The show must go on, but for Andrew Lloyd Webber, family comes first.
The musical theater composer, whose latest show “Bad Cinderella” debuts this week, revealed he’s sitting out the premiere on Thursday to be with his son Nicholas, who is battling stomach cancer.
“I am absolutely devastated to say that my eldest son Nick is critically ill,” Webber said in a statement Sunday. “As my friends and family know, he has been fighting gastric cancer for the last 18 months, and Nick is now hospitalized.”
“I therefore have not been able to attend the recent previews of ‘Bad Cinderella’ and as things stand, I will not be able to cheer on its wonderful cast, crew and orchestra on opening night this Thursday,” Webber continued. “We are all praying that Nick will turn the corner. He is bravely fighting with his indomitable humor, but at the moment my place is with him and the family.”
Born in July 1979 to Webber and his former wife Sarah Hugill, Nicholas followed in his father’s creative footsteps and became a composer. The 43-year-old’s work includes compositions for the BBC One drama “Love, Lies and Records,” as well as the Gillies MacKinnon drama “The Last Bus.”
In 2022, Nicholas scored a Grammy nomination alongside Webber for best musical theater album for “Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella.”
While Nicholas was self-conscious of his famous pedigree at the start of his career, he said he eventually learned to embrace it.
“For a long time, I dropped the Lloyd bit to see what the reaction would be,” Nicholas told The Telegraph in November 2011. “I got some stuff on the radio, so I thought, ‘OK, I’m obviously not a complete idiot.’ Then I thought, ‘Hang on, if other people are prepared to work with me without the surname, then maybe I should just get on with it.’”
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