ALW On Stephen Ward

On occasion of the presentation of a handful of songs from the score of his up-coming new musical Stephen Ward, Andrew Lloyd Webber discussed the impetus behind his new show. ALW still remembers the actual event that is the theme of Stephen Ward as it happened in the late 1960s, "I was very young at the time. I remember the whole so-called Profumo Affair... I suppose I must have been suggested the idea as an idea for a musical many, many times, but I never thought it was a good one."
Continuing, he said, "I thought I would research it a bit, and I looked into the story... I found it extraordinary, really." As for the dramatic pull of the project: "A very odd, odd story in that: how could this man end up in the chamber of horrors at Madame Tussaud's? It was sort of, in a way, the last gasp of the old establishment... to suppress something that they didn't want and to find a scapegoat, and that's what this show is really about... We present it as it happened, if history somehow relays or feels the verdict was unsound or whatever, we end with Ward's suicide, so we probably say all that we need to say."
Stephen Ward features music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton as well as direction by Richard Eyre. The musical begins previews in the West End on December 3.