Andrew Lloyd Webber Trivia
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59 free Andrew Lloyd Webber trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Andrew Lloyd Webber has written 21 musicals, a Requiem Mass and some of the most-recorded show tunes of all time, and several of his productions have run for more than a decade in both the West End and on Broadway. This quiz covers his whole career: the schoolboy cantata that became Joseph, the concept albums that launched Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, the poems behind Cats, the chandelier of The Phantom of the Opera, the roller-skating trains of Starlight Express, Sunset Boulevard's lawsuits, the reality-TV casting shows and the late flourishes of School of Rock and Cinderella. Easy questions ask which show is based on T. S. Eliot and who sang Christine first; harder ones cover the Eurovision reject that became King Herod's song, the Paganini variations that opened The South Bank Show, and the cat that destroyed a Phantom sequel. It suits musical-theatre fans, West End and Broadway regulars, and quiz nights that want a music round with more than pop charts in it. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on Lloyd Webber and his individual shows, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Broadway composer shares Lloyd Webber's 22 March birthday?
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim. The supposed rivals were born 18 years apart to the day, and at a 1998 London gala they performed together for the first time, spoofing their own songs by tangling Send in the Clowns with The Music of the Night.
Q 02Which former James Bond walked out of Lloyd Webber's Aspects of Love weeks before its 1989 premiere?
Roger Moore
Roger Moore. He withdrew from the lead shortly before the 1989 opening, saying he had come to feel that the musical stage was not for him.
Q 03Lloyd Webber and Rice's first musical, The Likes of Us, told the story of which Victorian founder of children's homes?
Thomas Barnardo
Thomas Barnardo. The 1965 show about his work with destitute children never found a backer, so it sat unstaged for 40 years until the pair finally mounted it at Lloyd Webber's own Sydmonton Festival in July 2005.
Q 04Which biblical figure is the hero of the 15-minute pop cantata Lloyd Webber and Rice wrote for a London school in 1968?
Joseph
Joseph. The piece for the boys of Colet Court grew with each outing, and at its second performance one parent in the audience was the Sunday Times critic Derek Jewell, whose warm review set it on the road to a full-length show.
Q 05Which Jesus Christ Superstar character taunts Jesus in a jaunty vaudeville-style number, daring him to walk across a swimming pool?
King Herod
King Herod. His song began as Try It and See, a pop tune the pair wrote as a hopeful for the 1969 Eurovision Song Contest; it missed out, was recorded by Rita Pavone and was then rewritten for the show.
Q 06In what form did Jesus Christ Superstar first reach the public in 1970, before any stage production existed?
A concept album
A concept album. Nobody would back a stage show about the last days of Christ, so the pair recorded it instead; the double LP topped the US chart in early 1971 and the Broadway production followed that October.
Q 07Which Deep Purple frontman sang the role of Jesus on the original Jesus Christ Superstar album?
Ian Gillan
Murray Head was Judas and Yvonne Elliman sang Mary Magdalene, a role she repeated on stage in Pittsburgh and on Broadway.
Q 08Which country banned Jesus Christ Superstar on religious grounds after its 1971 Broadway opening?
South Africa
South Africa. On Broadway the show was condemned by Christian and Jewish groups alike, but South Africa went further and banned it altogether.
Q 09Which English comic playwright wrote the book and lyrics for Lloyd Webber's 1975 flop Jeeves?
Alan Ayckbourn
Alan Ayckbourn. He stepped in after Tim Rice dropped out, and savage reviews closed the show within five weeks; two decades later the pair rebuilt it as By Jeeves, which opened in Scarborough in 1996 and reached the West End and Broadway.
Q 10After Julie Covington turned down the stage role, which little-known actress became a star as Eva Perón in London's Evita in 1978?
Elaine Paige
Elaine Paige. Covington had sung Eva on the 1976 recording but declined to play her, so hundreds of women were auditioned over several months; the part lifted Paige from near obscurity at 30 and made her name.
Q 11Which future star of The Princess Bride won a 1980 Tony Award as Che in the original Broadway production of Evita?
Mandy Patinkin
Mandy Patinkin. Broadway's first Che was his breakthrough role and won him the featured-actor Tony, one of seven the show took in 1980; seven years later he was the swordsman Inigo Montoya.
Q 12Which ballad, written for Madonna's dying Eva in the 1996 Evita film, won Lloyd Webber and Rice the Best Original Song Oscar?
You Must Love Me
You Must Love Me. Only a song written for the film itself could compete, so the pair added this new number to their twenty-year-old score; it brought Lloyd Webber his first Oscar and Tim Rice his third.
Q 13Lloyd Webber's 1978 Variations, written for his brother Julian, rework a famous caprice by which violin virtuoso?
Q 21The Phantom of the Opera is inspired by a novel by which French author?
