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Cameron Mackintosh is the legendary producer responsible for some of the biggest West End musicals ever. Cameron knew from the early age of eight, when he saw the musical Salad Days, that we wanted to be a West End musical director. Cameron started out as a stagehand at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane. He soon worked the ladder and in his 20s produced some small scale tours leading to his first musical Anything Goes, which opened out of town. It later transferred to the West End’s Saville Theatre, closing after just a fortnight.

During the 1970s he continued to produce numerous tours, with Godspell running almost continuously for five years. Trelawny in 1972 saw Cameron’s real big break where it performed at both Sadler’s Wells and the Prince of Wales for over a year.

His first international success came in 1976 with the musical Side by Side, where the show transferred from the Wyndham’s Theatre to New York, with the same cast. This led to the successful revival of the original production of Oliver! And later productions of two classic great musicals My Fair Lady and Oklahoma!

The unforgettable Cats was born in 1981, but it was 1985 that would change Cameron’s life for good. Les Misérables opened at the Palace Theatre and has been performing ever since, with a transfer to the Queens Theatre in 2004. Today it is the longest running musical in the world and has recently had revived interest thanks to Susan Boyle, who famously sang “I Dreamed a Dream”. 

In 1986 Cameron Mackintosh joined yet again the other great of the West End and theatre world, Andrew Lloyd Webber. Together they produced the world wide theatre classic, The Phantom Of The Opera. Opening at Her Majesty’s theatre starring Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman, the show has not lost popularity since.

The 90s saw Cameron continuing to have success with shows like Miss Saigon, Carousel and another revival of Oliver, this time a completely new production at the London Palladium.

In March 2001 Cameron opened My Fair Lady starring Jonathan Pryce as Professor Higgins and Martine McCutcheon as Eliza. In 2004 Cameron fulfilled a long-standing ambition to produce a stage musical of Mary Poppins. The production was in collaboration with Disney.

Today he owns seven theatres in London’s West End, the Queen’s, Gielgud, Prince of Wales, Novello, Prince Edward, Noël Coward and Wyndham’s. He still remains the leading producer in the West End with many projects planned for the future.

1967 – The Reluctant Debutante

1986 – The Phantom Of The Opera

1969 – Anything Goes

1987 – Folles – A Broadway Legend

1971 – Salad Days

1989 – Just So

1972 – Trelawny

1990 – Five Guys Named Moe

1973 – The Card   

1991 – Moby Dick

1973 – Winnie The Pooh

1992 – The Card

1974 – Godspell

1992 – Putting It Together

1976 – Lauder!

1993 – Carousel

1976 - Side By Side

1996 – Martin Guerre

1977 – Oliver!

1997 – The Fix

1978 – My Fair Lady

1998 – Mr Producer!

1979 – Oklahoma!

1999 - Oklahoma!

1980 – Tom Foolery

2000 – The Witches Of Eastwick

1981 – Cats

2001 – My Fair Lady

1982 – The Little Shop Of Horrors

2004 – Mary Poppins

1982 – Song & Dance

2006 – Avenue Q

1983 – Abbacadabra

2008 – Oliver!

1984 – The Boyfriend

1985 – Les Misérables

• Productions being  played in 38 countries and 223 cities

• Over 38,000 professional performances worldwide

• Total audience figure of more than 51 million people worldwide

• 31 cast recordings

• 50 major theatre awards

• Approximately 101 cast and crew directly involved in every performance not including front of house staff, and the huge back up services including ticket sales, advertising, wardrobe staff, set contractors, maintenance, office staff, advertising and publicity

• Each performance entails some 392 complete costumes consisting of some 1782 items of clothing and 31 wigs

• The longest running production is in London where it played 7,602 performances at the Palace Theatre before transferring to the Queen's Theatre where it opened on 3 April 2004

• Opened at Her Majesty's Theatre, London on 27th September 1986, now in its 24th year

• Became Broadway’s longest running show ever, overtaking the record set by Cats with its 7,486th performance in January 2006

• Estimated that more than 100 million people worldwide have seen the show, which has been performed in 14 languages

• Won over 50 major theatre awards including three Olivier Awards

• Produced in 149 cities, in more than 25 countries around the world

• The original cast album became the first in British musical history to enter the music charts at number one. The album has sold more than forty million worldwide and has become the biggest selling cast album of all time

• The infamous chandelier is made up of 6,000 beads consisting of 35 beads to each string, standing at three metres wide and weighs one ton

• The Phantom's make-up takes two hours to put on and 30 minutes to take off. The face is moisturized, closely shaved and the prosthetics are fitted, setting immediately, before two wigs, two radio mics and two contact lenses (one white and one clouded) are placed

• 130 cast, crew and orchestra members directly involved in each performance

• 230 costumes, 14 dressers, 120 automated cues, 22 scene changes, 281 candles and 250 kg of dry ice and 10 fog and smoke machines are used