Everyone I know seeems to have seen Love Never Dies already, and comment on the score is flowing freely through the newspapers and on the blogosphere.
Critics have listened to the score and the Press previews are starting on Saturday.
So once again the whole idea of a First Night next Tuesday is a wash-out. And the peculiar thrill of being able to say “I was there” when the show opened is blown away on the wind.
I know from reliable colleagues like Baz Bamigboye and Edward Seckerson that the new score is a peach, Well, I know it for myself and, without preempting later critical comment, I am intensely looking forward to hearing “live” the eerie dissonance of the song the Phantom can’t express until, ten years after they parted, he hears Christine sing again.
The title song of “Love Never Dies” is in its third incarnation. I first heard it at Lloyd Webber’s fiftieth birthday party, when Kiri Te Kanawa sang it to lyrics by Don Black (“The Heart is Slow to Learn”).
Then it cropped up again in The Beautiful Game, lyrics by Ben Elton, as “Our Kind of Love.” And now Glenn Slater’s lyrics return the song to the dramatic context is was written for, when the Phantom sequel was a twinkle in the composer’s eye.
All great composers re-write their main material. Prokofiev’s opera The Fiery Angel comes back as his brilliant Third Symphony. Beethoven and Rossini never wasted and wanted not.
So Lloyd Webber is merely following some familiar precedents. Making a joke of this, someone spots Oscar Hammerstein in the popular throng at the fairground.
But he’s also been liberated, I think, by this new fairground setting on Coney Island, with hurdy-gurdies and lovely girlies, a fantatstically complex and interesting quartet deep into the second act, and the pounding rock of “Beauty Underneath” that sounds like a Bonnie Tyler song, very much in Whistle Down the Wind mode.
I’m a bit worried by the crude melodrama of the denouement, and disappointed to learn that Bob Crowley’s design is based on projections rather than mechanical structures, but one can only judge that sort of thing in performance.
But the revelation of the Phantom’s tryst with Christine on her wedding eve in the opera house, their one night of guilty passion, is beautifully unravelled in “Beneath a Moonless Sky.”
I agree with those who don’t think much of the title, and the absence of star names could still hurt the show. Mind you, what show, I asked myself when I stood outside the Adelphi last night before the opening of Private Lives next door at the Vaudeville.
There’s no front of house, no buzz, no-one buying tickets, no sign of anything.
It wasn’t like that first time round. The Phantom of the Opera opened at Her Majesty’s on Thursday 9 October 1986, with a thrilling star performance by Michael Crawford in the title role; it was a night of sex, glamour, wonderful costumes and soaring melody, something missing from the West End for quite some time back then.
Even before Crawford was announced — on a lunchtime radio news programme, I seem to recall – the title song had been recorded as a video by Ken Russell and launched on Terry Wogan’s television chat show. The recording was made by Sarah Brightman and Steve Harley, of Cockney Rebel fame, and it climbed to Number Seven in the charts.
Simultaneously, Cliff Richard joined Sarah in releasing “All I Ask of You” as a single. Then Crawford — who really was a very big star — was announced, and the box office went crazy, and stayed that way for twenty years.
The late, much lamented designer Maria Bjornson, who has been touchingly evoked by Lloyd Webber in the pre-publicity, always maintained that the power of Phantom as a love story was down to the fact that Lloyd Webber never possessed Sarah completely.
He loved her, of course, and they were married probably in order for him to write the show. There was also the ghost of his dead father in there somewhere, the angel of music, perhaps.
It remains to be seen if the composer has reactivated that inspiration in quite the same way, or perhaps even gone beyond it. We shan’t know for sure till the middle of next week.
Thanks for an informative piece. I did enjoy reading it. You’re right about the lack of glamour. I too remember the Ken Russell video, filmed on the actual sets of the show (I think). It was so huge and evocative I HAD to go to see it!
