Lloyd Webber to lobby for West End tax breaks

Published Tuesday 3 February 2004 at 14:40 by Jeremy Austin

Andrew Lloyd Webber is calling on the government to introduce tax breaks for new West End drama producers in an attempt to make it easier for commercial producers to compete with those in the subsidised sector.

Speaking to The Stage, life peer Lloyd Webber said he intends to “beat the drum a wee bit” in the House of Lords to try to influence government in coming to the aid of the commercial sector by introducing film industry-style breaks.

“I don’t think people realise just how un-level the playing field is between subsidised and commercial - not un-level, it is almost a vertical drop,” he said.

He says he fears London’s playhouses could be left bereft of theatrical product and will ultimately have to close as producers struggle against ever increasing pressures. Lloyd Webber revealed that working on The Woman in White with one of the West End’s highest profile young producers Sonia Friedman has highlighted to him the pressure under which the subsidised sector is placing its commercial rival.

Friedman had told him “blood curdling” stories about the difficulty competing with subsidised producers who can offer more favourable contracts to actors.

“I don’t see how people like Sonia can really in the end struggle against so many forces unless the playing field was made a little bit more level,” claimed Lloyd Webber. “Maybe the answer would be to do what the government did for films and make theatre investment treated in the same way for plays. That might be a way forward - not necessarily offering it to The Producers or Mary Poppins but doing it for some young producer.”

The so-called Section 48 tax relief for investors in “British-qualifying” films was introduced by the government in 1997 and was extended until April 2005 three years ago. It gives a 100% first-year tax write-off for films budgeted below £15 million and complements Section 42, which operates similarly for qualifying films with a budget above £15 million. It is estimated that in 1999/2000 some £500 million of film production was generated through the application of Section 48 relief.

One source of funding that has been used by producers to invest in shows is venture capitalists. Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group itself bought the former Stoll Moss chain of theatres in a 50/50 deal with Bridgepoint Capital. However, the impresario warned such collaborations could be fraught.

“I don’t think it is a business that really they ought to be in because it is never going to give them the kind of returns they look for. They are looking for something quick and it is never going to do that,” he said.

“A statistic that sums it all up - the entire profit of all four Shaftesbury Avenue playhouses from 1945 to present day is less than the amount of money given to the Royal Court to refurbish.”

One of the reasons he resigned as a director of Really Useful Theatres in June last year, he says, was because of the pressure such investors were putting on the group as a theatre owner.

“Where it’s been venture capitalist involved in theatre they obviously have a very big say. They can say it’s below the break [so close it] and I didn’t want to be involved in any situation like that,” he said.

• This year will see Lloyd Webber’s newest musical The Woman in White open at the RUT-owned Palace Theatre, which is to be refurbished. Directed by Trevor Nunn and starring Maria Friedman, Anne Hathaway and Kevin McKidd it is due to open in September. Tickets go on sale this month. It has been adapted for the stage by Charlotte Jones, with lyrics by David Zippel.

He is also due to bring Evita back to the West End in September 2005. Produced by Cameron Mackintosh, it will have a different orchestration, more in line with how the composer originally envisaged it. Meanwhile, Bombay Dreams is set to receive its one millionth customer this month and is to be made into a Bollywood movie.