"Joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat" was the musical that put Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice on the map.

"Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" was the musical that put Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice on the map. Its humble beginnings as a simple pop cantata with a Biblical theme in a school hall in March 1968 were all part of its charm and freshness.

The whole serendipity of how Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice got together informs the bounciness of the early work they produced. Webber had written music from the age of six or seven. His father was a composer, organist, and teacher at one of the leading London colleges, and his mother taught piano to young children. But in a Webber biography he talks of a life changing experience when he was asked to play the violin in a school concert:

He said, 'I'm not going to do that, I'm going to play six songs on the piano, and I'm going to dedicate each one of them to masters in the school,' which he did from the stage. Apparently the reaction of the other kids led him to believe that there was something very different the pieces ... he was about nine or ten, and he'd written all the songs himself."

Throughout his teenage years at Westminster School, he composed songs for student revues and indulged his enthusiasm for musical theatre in the company of his Aunt a former actress who took him on outings to the West End.
He sent songs off to publishers and record producers in London, and through this network, his name was passed on to another young hopeful in the music business, Tim Rice.

Tim Rice wrote to Lloyd Webber in April 1965, suggesting they try writing pop songs together, as he had been told that the budding composer was looking for a "with-it" lyric writer. Andrew was on his way to Oxford University, but this meeting was said to have changed his life.

They immediately set to work on a musical about an orphanage but the work was never produced, and Andrew, who always says that he was literally "smitten" with Tim, could not settle into the rhythm of academic life as all his energy now poured into working with Tim. The young duo churned out pop songs, following the pattern of music first, words later, which marked all their collaborations.

The Lloyd Webber household in South Kensington became home for Tim, too, as he moved into a spare bedroom in the large apartment. Another regular visitor, and family friend, was a music teacher, Alan Doggett, who had taught Andrew's younger brother, Julian in Westminster preparatory school. Doggett had moved on to another preparatory school, and suggested that Tim and Andrew should write a pop cantata for the annual school concert, ideally on a Biblical subject.

Tim's favourite Bible story had long been Joseph and his coat of many colours.
in his autobiography he said “Andrew and I told the story very well indeed."

The audience at the first performance agreed, and the show was repeated a couple of months later, in the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster, in the audience and unknown to Tim and Andrew, was Derek Jewell, then the jazz and pop critic for the SUNDAY TIMES. His unsolicited review on the following weekend truly did change their lives:

"Throughout its twenty-minute duration it bristles with wonderfully singable tunes. It entertains. It communicates instantly, as all good pop should. And it is a considerable piece of barrier-breaking by its creators."

On the 9th of January 2000 Andrew Lloyd Webber was interviewed on the BBC Breakfast with Frost programme. It was during that same weekend that Andrew Lloyd Webber gained control of a third of all the grand old theatres in the West End, the London Palladium for one and the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, the Really Useful group worked in partnership with the National Westminster Equity partners to acquired nine venues in total in a deal worth over £80 million.

The company already owned the Palace Theatre and half of the Adelphi and ...

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The company already owned the Palace Theatre and half of the Adelphi and the New London and they were to be incorporated into the whole group. He claimed the reason that RUG bought the venues was because he was concerned that the way to make theatre work was not to run it as a business and he felt that was the way theatre was starting to turn.

Sir Andrew was also aware that people within Really Useful were worried that the group would fall into the hands of moneymen and who wouldn’t necessarily understand that the thing about theatre is you’ve got to take risks.

Another Venue that Sir Andrew was contemplating buying would have certainly altered the future for musical theatre. It would have taken shows from a traditional theatre into a contemporary performance space. The millennium Dome! He was heard to have said you could probably do Starlight Express in the Dome. Personally think the Dome is a perfect performance space but is probably a little to modern for a company like RUG.

Just to add that even though RUG has purchased these venues the company is adamant that this will not stop Webber’s writing.

It was shortly after this interview that the first workshops of The Beautiful Game with Ben Elton was seen but almost as soon as the curtain was up it fell again on what was then the most recent of Webbers productions again this closure was blamed on a tourist slump.

It was at the beginning of July that Lord Lloyd Webber shocked the West End by announcing the closure of this acclaimed new show. The show was said to have been financially crippled by a loss of just under £1m in advance bookings from the US due to the drop in overseas visitors to the capital.

So what has brought about the huge changes in the stucture of west end theatre. The obvious ones being September the 11th reducing the amount of over seas tourists and the foot and mouth outbreak, I believe however that the a huge reason for the changes are that the shows that were on no longer reach the audiences and so change was clearly necessary an example of this happened during 2002 which saw the launch of two Asian lifestyle shows and a third committing to a venue for a further three years. Even outside the industry the culture is at the fore. Selfridges department store recently ran a Bollywood season with a promotion on ethnic clothes, food and furniture. It seems all things Indian are the latest trend. Maev Kennedy the arts and heritage correspondent for the guardian hit the nail on the head when she wrote about the closing of Kiss Me, Kate and the overwhelming hit that is Bombay Dreams.

"Not everybody loves Andrew Lloyd Webber's shows," she said, "but what anyone in the business would concede is that Lloyd Webber has an uncanny ability almost to smell the changing mood, to sense the next big thing. Bombay Dreams is absolutely of now, a show people want to go to and be seen going to. Brilliant as Kiss Me, Kate is, it is not hip. And I think we now have to ask about the future of big revivals of classic American musicals." It seems all things Indian are the latest trend.