Gaston Leroux
Gaston Leroux. Lloyd Webber picked up a battered second-hand copy of the novel, read it in an afternoon and saw that it could carry the big romantic score he had been trying to write.
Q 22Who played the Phantom in the original 1986 London production, winning both the Olivier and the Tony?
Michael Crawford
Michael Crawford. He was known mainly for comedy, above all as the hapless Frank Spencer on British television, but Lloyd Webber remembered him from the musical Flowers for Algernon and backed a hunch.
Q 23Which young unknown rewrote Richard Stilgoe's lyrics for The Phantom of the Opera and took the main lyricist credit?
Charles Hart
Paganini
Paganini. His 24th Caprice is put through 23 variations for Julian and a rock band, and the opening became familiar to millions of British viewers as the theme tune of The South Bank Show.
Q 14Cats is based on a 1939 collection of light verse by which poet?
T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot. He wrote the verses of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats in the 1930s to amuse his godchildren, and his poems supply most of the show's lyrics.
Q 15In Cats, the Jellicle tribe gathers to choose which of them will ascend to what?
The Heaviside Layer
The Heaviside Layer. The cats' heaven borrows the name of a real band of the upper atmosphere that bounces radio waves back to earth, predicted in 1902 by the self-taught English engineer Oliver Heaviside.
Q 16Which actress withdrew from the original Cats a week before previews after snapping her Achilles tendon?
Judi Dench
Judi Dench. She had been cast as both Grizabella and Jennyanydots when the tendon went in rehearsal, so the faded glamour cat and her big ballad passed to a late stand-in.
Q 17Who wrote the lyrics of "Memory", drawing on Eliot's poem "Rhapsody on a Windy Night"?
Trevor Nunn
Lloyd Webber played the tune to his Puccini-expert father, who reportedly said it sounded "like a million dollars".
Q 18Which musical overtook Cats in 2006 as the West End's longest-running musical?
Les Misérables
Les Misérables. Cats had closed in May 2002 on its 21st birthday, and in 2018 its old London home was renamed the Gillian Lynne Theatre after the show's choreographer.
Q 19In Starlight Express, the actors perform on what?
Roller skates
Roller skates. The story is a child's train set come to life, with engines racing to be the fastest in the world, so the cast skate at speed on ramps that loop out around the audience.
Q 20Starlight Express has run since 1988 in a purpose-built theatre in Bochum, a city in which country?
Germany
Germany. The Bochum venue was built around the show's racing ramps and it has played there since June 1988; by January 2025 more than 19 million people had seen it, a Guinness record for a single theatre.
Charles Hart. He was fourth in line for the job: Jim Steinman was busy, Alan Jay Lerner fell fatally ill and Richard Stilgoe's draft was largely rewritten, leaving the newcomer's words on Broadway's longest-running show.
Q 24Cats became Broadway's longest-running show in 1997 by overtaking which backstage musical?
A Chorus Line
A Chorus Line. Cats passed its record at performance 6,138 on 19 June 1997 and kept the title until another Lloyd Webber show, The Phantom of the Opera, took it in January 2006.
Q 25Which British producer announced in 2022 that Broadway's Phantom would close after 35 years?
Cameron Mackintosh
Cameron Mackintosh. He blamed a weakening box office and rising costs, saying you don't want to run a great show into the ground; the curtain fell in April 2023 after 13,981 performances.
Q 26Which lot number is the famous chandelier in the auction prologue of The Phantom of the Opera?
Lot 666
Lot 666. It comes up straight after a monkey music box, and as the auctioneer has the wrecked chandelier switched on it flickers to life and rises to the ceiling, carrying the opera house back to its glory days.
Q 27Which Pink Floyd member accused Lloyd Webber of lifting the Phantom's riff from "Echoes"?
Roger Waters
Roger Waters. He called the likeness probably actionable but chose not to sue, and instead took a swipe at Lloyd Webber's long-running shows in his 1992 song It's a Miracle.
Q 28"Love Changes Everything", from Aspects of Love (1989), became the signature song of which performer?
Michael Ball
Michael Ball. He opened Aspects of Love singing it as the young Alex, and his single climbed to number 2 in the British chart in early 1989, launching the recording career he has run beside his stage work ever since.
Q 29For which event did Lloyd Webber write "Amigos Para Siempre", sung by Sarah Brightman and José Carreras?
The 1992 Barcelona Olympics
The 1992 Barcelona Olympics. José Carreras, born in the city, was music director of the Games' ceremonies and sang it with Sarah Brightman at the closing one.
Q 30Sunset Boulevard is based on a 1950 film by which director?
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder. Hal Prince held the stage rights when he and Lloyd Webber discussed the film in 1976, but the composer did not come back to the idea until after Aspects of Love, more than a decade later.