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Andrew Lloyd Webber: UK government wants musicals ‘without any singing’

Next time you go see “The Phantom of the Opera,” if British officials have their way, you might listen to the small-talk of the night. Andrew Lloyd Webber told BBC Radio 4 Friday that a government official bizarrely suggested that West End musicals come back “without any singing” to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. …

Next time you go see “The Phantom of the Opera,” if British officials have their way, you might listen to the small-talk of the night.

Andrew Lloyd Webber told BBC Radio 4 Friday that a government official bizarrely suggested that West End musicals come back “without any singing” to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.

“I don’t know what’s going to be in the report on theater that’s coming out on Monday,” the Tony-winning composer, 72, said of next week’s announcement. “But I sincerely hope it doesn’t contain some of the things that I’ve seen in some of their advice — one of which was a brilliant one for musicals: that you’re not allowed to sing.”

Group singing is considered by many scientists to be a dangerous activity, due to the large amount of heavy breathing and potentially infectious droplets it can cause.

Knowing this, Lloyd Webber also revealed he plans to test out an antiviral fog machine and thermal imaging scanner, to sense audience members with high temperatures, at the London Palladium where his classic musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” would have been performed this summer. The technologies have proven safe and successful for a South Korean production of “Phantom.”

“What I hope to do is to demonstrate to the British government what has happened in Korea at the London Palladium, hopefully in the first week of July,” he told the program.

But London’s showman, producer Michael Harrison, tells The Post that his popular “Joseph” revival, starring Jac Yarrow and Jason Donovan, is ready to return to the Palladium in summer 2021, full-steam ahead.

“It’s the show people will need after this,” he says.

Harrison also did not rule out the return of his raucous annual Christmas pantomime at the 2,300-seat Palladium in December.

In venting his frustrations, Lloyd Webber joins many British theater professionals who are pressuring the government for increased support during a difficult moment for their industry.

Producer Cameron Mackintosh said that all of his shows — “Phantom,” “Mary Poppins,” “Hamilton” and “Les Miserables” — would not reopen until 2021. And “Harry Potter” producer Sonia Friedman wrote in the Telegraph in May that the British theater was on the “brink of total collapse.”

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