Europe's £40m welcome for Lloyd Webber

Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber has persuaded business groups and local authorities in two European cities to spend £40m on two new theatres, purpose-built for his own productions.

It will be the biggest example of European empire-building by a British theatre company, and will increase the United Kingdom and European revenue at Sir Andrew's Really Useful Group - which last year stood at £41m - by 10 per cent.

Sir Andrew will be producing both the shows, even though they will be performed in German, and his Really Useful Group will be hiring all the staff, and running the box offices - the first time this has happened in Europe.

The 1,600-seat theatres, in Frankfurt, Germany, and Basle in Switzerland, will be built to take his productions of Sunset Boulevard and The Phantom Of The Opera. Ticket prices will start at £20 and rise to £80, giving huge profits to Sir Andrew, even after he spends a total of £12m on the two productions.

The agreement drawn up by the Really Useful Group gives it "an ongoing option for programming", meaning that it can choose the next three productions, all of which will be Lloyd Webber musicals. Effectively this will keep Lloyd Webber musicals in both theatres for at least a couple of decades.

This will not be the first case of a purpose-built theatre for a Lloyd Webber show. One was built in the German town of Bochum for Starlight Express and its complex roller-skate rink set. But these two new examples go far beyond that as Sir Andrew's organisation will be producing the shows abroad, hiring staff, buying the hardware, running the box offices and getting a greater percentage of royalties than with other foreign versions of his shows.

These are also the first cases where Sir Andrew's reputation has enabled him to secure agreement that even when Sunset Boulevard and The Phantom Of The Opera eventually close, he can merely replace them with other musicals that he has composed.

The £25m Frankfurt theatre is being built outside the city, 20 minutes down the autobahn, and will have large glass areas giving views over the surrounding forests, rivers and countryside. It has been financed by a group of hoteliers and will have an adjoining hotel. The £15m Basle theatre will be in the city centre and has been financed by the city fathers with some money coming from the city's trade fair organisation. Both theatres will open in the autumn. In Basle, where tickets have already gone on sale, the box office has taken £1.5m in 10 days.

James Thane, head of theatre at the Really Useful Group, said the two ventures broke new ground in the export of theatre. He added that the hydraulic and steel engineering needs for the sets in Sunset Boulevard will be incorporated into the new Frankfurttheatre. But even when the show eventually closed, the stage could be amended for other Lloyd Webber productions.