REVIEW - Love Never Dies

Last weekend (or at least, it was last weekend when I started writing this blog, but due to other things getting in the way, it's now a week and a half ago. Such is life), I took the ever-beautiful Neety to go and see Phantom: Love Never Dies - the new show from Andrew Lloyd Webber. This show, a sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, had appeal to us both for different reasons. Neety is an avid fan of the original, and has read the book that the sequel is mostly based on, and I, well, I enjoy most Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals (Useless Fact: Did you know that although his name, Andrew Lloyd Webber, is not hyphenated, his title, Lord Lloyd-Webber, is? That's .... strange) and although there are some that leave me cold, every one I've seen has been a good night out.

However, I've only ever seen the film of Phantom of the Opera, never having gone to see it live, (And yes, that is partially because of the fact there are very rarely cheap tickets for it, as it is still insanely popular) and that meant that I could go into this with a basic knowledge of the original, but not slavishly devoted to it.

So here we go (Warning, there may be spoilers throughout this review)

PHANTOM: LOVE NEVER DIES

In Which: Ten Years on from the original Phantom of the Opera, the Phantom brings Christine and Raoul back into his life...

What did I think?: I have to say that I really enjoyed it. And my lack of knowledge about the plot (or the music for that matter) really helped that. I can't remember the last time I went to see a big budget musical where I didn't know the songs or the outcome beforehand, and it really helped. For that reason, I'm going to do my best not to spoil the ending for those of you reading this who will want to see it, but there may be mild spoilers concerning the rest of the show.

As I said, the plot was strong, if slightly contrived (in the way that all sequels are when attempting to re-integrate previous characters,) but it worked, simply due to the Phantom's obsession with Christine. In fact, the Phantom, Christine and Raoul all appeared to be obvious extensions of their characters from the original (in as far as I noticed). The other two returning characters are Mme Giry and Meg Giry, and I felt that both of them suffered from a significant lack of development. They were much more one-dimensional than the other three, and (according to Neety at least) Mme Giry appeared to have had a significant character change from the original.

For a Lloyd Webber show, there was remarkably little for the chorus to do, instead the show focuses on the six characters. ("Six?" I hear you say "But you've only listed five!"). The sixth is a new character - Gustave, the son of Christine and Raoul. But of course, the centre of the show is Christine and the Phantom, which does mean the other characters get slightly sidelined (particularly Raoul in Act One, although this is fixed within Act Two, primarily in the opening scene, where the plot finally manages to involve him more directly.)

Musically, I found it all entertaining (nothing of the annoyance level of "Castle on a Cloud" from Les Miserables or as narratively redundant as "Those Canaan Days" from Joseph) and, this being Lloyd Webber, there was good use of themes and thematic transformation (and yes, there are a couple of obvious callbacks to the original score, but they're not the songs you'd expect, and none of them are longer than a few bars). There were four or five songs that stuck in my mind as being outstanding which were:
'Til I hear you sing - The Phantom's first solo
Dear Old Friend - The sarcasm-riddled quartet when Christine, Raoul, Meg and Mme Giry all encounter each other for the first time
The Beauty Underneath - AKA "How to mentally scar a ten-year-old"
Why does she Love Me - Raoul's opening of Act Two, and a song sure to be used by many tenors for auditions in the future
Devil Take The Hindmost - Both versions of this, the duet with Raoul and the Phantom, and the Quartet version later in the act

What did I think of Love Never Dies - the title song of the show? It was OK, but to my ears it was certainly not the best of the score. Also, Mme Giry's first song did seem like it should have titled "Exposition City - the last ten years" as it just ticks off what happened between the original show and the start of this one...

From a technical perspective (and speaking of perspective, when the show starts, admire the creation of the on-stage pier. Seriously, it's impressive) it was a big, bold, brash and brilliant show, utilising nearly every trick I can think of including projection, trapdoors, a revolve and many more.

For me, the only disappointing parts of the show were that it stopped once due to a technical fault (which was OK, because it did at least stop at the end of a scene, and we just had to wait a few minutes for the next scene) and... well... the ending.

Don't get me wrong, the end as written is good. There is tension, uncertainty, no knowledge of what is going to happen... but two things spoilt it for me really. (This is tough to talk about, as I REALLY don't want to give away the ending to those of you who want to see it). The first was there was a moment of overacting from the child playing Gustave (who, incidentally, looked an awful lot like Greg) although if you give a child the line "Nooo!" then what do you expect... and the second is that I didn't quite buy into Meg doing what she does. (I hope that's vague enough)

The most disappointing part of the whole experience though? The fact that it cost £11.80 for two drinks in the interval! Oh, and the seats aren't the most comfortable in the world...

The Good: On the whole, performances were excellent. (We saw the first cover Phantom, and he was amazing). The score is memorable (to the point where writing this has me now wanting to listen to it) and the whole performance is a feast for the senses.

