Andrew Lloyd-Webber Looks to Sell Palace Theatre

Andrew Lloyd-Webber has confirmed he is looking for a buyer or partner to take possession of the Palace Theatre, the first theatre he bought outright in 1983 for £1.3million, according to the UK's Daily Express.

Lloyd-Webber now owns the London Palladium and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and also a share of the Adelphi Theatre where LOVE NEVER DIES plays.

A spokesman for his Really Useful Group said it was in "preliminary discussions about the future of the Palace Theatre."

A plan in which Lloyd-Webber would sell it along with three others to a consortium led by Michael Grade, the former BBC chairman and ITV chief executive, and agent Michael Linnit, was agreed upon in October but was abandoned.

At the time, Lloyd Webber admitted that the move was driven by his prostate cancer diagnosis in 2009.

Lloyd-Webber said: "It has been a totally gut-wrenching decision for me to decide to sell the four theatres. However, following my illness last year I was advised to reduce the debt in the family company.

"I have agreed the price be reduced by £5million [to £45million] to enable GradeLinnit to invest this sum in the theatres, principally in the Palace."

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Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre, and has been referred to as "the most commercially successful composer in history." Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass.

He has also gained a number of honours, including a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage from the British Government for services to Music, seven Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, fourteen Ivor Novello Awards, seven Olivier Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006.

Several of his songs, notably "The Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" and "You Must Love Me" from Evita, "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and "Memory" from Cats have been widely recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals.

Photo Credit: Peter James Zielinski

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