Lloyd Webber's football musical falls victim to foot-and-mouth

The foot-and-mouth crisis claimed an unusual casualty yesterday: the latest West End musical from the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The Beautiful Game, a collaboration with Ben Elton, the comic-turned-lyricist, about a 1960s Northern Irish football team, was the casualty of a 10 per cent slump in takings in the West End as overseas visitors stayed away because of the disease. Members of the cast were given the news last night that their Cambridge Theatre production would close on 1 September, after a run of one year. The composer's company, the Really Useful Group, said the show had lost almost £1m in advance bookings from America because of the tourism slump. A spokeswoman said: "In the end, that has proved to be the difference between going on and doing a West End run of maybe another two or three years or closing now."

But Lloyd Webber himself admitted that the musical's subject might have been part of the problem. "I always knew that to write about Northern Ireland would be understandably difficult for British audiences and I am proud that The Beautiful Game is my first show to win the London Critics' Circle Award," he said.

"Challenges in musical theatre are my lifeblood and always will be. That is why my subjects have varied from Jesus Christ to the wife of an Argentinian dictator, via T S Eliot poems, and why I will be presenting next year the Indian musical Bombay Dreams. I'm looking forward to the new production of The Beautiful Game that opens in Toronto next autumn prior to moving to New York."

A number of West End shows have decided to close early in recent months, because the box office depends heavily on tourist cash.

However, the stage hit My Fair Lady, which transfers to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane this month, has clocked up a box office advance of £10m, which is thought to be a record.

The early closure of The Beautiful Game comes as an unusual blot on the career of a composer who dominates the world of musicals. His work includes hits such as Cats, Evita, Starlight Express and Jesus Christ Superstar, and he was the first person to have three musicals running simultaneously on Broadway and in the West End.