THE ‘80s A Special Report :...

Cameron Mackintosh had his first financial success in 1976 producing “Side by Side by Sondheim” in London, but things accelerated in 1981 when composer Andrew Lloyd Webber “took a bit of a flyer on me,” and he produced “Cats.” The show’s 16 productions went on to gross $1 billion around the world, paving the way for Mackintosh’s later mega-hit productions: “Les Miserables,” “The Phantom of the Opera,” and the new “Miss Saigon.”

Such people as Jujamcyn Theaters president Rocco Landesman have indirectly credited Mackintosh’s success with encouraging other producers to take risks on Broadway musicals. But Broadway is just one peg in the Mackintosh game board. Convinced that traveling shows don’t have to be limited to six-week or even three-month runs as in the past, the British producer, 43, began exporting musicals with scientific precision. “Les Miserables,” for instance, has already been presented in nearly 50 U.S. cities and a dozen foreign ones.

Mackintosh, who the show business trade paper Variety has called “the most successful commercial legit entrepreneur of the 1980s,” has compared the universality of his shows to “Star Wars” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark”--international money makers with universal appeal and nearly unlimited merchandising possibilities. Moving his shows one after another from London to New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Tel Aviv, Mackintosh is testing his contention that “maybe the world isn’t as different as everybody thought and a good show is a good show in any language.”

The Taste Makers project was edited by David Fox, assistant Sunday Calendar editor.