far more restrained. Cameron merely wanted to say thank you – and we returned the compliment. And although the thank you lists could stretch in both directions for miles, he confined himself to paying tribute to four men, without whom “I might otherwise be in jail” – Bob West (doyen of West End company managers), and Martin McCallum, Matthew Dalco and Nicholas Allott, who have all variously served duty as his senior executive staff.