The Bad: Minor bits of overacting aside, the chorus are underused (although I understand why, from a dramatic purpose) and the drinks are overpriced.

Conclusion: 9/10. I loved it. Go see it.

A Play by any other name... is less important than Shakespeare apparently.

Why are there some people, be they writers, musicians or filmmakers, who automatically have to be held up in high regard? People like the Beatles, Martin Scorsese, Charles Dickens... why are they considered better than their peers? (I'm not picking on any of them in particular, I'm just showing examples. Although I do think that at least two are overrated to some degree) Shouldn't it be judged on the work alone? And why, Brawny, are you bringing this up now? (That last question was the one you're all asking. I know you are. Go on, admit it. ADMITTT ITTT!!!)

Well, it turns out that there's a new Shakespeare play. Except it's not new. It's been around for 300 years. But it wasn't credited to him. Now, however, according to Shakespeare expert Professor Brean Hammond (And yes, that is his name, not a typo) "I think Shakespeare's hand can be discerned in Act One, Act Two and probably the first two scenes in Act Three of the play"

Let's ignore the multiple jokes I could make at this point involving Shakespeare's disembodied hand, working alone, and just focus on the ridiculousness. It had been assumed it was written solely by John Fletcher, whom it has been established also co-wrote Henry VIII and the Two Noble Kinsmen with Shakespeare (although, how it can be established is beyond me. Presumably they do some clever comparison of the writing and figure out the likelihood of it. Or maybe they hired a medium to speak to them and clear the situation up. Who knows?) even though "Theatre impresario Lewis Theobald presented the play in the 18th century as an adaptation of a Shakespeare play but it was dismissed as a forgery." So it looks as if Lewis Theobald was ahead of his time. By about 200+ years....

My point is, who cares? The play's existed for 300 years, and it's no different today than it was yesterday. The text is still the same, the plot is still the same, the dialogue is still the same. It's just today it's been published in a collection of Shakespeare, so people will now instantly love it.

Another artist who suffers from this is the late Michael Jackson. Regardless of his personal issues or problems, it can't be denied he was an important force in popular music, and therefore his musical reputation is, by and large, deserved. However, today news comes that his estate has signed a massive record deal . I'm not necessarily saying I'm against posthumous albums in general (although they're rarely the artists best work) and I'm not particularly surprised that there was interest in his unreleased material. However, it's this sentence that is disturbing. "The deal reportedly involves 10 album projects over seven years - including one of previously unreleased material. "

Hang on a minute, TEN albums?? And only ONE is previously unreleased material?? What are the other nine going to be? Well apparently they're likely to be "revamped packages of old hits." Forgive me, but didn't we get that at the point he died?? This seems like overkill to me. Even The Beatles, who are several light years above Michael Jackson in contribution to music terms, only released three double posthumous albums, and they all had stuff on that die-hard fans wanted to hear (mostly demos and out-takes). So one wonders how they're going to fill ten albums. And how many of them will have versions of Thriller on them.

Seriously. I imagine that the unreleased material comes from late in his life, and who can honestly say he was at his best then? Keeping with the Beatles example for a second, who rates Free as a Bird as one of their all time best Beatles songs? Answer, not many.... (At least as far as I know!)

It's just depressing. In an age where it's harder than ever to be a new artist, Sony will give $200 million for albums of rehashed stuff they've already released before.

Not much to say really. Just disappointed in them.

Theatre 2: The Rise of the Theatrical Sequels

My dear reader, have you noticed the rising case of sequel-itis in the world today? (Yes, it is a word. I don't care what you say, my blog - my words, clear?) Everything seems to get inappropriate sequels at some point or another - films, books and now stage shows.

Yes, in a (not-really-very-at-all) veiled way, I'm talking about the new show from Andrew Lloyd-Webber "Phantom: Love Never Dies".

So it's a sequel to Phantom of the Opera, which, if he feels there is a good story to be told in it (And seeing as Frederick Forsythe managed to get an entire novel "The Phantom of Manhattan" out of the idea of a sequel to the show, and being as Lloyd-Webber has used some or all of that plotline in his new show, then one has to assume that he does) then it's fine by me, but the cynical part of my brain does wonder how much of it is a desire to revisit that world, and how much of his enthusiasm was simply to do with the fact that every show he has written since that point has been compared to Phantom.

Examples according to my extensive research (and by extensive research, I mean thinking about it hard, because I saw both of these adverts myself) are that Whistle Down the Wind had "Lloyd-Webber's best show since Phantom" as a quote outside the theatre when it ran, and The Woman in White had almost the exact same quote also. So is it just the case that he decided he should return to the scene of what is considered to be his greatest success?

