In a revealing moment at today’s Press launch of Love Never Dies, the Phantom follow-up set among the freak shows and big dippers of Coney Island in 1907, Andrew Lloyd Webber and director Jack O’Brien said they had “no idea what the budget is.”

Alongside the two leads, Summer Strallen is expected to be announced as Mme Giry, so I hope her agent is taking advantage of  lax accountancy at the Really Useful and pushing for a maximum wage with City-style bonuses.

The composer finished the score six weeks ago, and the two people he most wanted to hear it, Cameron Mackintosh and Sarah Brightman, have expressed their pleasure, Cameron writing him the most touching letter he can remember receiving.

And how will he measure the success of the show alongside his other big hits?

“I’m happy with it as a piece,” said a mellow ALW, looking spruce and fit in a grey suit and mauve shirt, “and that’s enough for me.”

The title song, which has been sung on many public occasions by Kiri Te Kanawa, including the composer’s fiftieth birthday party over ten years ago, has been re-fitted with new lyrics by Glenn Slater, who was notably absent from the launch.

The two pieces of the score we heard in the Her Majesty’s this morning (although the show will premiere at the Adelphi next March) were the rousing carousel waltz overture, played by a big band under the expressive baton of Simon Lee, and the Phantom’s operatic manifesto, “Till I Hear You Sing Again.”

Ramin Karimloo, the 31 year-old Iranian/Canadian who has sung all three main Phantom “lover” roles — the Phantom and Raoul in the West End, Christine’s father in the film — despatched the aria with astonishing power and beauty.

His Christine, 27 year-old Sierra Boggess from Denver, Colorado, sat prettily by his side in a big chair and big hair — a tumbling curly mop that made her look just like Sarah Brightman.

Karimloo later confirmed that he will be masked as the Phantom in fantasy land, having first workshopped the role at Lloyd Webber’s Sydmonton Festival two years ago.

And Jack O’Brien also confirmed that there will be no chandelier and not even a roller coaster derailment “accident” to add to the Phantom’s list of murders…
 
There are to be no musical quotations from the previous Phantom, and Lloyd Webber insisted that this is a stand-alone show, even though most of the characters will be familiar.

I was very happy to find that Bob Crowley will be the designer, Nick Bromley the company manager and that ALW still pays fulsome credit to the Phantom’s designer, the late Maria Bjornson.

It was Maria, he said, who first expressed the view that there was unfinished business in Phantom –  Christine married to a bore, the Phantom on the loose — that needed addressing in a sequel.

So the story has been evolved through the novella Frederick Forsyth wrote, The Phantom in Manhattan, with crucial input from first Ben Elton and now Jack O’Brien, although ALW was distinctly hazy about attributing a libretto to anyone at all.

Press supremo Peter Thompson’s office later confirmed that the credit is : Book by ALW and Ben Elton, with Glenn Slater and Frederick Forsyth.  

Once we got going it was a fairly successful occasion, though the miling about beforehand was hopelessly mismanaged by a bevy of anodyne beauties from Freud Communications who didn’t seem to know who anyone was, where anyone should go…and had failed abysmally to provide early morning coffee.

No wonder Tommo rallied the troops in the circle bar just after noon, and just in time, with a cry of, “The bar is open, so you can all have a real effing drink.”
 

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Michael Coveney. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.