Hit and miss for the impresarios

PROFITS have slumped at impresario Sir Cameron Mackintosh's West End empire. But elsewhere in Theatreland, it is a case of money, money, money for the brains behind the global hit Mamma Mia!, based on the Seventies and Eighties hits of Abba.

Latest accounts filed by Cameron Mackintosh Ltd reveal that pre-tax profits for the group, which produces shows like Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera and owns a host of West End theatres, plunged by nearly 30% last year to £6.4m as sales went down by 10% to £20m.

Sir Cameron's pay for the year dived to £785,000 from £2.5m. But the 58-year-old philanthropist, reckoned to be worth £400m, clearly also has one eye on his retirement: payments into his pension scheme in the year tripled to £1.5m.

The results come after a year in which Mackintosh introduced an off-peak discount scheme for ticket prices to his flagship productions, including the now closed My Fair Lady.

Mackintosh brought in the scheme following the slump in theatre-going US tourists to the capital after the 9/11 terrorist atrocities saw sales and profits dive by nearly 20% in 2002.

Mackintosh's financial controller, Richard Knibb, said the scheme was designed to ape the low-cost airlines: 'It is better to have someone in the seats who may have paid a little less than to have the seat empty.'

However, the owner of rival hit Mamma Mia! appeared to have had no such problem. Having recently celebrated its fifth year in the West End and having been seen by more than 17m people in 70 cities around the world, Mamma Mia! brought in profits of £9m last year for Littlestar Services, the production company set up by Judy Craymer, the producer who had the idea for the show, along with Abba songwriters Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus.

Craymer took no pay last year, according to the company's latest accounts, but received £3.55m in dividends.

The accounts also show that a further £968,000 was paid in production and management services to a company controlled by Craymer and she received another £110,000 in accommodation costs.

In the previous year, Craymer received £1m in dividends and her management company received £2.9m.

Another £3.55m was due in dividends to Andersson and Ulvaeus, who together own 50% of Littlestar.

Craymer had the idea for the show - which has since been aped by productions like We Will Rock You and Tonight's the Night using the music of Queen and Rod Stewart respectively - after hearing Abba's The Winner Takes It All, which she believed could be used like Rice and Lloyd Webber's Don't Cry For Me Argentina to anchor a storyline.

She employed Catherine Johnson, a sometime television scriptwriter based at the Bush Theatre in Shepherds Bush to come up with the storyline.

The show was launched with £2.5m of business backing. 'It's kind of ironic because the show was quite hard to sell at first,' says Craymer.