And if that is the case, how much of it will carry over? Will it be an entirely new tale just told with the same characters and nothing else? Or will we be expecting a reprise of the title song from Phantom of the Opera when the Phantom first dramatically reveals himself? (And of course he'll do it dramatically, he's a deformed psychotic who wears a white half-mask. He'll have trouble doing it in any un-dramatic way). Will Lloyd-Webber go further than that and incorporate themes and reprises from the previous show? Will anything happen in the sequel that devalues the original (such as the entire of the original show, up to and including it's conclusion, turns out to be part of the Phantom's plan all along)?

Put broadly - how familiar will you have to be with the original in order to watch the sequel? Because if anything more than a passing familiarity is required, then I have a feeling that it will be a short-lived experiment. Looking back at the history of them, theatrical sequels have never done particularly well. Examples include:

Annie Warbucks - An attempt to continue the story of everyone's most irritating small ginger child, this ran for 200 performances in 1993... which is OK. I mean it's not an outright failure like the original Annie sequel was (apparently entitled Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge, and if you read the synopsis, it sounds hilarious - for all the wrong reasons!) but it's not going to trouble any "longest-running show on Broadway" records, or even make it's money back, is it?

Snoopy!!! - The Musical - A moderately successful sequel to "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown", I suspect that the secret to it's mild success is that it belongs to the camp of sequels where you take the characters (which had the advantage to being instantly recognisable to millions of people anyway) and just tell a brand new story around them.

The Best Little Whorehouse goes Public - A Sequel to "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" this ran for just 16 performances, making it the most obvious outright failure in this list.

So what's your opinion for the general failure of stage sequels Brawny? asks the average reader (Look at me, assuming I have more than one reader, how confident am I?)

It's simple. Sequels on film and in print can work, especially given the rise of Video/DVD (And for those youngsters out there, Video is those big black tapes...) so that now we can own the original and see it any time we want. But stage isn't like that. If you need to have significant knowledge of the original show, then you need to have seen it before you see the sequel. Snoopy!!! - The Musical (Yes, the three exclamation marks appear to actually be part of the title) probably worked best because it was a new, self-contained story, featuring characters that you could have been exposed to any other way.

Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge, however, appears to be the worst type of sequel, picking up straight where the original left off and effectively continuing the story. Films can get away with this (Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers for example) but shows really can't. So I watch how the Phantom sequel progresses with interest. I'm sure I shall see it at some point, as I'm interested, and Neety is a big fan of the original, so I shall let you all know.

And now, for your comic amusement, potential sequels for current West End Shows, as considered by Money-Grabbing Producers, following the obvious trend of trying to tell a new story while bringing back as much of the audience-pleasing elements and characters as you can:

Oliver! 2 - Ignoring the fact that Dickens never wrote a sequel to the original novel that inspired the musical, the new story starts with Oliver getting left behind as his new family move out of the city, and he then has to wander through the city attempting to find his new home. Part Road-Trip, part Home Alone (or Home Alone 2: Lost in New York), it gives Oliver plenty of opportunity to run into previous characters such as Fagin or the Artful Dodger, or maybe even Bet (who, being as she is so pointlessly sidelined in the original, is the obvious choice for a female lead, continuing in her quest to be the next Nancy). Who would be the antagonist? Why the returning Mr Bumble of course, who has decided for whatever reason, that he wants Oliver returned...

Mamma Mia 2 - After the anti-climatic ending of the previous musical, where Sophie's father is not revealed, and she doesn't actually get married, this production picks up a couple of years later, with her preparing to wed again, and re-opening the question of who her father is, as Bill and Harry have disappeared from her life again, and Sam is too busy fighting with Donna to spend any time with her. What follows is basically a re-hash of the first plot, utilising the second tier of ABBA songs (i.e. the ones that weren't good enough to put in Mamma Mia) ending with everyone happily married, the parentage issue sorted and a curtain call identical to the one from the first show, just so the audience don't feel ripped off...

Les Miserables 2 - OK, so nearly everyone died in the first one but that's never been a big problem for sequels. Taking Marius and Cosette, the story follows them fighting their way through the early stages of a relationship against the backdrop of 19th century France. Returning characters Thernadier and his wife become overly comic, losing all of their threatening edge, and almost annoy the audience to the point of leaving, before attempting to bring back some goodwill by bursting into their original show-stopping number "Master of the House". Meanwhile a shadowy figure is attempting to destroy Marius and Cosette's lives, who is revealed at the end of the show to be none other than Javert, whose suicide failed, and he had spent all this time plotting his revenge... Will Marius and Cosette survive? Will Javert succeed? Does anyone care?

Wicked 2 - The novel on which this wonderful piece of theatre would be based already exists, and Son of the Witch utilises one of those most traditional traits in sequels, the children of the original protagonists. In this story the son of Elpheba and Fiyero basically goes on a quest, and stuff happens. I'm amazed this isn't in production right now.

We Will Rock You 2 - Take more Queen songs, and glue them together. Oh wait, this is in production and entitled "The Show Must Go On". Oh well, at least Queen had enough good songs to fill a second show, unlike ABBA...

Any further suggestions? As always, feel free to make them in the comments section...