Almost a year ago, when I was attending the Holders Festival in Barbados — one of the Caribbean’s leading performing arts festivals — I had a nice chat with Andrew Lloyd Webber, who has a house on the island.
He had just started work on a new musical about Stephen Ward, the osteopath at the center of the Profumo Affair, the 1963 prostitution scandal that brought down Prime Minister Harold MacMillan’s government.
Lloyd Webber played a tune on the piano for me — a gorgeous, haunting melody that, he said, would be Ward’s theme. The next day, lyricist Don Black and playwright Christopher Hampton arrived to kick around some ideas for the musical.
The show has, I’m told, percolated along nicely over the year, and next month Lloyd Webber is organizing a reading of it in London for an invitation-only crowd of theater VIPs.
Richard Eyre, who used to run the National Theatre and who staged “Mary Poppins,” has signed on to direct, and the producer will be Robert Fox, who brought Hugh Jackman’s sensational one-man show to Broadway last season.
If the reading goes well, Lloyd Webber will unveil a fuller version of the show — known, for now, as “The Stephen Ward Musical” — this summer at his annual Sydmonton Festival.
Sydmonton, for you civilians, is Lloyd Webber’s country estate outside London. In June, theater heavyweights — the Shuberts, the Nederlanders, Cameron Mackintosh, Tim Rice — spend a weekend at Chez Lloyd Webber, eating fine meals, drinking superb wines, watching polo matches and playing a fiercely competitive round of Name That Pop Tune (Rice, an expert on pop music, usually wins). The highlight of the weekend is a sneak peek at Lloyd Webber’s latest show, which is staged, with a full orchestra, in a 16th-century chapel on the grounds of the estate.
“Evita,” “Cats,” “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Sunset Boulevard” have all debuted at the Sydmonton Festival.
It’s one of the most sought-after invitations in England, and guests are asked not to speak about the festival — or Lloyd Webber’s latest show — in the press.
(Somehow, though, I always manage to get a full report on the proceedings.)
“We’ve broken the back of the show, and we’re going to finish it next week,” Black told me yesterday. “We’ve been working with Andrew all year in Barbados and Marbella, [Spain].”
One of the pleasures of writing a Lloyd Webber musical is that you get to work in all the lovely places where he maintains homes.
“Andrew doesn’t believe in roughing it!” says Black, with a laugh.
Much has been written about the Profumo Affair, most notably by the celebrated journalist and broadcaster Ludovic Kennedy, who covered Stephen Ward’s trial.
(“The Trial of Stephen Ward” is an excellent book, well worth ordering from a used bookseller.)
Ward was a society osteopath, who had offices on fancy Harley Street and who introduced attractive young women to his high-powered friends and clients.
One weekend, he introduced Christine Keeler, a showgirl and occasional prostitute, to John Profumo, Britain’s secretary of state for war. An affair began, but Profumo wasn’t Keeler’s only suitor. She was also scampering around with a top military official from the Soviet embassy in London.
When news of his affair with Keeler broke, Profumo issued a denial in the House of Commons, but later admitted the truth — and resigned.
Blame for the scandal, which rocked the British establishment to its very foundations, fell on Ward, who was accused of being Keeler’s pimp. On the last day of the trial, he killed himself by taking an overdose of drugs.
Kennedy believed Ward had been railroaded — that he took the fall for Britain’s ruling class.
Lloyd Webber’s musical takes that point of view as well, hence his poignant, haunting “Stephen Ward Theme.”
“I must say, this is the best score Andrew’s written in years,” says Black.
I hear the composer wants Julian Ovenden, who appeared off-Broadway last year in “Death Takes a Holiday,” to play Ward.
I’m keeping my eye on “The Stephen Ward Musical” — it sounds fascinating.
And I’ll be checking the mail for my invitation to Sydmonton this summer.
See you at the polo match, darlings!