One (not so) careful owner….

And those wonderful experiences continued for Michael across six succeeding decades. As he goes on to say, “So I have mixed feelings about the old theatre: it may have been a red-brick fortress but it was filled with treasures.” And the same is true of just about every theatre I’ve ever been to: the moment you see a good show there, part of the memory of the show is where you saw it.

Of course, that’s no reason to be romantically attached to every single theatre in the land; and there are some theatres where one rarely if ever have seen a good show, like the Drill Hall; or theatres where the romantic association is with a former regime, like the late Dan Crawford at the King’s Head, where the magic dust he sprinkled on the place evaporated, it seems, with his passing is yet to return.

But if those of us who love the theatre part of that love is for the theatres for themselves, it seems a crying shame that there’s little love lost amongst many of those who are their sometimes all too temporary custodians. Five years ago, I wrote a feature in the pages of The Stage that pointed out, “From what is mostly a static stock of some 40 or so commercial theatre buildings, most of which have been in use for somewhere between 75 and very nearly 200 years, it’s surprising how frequently the map of the ownership and control of them seems to need re-drawing. The last seven years alone have seen an astonishing 29 theatres change hands already - and now four more are about to be added to the list, when American producer Max Weitzenhoffer and Nica Burns sign on the dotted line to transfer ownership from the Really Useful Group’s Apollo, Lyric and Duchess, plus the lease on the Garrick, to add to a portfolio that already includes the Vaudeville. So that leaves less than a quarter of the West End’s stock in the same hands that were operating them less than a decade ago.”

Since I wrote those words in 2005, the Lyceum and Apollo Victoria have also changed hands again, when the theatres of what once belonged to Apollo Leisure and then Live Nation were sold to ATG. And now in the Sunday Times this weekend, and confirmed here in The Stage yesterday, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group is currently in exclusive negotiations with Michaels Grade and Linnit to offload the Palace, Her Majesty’s, New London and Cambridge Theatres to them.

It seems amazing to me that Andrew Lloyd Webber is ready to let go of these theatres, three of which have played a massive part in his theatrical career. The Palace is not only where he had his first substantial London hit with the record-breaking run of Jesus Christ Superstar through most of the 70s, but it is also where his theatre owning career started when he bought it in the 80s - and where, thanks to the sense of business loyalty, his then head of the theatre Biddy Hayward honoured a promise to lease the venue to Cameron Mackintosh for the transfer of Les Miserables when the early reviews at the Barbican suggested they might be better off looking for another tenant, and proceeded to keep the theatre full for the next twenty years. Lloyd Webber had wanted the theatre for his own Phantom of the Opera, but the show wasn’t ready to go into production yet; in the end, he finally saw off Les Miserables when he wanted to install another of his own shows there, The Woman in White,which turned into another mistake: while Les Miserables continues happily at the Queen’s, The Woman in White quickly faded to black.

Phantom, meanwhile, of course went to Her Majesty’s, where it is still running today and next year celebrates its 25th anniversary; so at least if Grade Linnit do buy the theatres, they’re getting a good sitting tenant there (though presumably on the contractual terms set by its owners at the time it opened who were then Stoll Moss; so maybe, like many sitting tenants, it may be a not particularly advantageous one). But again, I’d have thought that Lloyd Webber might have some residual affection for a venue that gave birth to his biggest-ever hit; as he might have, too, for the New London, which gave birth to his next biggest show, Cats. He’s even originated a show at the fourth theatre in the portfolio of theatres he’s now considering giving up, the Cambridge, though since that was the flop of The Beautiful Game which ran for less than a year, perhaps he doesn’t much care about it.

But then perhaps owning theatres isn’t about romance but about hard business decisions; yet well-managed venues can be both. Cameron Mackintosh has demonstrated that, by putting his (own) money where his mouth is, the theatres can not only be physically transformed beyond recognition, but also - by being so much more desirable for audiences to visit as a result - become amongst the most sought-after addresses for producers to put their shows into, as well.

And Nica Burns, with considerably less money to spend but a lot of love to give, is also actively transforming the theatres she and Max Weitzenhoffer bought from Lloyd Webber.

By comparison, Lloyd Webber’s default position throughout his tenure as theatrical owner has been to complain about their lack of commercial viability and even urge their destruction. (At one point he actually suggested in the House of Lords that demolishing the Apollo and Lyric might be a good idea, and replacing them with one new theatre). Another regular ruse has been to suggest that, since they’re landmark national venues, someone else should help pay for their transformation into fit-for-21st-century-purpose buildings. He regularly protested that installing air-conditioning in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, for instance, would cost a prohibitive £20m; last year this figure suddenly dwindled to £1m and some work was done, though if my experience from seeing Oliver! there this summer is anything to go by, it hasn’t been particularly effective. So maybe it is time for someone else to have a go at owning these theatres. But it’s interesting that the two prime musical houses, the London Palladium and Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, that he controls are conspicuously not being included in the portfolio that’s up for sale; I’d love to see what Cameron Mackintosh would do with them.