There’s more than one way to skin “Cats.”
The man behind the Box and “Sleep No More” says he’d like to take over the shuttering “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” — because he says that, despite Andrew Lloyd Webber’s dire warnings that Broadway is doomed, there’s plenty of viable ways to put on a big-time production in New York.
“I love that show. I would so take that on… Broadway economics make it hard to find a new audience, and Broadway’s business structure is predicated on failing,” Randy Weiner, who’s currently producing Weber’s “Phantom of the Opera” as the immersive “Masquerade” off-Broadway tells Page Six.
Several shows are “waiting in the wings to take over the venue” after a show’s evicted, he said.
The announcement of the abrupt closing of “Jellicle Ball” sent waves through the theatre community this month – especially since it garnered so much buzz and took home three Tony Awards in June. Weber responded to the news with a desperate plea on social media for “theatre owners, unions, and producers to come together urgently” to end what he claimed is a crisis that destroyed “Jellicle.”
He stressed that the Great White Way can’t survive by relying on staging sure-fire, proven hits alone. “Broadway is in dire danger of rivaling Hollywood’s empty soundstages with increasingly dark theatres,” he wrote.
“I know [Weber] sincerely wants to change the system,” Weiner told us, “I know that because…he gave his most precious possession — the most successful show in the world — to me to explore, doing it in a completely artistic different way.” He added that “Masquerade” has been a success, in part, because the production is also the proprietor of the building and the bar within it. (Many have blamed Broadway’s struggles on the ever-rising rents that Times Square owners charge).
“Andrew gave me ‘Phantom’ to try something new creatively and with [a different] business model,” he said. Weiner believes “Cats” – and other original Broadway shows – could live on if it followed a similar model.
“I’m one guy. I’m not an industry, but I would do anything to help them. I love that show. I would build a whole club for it. I would get the bar, dancing afterwards and support this thing,” Weiner who’s seen the show on and off-Broadway said. “A bunch of those performers were in my club called the Stranger,” he added referring to the former W. 57th St. nightclub The Post described as an “unhinged.”
Weber’s “Jellicle Ball” will close its doors on Aug. 8., after four months on Broadway.
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