I have to disagree about this score being ‘a peach’ – it sounded cliched and derivative to me, when I was expecting something that matched the (really quite good) title song. The ‘Beauty Underneath’ was a particularly low point, with the pounding over-miked 80s rock sounding comically out of place amid the rest of the score, and a dreary tune. It’s also typically Lloyd Webber that he has written about six songs that are just repeated several times each with different lyrics. There’s no sense of creating a musical world for each character, and his pastiche numbers have very little wit about them. The quartet to me was a cliched idea with lyrics that need to be a lot cleverer to make it work. The chorus numbers are also very simplistic and lack any musical complexity or depth. Just my opinion, of course, but one shared by most of the people I saw last night’s still disappointing preview with. The final scene still had several people in the dress circle in fits of laughter. Ultimately, the characters are all so awful and/or dull that there’s not much that can be done with them.
I can see what people mean when they say that there is no merchandise and no big names. The problem is that ALW has already been accused of selling out – writing a sequel to his most succesful musical? It’s inevitable, and possibly correct. And I hear that the title song is confirmed as a recycled song in the programme (I admit that I haven’t had first hand experience as I’ve not seen it). Does admitting it make it acceptable? I haven’t heard ‘The Heart Is Slow to Learn’ but ‘Our Kind of Love’ I do know – after all, ‘The Beautiful Game’ has had a recording made of it.
Having merchandise and a big name would just confirm suspicions of selling out. But every musical seems to have merchandise these days, if only a mug and a poster, so not having it seems to me to be a transparent attempt at not looking commerical (maybe I’m being cynical, maybe they just haven’t had merchandise made yet. In which case, what awful planning!)
If the name of ALW wasn’t pulling power enough, the name of Phantom is an even bigger crowd puller. Having a big name star and pre-released, chart pleasing songs would not make the musical more talked about than it is. I think having a man who has already played Phantom (brilliantly – this I have had first hand experience in) and Sierra Boggess – a performer who has only just made her Broadway debut and so is established as good yet still a newcomer – is just an attempt of bringing it back to the talent instead of the money. The question is whether this is calculated for appearance or whether it’s because the casting directors were doing what was best for the production.
Uf, I have some strange feelings about the complete score of Love Never Dies, strangely erased by a cat long ago: It´s a work full of recycled and repetitive tunes. From Sunset Blvd. to Evita, The Woman in White and The Beautiful Game. The title song, “Love Never Dies”, is a huge dissapointment, a bad joke and a boring melody. Sierra Bogges is beautiful and she has a wonderful voice. But her principal song is a symphony of irritative screams. The girl screams and screams without transmitting anything. I don´t know ALW has insisted and insisted on putting this song into this new show. When Kiri Te Kanawa sang it, nothing happened. When it was perfomed in The Beautiful Game, nothing happened either. And now, all United Kingdom is sure that nothing will happen with this trash. Lloyd Webber has made useless efforts with this terrible song promoting it in a marketing campaign that confronts two Divas in a gossip: the lovely Sierra Boggess and the ex-alcoholic Katherine Jenkings. On the other hand, I have to say that once more, the mix Lloyd Webber-Elton didn´t work. (Where´s Tim Rice?) The lyrics by Gleen Slater are terrible too, specially in “Til I hear you sing” (Why this guy always writes his songs using the same words live Til and Heaven?) Just check the titles of his movies and musicals songs. I´m Carlotta Rojas de Chañí, I buyed the Love Never Dies CD and I want my money back. Now.
Unforgiveable Mr Lloyds Bank that previews were FULL price.That stinks of pure greed and disdain for the paying public. He deserves reviews like this stinker!-
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/theater/10love.html
And no names for your £67! For that I’d have wanted Michael Crawford,well not really,Glenn Close and Bonnie Langford.I also pondered did Rodgers and Hammerstein -say after the huge success of “Sound of Music” think- mmm shall we knock one out about Maria 10 years on with a new kiddie and a Nasty complex? What apart from hoping to emulate the financial success of Phantom mad ALW toil over the joanna for so long? Not because the public wanted or expected a (groan) sequel.
this particular game is astounding
Our favorite holding period is forever.
Regarding the time we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
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