‘Les Mis is my baby’: Whether it’s the West End, Broadway or film, Cameron Mackintosh is master of musicals

Sat, 11 May 2013 18:00:45 GMT

Source: arts.nationalpost.com --- Saturday, May 11, 2013
In 1998 in London, the Royal Family in attendance, there was a gala tribute to Cameron Mackintosh, the most successful of musical theatre producers then, now, and conceivably ever. It was indeed called Hey, Mr. Producer! Perhaps its most memorable item was a pretaped duet between Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber, two composers who, whatever their dissimilarities, share two things: a birthday and a track record of having their shows produced by Mackintosh. For this occasion, Sondheim wrote a parody lyric to music that alternated his own Send in the Clowns with Webber’s Music of the Night . The moment that went viral, as people probably weren’t saying in those days, was the one in which Sondheim sang “God, but he’s rich!” to which Webber replied: “Richer than me!” Well, he ought to be. He’s produced the longest-running of Webber’s own musicals ( Cats and The Phantom of the Opera ) as well some comparably successful shows by other composers: most spectacularly, of course, Les Miserables. He also produced the movie version of that show, Blu-ray edition now available. Since this was his first film, (“apart”, as he says, “from filming a few concerts”) I was curious to know whether his had been a hands-on involvement. On the phone he replied, emphatically, that it was. Not from the start, apparently. “I went into it” he said, “just as an executive producer. But Les Mis is my baby, as it were. I’ve been its catalyst since the beg ...