"If a show like Kiss Me, Kate, which was done by the book of excellence in every possible respect, can't survive for a year, it has to make us all stop and think about the future. Is wasn’t the reviews that killed Kate it was hailed by critics as "an unalloyed joy", "a dazzling evening" and ironically dubbed "the biggest West End hit" in the Newsnight review of the arts last year. Nor was it the location as it played within sight of the crowds struggling to get into Bombay Dreams at the Apollo Victoria. with music by A R Rahman, a star in Bollywood films but virtually unknown in this country, cost £4.5m, and has triumphantly vindicated producer Andrew Lloyd Webber's hunch that this was the summer of sequins and pink sari silk.

This just goes to prove what he was saying about taking risks something he will be eternally gratefully to Bernard Delfont because he got Cats into the New London when everybody else thought that it was a complete no-go zone. Taking risks is defiantly at the front of RUGs agenda I mean Les Miserables for example is a show where everybody’s practically dead at the end of it, on paper not the most commercial idea for a musical but theatre in general is about taking risks and you’ve got to take risks, and he claims he was just very concerned that the group might fall into the hands of people who don’t understand that.

So the question of what the future held for musical theatre was raised?

Lloyd Webber responded to this by saying that there was soon to be a revolution in theatre land. Not just in terms of musicals but large theatre nationally nor a revolution that is to alter our viewing pleasure of a night at the theatre, merely to bring about dramatic changes in the way in which we buy our tickets! buying theatre tickets through the internet.

One of the possible upsides to such a revolution or possibly a downside depending on how you look at it is that you can have one organisation or a small number of organisations who control all of the ticket sales across the country via the internet. Putting a stop to soaring ticket prices, on the other hand they could have a very adverse affect on what people put on in the theatres. One thing that Andrew Lloyd Webber feels passionately about is the need to encourage new talent and new ideas. But this revolution should also bring about a change of view toward theatre making it more accessible to children of all ages, therefore creating an interactive theatre experience right from the word go. They are hoping to see a large diversity of ages coming to see each performance, capturing the imaginations of future paying audiences.

However he doesn’t feel the need to change everything over the next two or three years in terms of his theatres or indeed West End theatre in general.

But over the next decade I think we are going to see a complete revolution, as I said a second ago, in the way people buy tickets for theatre and I think that will lead to a much more altering west end where we no longer see runs of twenty years or so. Theatre as a whole has got to move with the times and stay fresh in order to keep the audiences flowing. Bombay Dreams was a huge departure not only for Sir Andrew but for the musical genre in general. Sir Andrew promised the show, which is based on the Bollywood film industry, would give London theatre a much-needed "shot-in-the-arm". But will people be ready to embrace a new generation of musical with a completely new storyline and unfamiliar songs?

From every angle it was detested by critics. One saying that he was surprised it was doing so well as usually when they all hate a piece, it flops! Another review read

"It's a bold inventive shot at something new that misses the target."

and slightly less subtle was Susannah Clapp’s review from the Observer

"For much of the time, watching this is like picking your way through a plateful of Bombay mix: you get to the pungent bits only after ladelling aside shovelfuls of uninteresting pebbly things."

However despite reviews like the last Bombay Dreams has done exactly what Sir Andrew prophesied, and created a new market. The young wealthy Asian couples, and entire large Asian families, flocking to the theatre every night, have almost fireproofed the show against any down turn in the tourist market. Another example of changing times can be seen at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, Philip Hedley puts on new musicals on budgets that wouldn't pay for a West End scene change. This year he is staging Da Boyz, a hip hop version of another classic musical, Rogers and Hart's Boys from Syracuse. Like Andrew Lloyd Webber, he has concluded that the traditional British musical is probably doomed without a transplant from the passionate musical tastes of young blacks and Asians. Hedley recently said that “Everything that theatre does, musicals do, only more so. It is an art form with a unique ability to engage and enthral the popular imagination - but the traditional musical is simply missing an entire generation. The young don't see musicals as connecting in any way with their own lives, and they're right. If we can't change that, the musical is dead,"

The price of getting it wrong however is phenomenal. Bombay Dreams was comparatively cheap at £4.5m. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang cost almost twice that whilst Cameron Mackintosh described The Witches of Eastwick as "a modest little show" at £6m.

I personally really don’t think you can really predict what’s going to happen in theatre least of all musical theatre. I do agree with Lord Webber though when he said that it’s very important to get as much new talent into it as possible. One thing you see people forget is that you cannot pirate theatres live experience, It was Michael Eisner that said he thought two things would happen, that live entertainment would grow and he thought that obviously that all the home entertainment would also grow but people don’t want to stay at home all the time and that’s why I think that there’s a huge future for theatre, the restaurants and all, anything that’s a live entertainment.

Bombay Dreams
Music by A R Rahman. Book by Meera Syal and lyrics by Don Black. Produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber and The Really Useful Theatre Company

For April to June 2001, released by the Society of London Theatres on Tuesday, show sales rose from £2.4m to £2.6m in the same period in 2000.