Lloyd Webber: Close Call Was of Paramount Interest

If you’re one of the Patti LuPone fans who’s disappointed that she won’t be in “Sunset Boulevard” when it opens next fall on Broadway, don’t blame Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Producer/composer Lloyd Webber blames Paramount Pictures. That was the thrust of his comments in a recent interview in the London Evening Standard. “The whole decision was taken out of my hands,” Lloyd Webber said. His own company “has only ever owned half” of the show. “The rest belongs largely to Paramount Pictures, who made the original movie . . . Paramount flatly refused to put up their half of (the $12-million Broadway budget) if Patti plays the lead. I can raise my $6 million but I can’t raise theirs. And they want Glenn Close. It’s as simple and as difficult as that.”

If you believe this scenario, Paramount--whose Cecil B. DeMille wouldn’t hire Norma Desmond in the fictional story within “Sunset”--also won’t hire the woman who created her on stage.

But Paramount disputes Lloyd Webber’s version. “All creative decisions were made by Andrew Lloyd Webber,” Paramount spokeswoman Cheryl Boone Isaacs told The Times. “Paramount had no conversations with him about casting. It was all in his court.”

SPEAKING OF “SUNSET”: The audience for the evening performance of “Sunset Boulevard” on June 12 will get an extra attraction for no extra charge.

Before the show begins, the concurrent Tony Awards broadcast on CBS will cut away from New York to feature a live performance of “As If We Never Said Goodbye” from “Sunset,” direct from Century City. After it’s over, star Glenn Close will present a Tony--which one isn’t decided--from the Shubert stage. Then the Tony telecast will switch back to New York, and “Sunset Boulevard” will go on as usual, from the top.

Although curtain time will remain at 7:30, the “Sunset” audience that night will be asked--via ads and mailings--to be seated no later than 7:15. No, you don’t have to wear black tie.

During the post-TV performance, the cast will, natch, repeat “As If We Never Said Goodbye.” Those words will never have been more accurate.

“Having a live number from Los Angeles shows the true national scope of today’s Broadway,” said Cy Feuer, president of the Tony co-sponsoring League of American Theatres and Producers. This doesn’t mean the awards themselves will have “a true national scope”--”Sunset” won’t be eligible for Tonys until next year, after it opens on Broadway.

BACK TO CBS: Michael Arabian, who brought a site-specific “Romeo and Juliet” to CBS Studio Center in Studio City last summer, will open another production there on May 20. But this one is a modern play, “The History of Shadows,” to be presented solely within Stage 18 (home of the “Dave’s World” TV series) rather than all over the lot.

Befitting the venue, three actors from popular TV series--Bernie Kopell of “Love Boat,” William Christopher of “MASH” and Robert Mandan of “Soap”--are in the cast. But this is material they never covered on “The Love Boat.” It’s about a young gay man interviewing older gay men about their years in the closet; Ron Lachman adapted Robert C. Reinhart’s novel. Rear projection film sequences will supplement the live action. Arabian plans to seat 199 and is negotiating an Actors’ Equity contract.

SAN BERNARDINO SHUFFLE: Earlier this year, San Bernardino Civic Light Opera postponed its spring season and asked its subscribers to donate their tickets to the restructuring effort.

Now, however, the city of San Bernardino has agreed to buy back the theater’s home, the California Theatre. Although details haven’t been finalized, a cash infusion is expected. In the meantime, the company went ahead and did a “Nunsense” without an Actors’ Equity contract and now expects to finish its spring season with “I Do! I Do!” and “Sophisticated Ladies,” probably with Equity contracts.

Equity was “extremely unhappy” about the non-union show, said an Equity official, “but now we’re happy to see them coming back from the dead.”*