Answering Dunaway’s ‘Sunset’ Charges : Theater: Lloyd Webber’s spokesman gives composer-producer’s perspective on the issue.

A spokesman for Andrew Lloyd Webber sought to explain over the weekend the background on the composer-producer’s actions leading up to last week’s firing of actress Faye Dunaway from the Los Angeles production of “Sunset Boulevard,” an act Dunaway has termed “capricious.”

Spokesman Peter Brown denied Dunaway’s contention that Lloyd Webber had insisted that she sing the role in a higher range than her own. “At her bidding, they tried different keys, but she was never asked to sing in a higher range,” Brown said.

Dunaway manager Bob Palmer replied that Dunaway and Lloyd Webber agreed about the key at their last meeting, but this followed a period when Dunaway “was trying to get her voice up there where he wanted it.”

In addition to payments for rehearsals, Lloyd Webber’s company has officially offered to pay Dunaway two weeks of her post-opening salary--the amount required by Actors’ Equity contracts when someone is dismissed during rehearsals. In Dunaway’s case, sources on both sides agree that two weeks’ salary amounts to approximately $50,000.

At her press conference Friday, Dunaway said she expects to be paid for the six-month term of her contract, which would have begun on opening night, July 5. At $25,000 a week, she would be due $650,000.

Spokesmen for both sides agree that no contract was signed. A pact had been drawn up but was still being examined. By offering to pay for two weeks, though no contract was signed, Lloyd Webber spokesman Peter Brown said “we believe we’re acting as if it had been signed.”

Dunaway’s attorney Larry Stein declined to comment on the status of the negotiations.

Asked whether the complications of Dunaway’s shooting schedule for the movie “Don Juan de Marco and the Centerfold” had also been a factor in Lloyd Webber’s decision to dump Dunaway, Brown said that requests from the Dunaway camp to delay her first performance beyond the announced July 5 had “made everyone look into the situation more closely.” He also noted that location shooting in Mexico would have required Dunaway to miss “Sunset” from July 13-15--a fact that Brown contends wasn’t told to Lloyd Webber’s representatives until after the July 5 date was announced.

Palmer said that details of the shooting schedule in Mexico had been made clear early on to Lloyd Webber’s company, but acknowledged that Dunaway had “looked into the possibility” of an opening night delay. However, he said that when she met with Lloyd Webber a week ago, “she was ready to open on July 5.”

Dunaway objected to Lloyd Webber’s manner of telling her the bad news--she learned it from Palmer after getting the impression at a session with Lloyd Webber one day earlier that all was well. Brown defended the producer’s behavior at that last meeting with Dunaway--”he’s not rude ever; he remained polite, then went away to discuss the situation” with the show’s director and musical director. After the decision was reached, “the proper way” was to go through Dunaway’s agent, Brown said.

“Sometimes it’s more civilized to tell it like it is,” responded Palmer. “She loves to deal with the facts. She’s not a naive woman.”

After grossing at least $25 million from 232 performances, including a L.A.-record-breaking final week’s take of $949,466, the musical closed Sunday night, with Close referring obliquely to the “very dramatic developments” of the past week’s closing announcement in her remarks to the capacity house after the final curtain.

Close brought virtually every member of the backstage team out on stage, mentioning most of them by name--from director Trevor Nunn to carpenters and costumers. She apologized for missing several performances but thanked her “wonderful and incredibly talented” standby Karen Mason, passing her own big bouquet of flowers over to Mason.

She listed momentous events since the show had opened--from fires, earthquake and floods to the death of Jackie Kennedy Onassis and the “tragedy and horror” of the O.J. Simpson story--noting that only one performance was missed (it was after the quake).

Her mention of Simpson may have raised a few eyebrows. For the record, the charity that Close selected as beneficiary of the $6,000 earned from auctioning her house seats at the final performance was the L.A. County Bar Domestic Violence Project. And, though she didn’t draw the parallel herself, the Simpson story is about a contemporary real-life double murder at an address not far from the fictional celebrity murder that serves as the framework for the “Sunset Boulevard” story.