Richard Eyre Climbs Aboard Andrew Lloyd Webber's Profumo Affair Musical, Reading Next Month, Ovenden to Star?

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As BroadwayWorld previously reported, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is at work on a musical based on the events surrounding the 1963 Profumo Affair and we revealed back in December that the project will reunite him with lyricist Don Black and playwright Christopher Hampton - the team behind SUNSET BOULEVARD, which debuted in the West End in 1993 and later won seven 1995 Tony Awards including Best Musical.

Today, Michael Riedel fills in a few more blanks in the New York Post, including word that producer Robert Fox has signed on, as well as director Richard Eyre (the National Theater, Mary Poppins). The show is next headed for a reading in London next week, followed by a summertime presentation at Lloyd Webber's annual Sydmonton Festival if all goes well. Riedel also adds that the composer wants Julian Ovenden (last seen in Death Takes a Holiday), to star.

The Profumo Affair was a 1963 British political scandal. John Profumo, Secretary of State for War, became involved with Christine Keeler, the reputed mistress of an alleged Russian spy; he then lied in the House of Commons when he was questioned about it, forcing the resignation of Profumo and damaging the reputation of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's government.

The project, Lloyd Webber tells The Globe and Mail today, will reunite him with lyricist Don Black and playwright Christopher Hampton - the team behind SUNSET BOULEVARD, which debuted in the West End in 1993 and later won seven 1995 Tony Awards including Best Musical. The show, based on the classic film of the same name, remains popular with regional theatres and revivals, including a West End revival in 2008.

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.