In America, Andrew Lloyd Webber is finest referred to as the composer of “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Evita,” “Cats” and “Sunset Boulevard,” amongst many different standard musicals.
However in London, the Brit additionally has a status as a serious West Finish theater proprietor. His LW Theatres counts six homes in its steady, together with His Majesty’s Theatre, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane and the London Palladium.
Nada in New York, although.
However there’s one constructing on Broadway he’s had his eye on for years — the Mark Hellinger Theatre on West 51st Road.
By no means heard of it?
That’s as a result of immediately the 1600-seat home the place “My Fair Lady” and Lloyd Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” way back premiered is the Occasions Sq. Church, an interdenominational place of “Wicked”-adjacent worship. And it’s one of many neighborhood’s most fascinating items of actual property.
“It has the best stage on Broadway,” Lloyd Webber solely informed The Put up throughout a sit-down.
“It was the premier house, really, for musicals,” he added. “Everybody’s tried [to buy it].”
Together with, by means of a deep-pocketed associate, Stephen A. Schwarzman.
“Funnily enough, a few years ago I had dinner with Steve Schwarzman, and I said, ‘If anybody could buy it, it would be Steve Schwarzman,’” Lloyd Webber stated of the Chairman and CEO of the Blackstone Group, who Forbes estimates is value $43 billion.
“I said ‘I bet you you can’t buy the Mark Hellinger, the old Times Square theater,’” the composer prodded.
“’Of course we can! Of course we can!’” he remembers the assured Schwarzman insisting.
“I said, ‘Look, OK, you buy it. I’m in as a partner with you. Go and buy it.’”
Six months glided by, and Lloyd Webber checked in with Schwarzman, whose spouse Christine produced the Brit’s “Bad Cinderella” in 2023.
“I said to him, ‘How’s it going?’”
“‘Oh, we’re negotiating,’” he remembers Schwarzman saying.
Persistent Lloyd Webber requested once more this April.
“He came to have lunch with me,” the Tony winner recalled. “I said, ‘What’s it doing?’ He said, ‘It’s the one negotiation we’ve not been able to pull off.’”
To cite Mrs. Potts: Story as previous as time.
The Nederlander Group first leased the constructing to the Occasions Sq. Church in 1989 — when the neighborhood was soiled and harmful and the theater enterprise was wobbly — for 5 years at $1 million a yr.
In 1991, the church purchased the Hellinger for $17 million. With a congregation of greater than 8,000 who often fill the gathering plate, it’s now value a number of instances that. The theater’s final present was Peter Allen’s musical “Legs Diamond,” which closed 37 years in the past.
“It is the theater to have,” Philip J. Smith, the late former chairman of the Shubert Group informed The Put up’s Michael Riedel in 2010. “We chased it twice, but the church wouldn’t sell. If they ever do, you can put us at the head of the list.”
Different energy gamers who’ve tried to snap up the previous Hellinger embody British producer Cameron Waterproof coat and crooked Canadian showman Garth Drabinsky.
However everyone who’s gone up in opposition to God has given up.
“That pastor there,” Lloyd Webber stated of senior pastor Tim Dilena. “He’s just got one organ, a little stage, him and a microphone, and he probably outgrosses everybody on Broadway!”
