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Charlotte McLaughlin

Lloyd Webber fears for future of Broadway due to costs

Andrew Lloyd Webber says he fears for the future of New York's Broadway theatre district. (AP PHOTO)

Andrew Lloyd Webber says he is worried about the future of Broadway due to the "incredibly high" running costs of productions.

The 75-year-old British composer saw the last performance of his production Bad Cinderella at a theatre in New York on Wednesday.

His world-famous The Phantom Of The Opera, which is running in London, also had its last curtain call after more than 30 years on Broadway in April.

"I'm a bit worried about the future of Broadway, the running costs are so incredibly high," Lloyd-Webber told the CBS Sunday Morning program.

"So Broadway is going to turn into the equivalent of Fifth Avenue where you know, if you want to create a brand you put it on Broadway knowing you're not ever going to really make any money on it, but they have to be there."

He says it will just be "very big hits" in the theatre district which "bothers" him.

Bad Cinderella, a retooling of the composer's West End musical Cinderella with new songs, leading lady and title, had not been well received by critics since its opening in March at the Imperial Theatre.

It received no nominations at the 2023 Tony Awards, which take place on Sunday.

"You can get a Tony Award for putting up a bit of money and saying you're a producer," Lloyd-Webber said .

"Somebody puts 20,000 (US) dollars ($A29,700) into a play or something, and then that play wins best play and they can say, 'I'm a Tony Award winning producer'.

"It needs to be addressed because it is a bit silly. There was that moment when sort of 30 people would come on stage (at the ceremony) because they're all producers."

Lloyd-Webber said he had not read any of the reviews for Bad Cinderella as his eldest son died the day after the show opened.

Nicholas Lloyd Webber, who was also a composer and was nominated for a Grammy alongside his father, Greg Wells and David Zippel for Cinderella, died at the age of 43 after battling gastric cancer.

"I don't think it really has completely sunk in yet," Lloyd-Webber said.

"I'm not sure I've dealt with it very well. It's very, very hard to put into words but I think about it a lot and we hugely miss him."

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