Love Never Dies – Adelphi Theatre – Review

In an attempt to regain the glory he lost with such shows as Whistle Down the Wind, The Beautiful Game and The Woman in White – and believing in the maxim, if at first you succeed, try again – Andrew Lloyd Webber returns to the source of his biggest hit, The Phantom of the Opera.

But someone should have told him that sequels rarely work and Love Never Dies, which was 20 years in the making, is no exception. A quartet of writers – Lloyd Webber, Ben Elton, Glenn Slater and Frederick Forsyth collectively prove that four heads are not better than one – especially when the one is Gaston LeRoux’s, the creator of the enduring novel without which, etc.

What LeRoux created was the kind of fail-safe plot that claws into the imagination and refuses to let go. What Messrs Lloyd Webber and Co. have wrought, are six characters in search – not of an author, they’ve got enough of those – but a workable story-line  that will move, engage and convince an audience.

In the absence of any such thing, we’re left with a tepid situation (it really can’t be called a plot) in which, ten years after the events depicted in Phantom, soprano Christine Daae, her now impecunious hubbie Raoul and their ten year-old son Gustav, travel from Paris to New York at the request of a certain Mr Y who makes them a financial offer they cannot refuse.

All Christine has to do is sing for him in a show he produces at Coney Island. What she doesn’t realise until her arrival in New York is that Mr Y is none other than the erstwhile Phantom of the Paris Opera, and, because, umm, love never dies, he is still besotted with her.

Oh, there’s a mini sub-plot of sorts involving ex-ballet mistress Madame Giry and her jealous dancer daughter Meg, neither of whom are a barrel of laughs. But then nothing in this musical is.

Gustav turns out to be the Phantom’s son, though why and how Christine allowed him that brief moment of passion ten years earlier, is never explained. Nor are we given any reason why Raoul, who, if memory serves, had pots of money in Phantom, is now down on his uppers.

More damagingly, it is never explained why the Phantom of the original, a psychopathic killer who indulged in some pretty anti-social behaviour, like dumping chandeliers on unsuspecting paying customers in the stalls, should become almost as wealthy as Lord Lloyd Webber and have morphed into a harmless eccentric with a passion for theatrical gadgets. Was he lobotomised? We need to be told.

And why, in the show’s preposterously operatic final scene (spoiler alert to follow) in which Christine is shot by the jealous Meg, does young Gustav seek solace in the arms of the Phantom, a stranger with a hideous facial scar he has only just learned is his real father? Wouldn’t he have rushed to his dying mother’s side to comfort her? Or seek out Raoul, who has done a runner on his family?

With so many questions to ask, and, frankly, with so little interest in the answers, all that’s left to enjoy is the music.

Ah, the music. Well, in common with most of Lloyd Webber’s shows, there are, to be sure, a couple of good tunes. And if they sound familiar, it’s because they are. I thought I detected a hint of Noel Coward’s A Room With A View in the Coney Island Waltz but in the main, the most blatant plagiarism is the composer stealing (or, to be more charitable, recycling) from himself.

The ubiquitous title song – and the best in the show – has a whiff of Adolph Deutsch’s theme tune from Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (the first four notes are identical), plus an essence of Puccini, without whose influence no ALW score would be complete.

The song, as everyone must know by now, was first heard in The Beautiful Game, which, though a financial failure, ran quite a long time. I know composers re-use material from shows that either closed in tryouts or within a week of opening. But to use as a title number a song from a fairly high-profile show that had a respectable run strikes me as unacceptable. And lazy.

Much of the rest of the score is characterised by lush, Lloyd Webber crescendi and the promise of soaring unforgettable melodies that never quite materialise.

Though the pervading musical ambience, with its duets, trios and quartets, rarely strays very far from operatic conventions, it also contains the obligatory nod in the direction of old-fashioned Broadway musical comedy (Heaven by the Sea). A real mish-mash of styles.

There’s not much to be said for Glenn Slater’s lyrics. Apart from the occasional infelicity, like rhyming ‘bother’ with ‘father’, the rhymes are generally clean and efficiently well-turned. Nothing, though, to give Stephen Sondheim a sleepless night. The cast, with the exception of Sierra Boggess as Christine, is no better than its material.

Ms Boggess’s ‘eleven o’clock’ title number is the evening’s only genuinely deserved show-stopper and she delivers it with spine-tingling conviction. There’s a real presence on stage whenever she appears – which, alas, cannot be said of Ramin Karimloo’s Phantom. His voice is fine, but where’s the personality? The charisma? If ever a show relied on its leading man to go beyond the call of duty and conjure magic where none exists, this is it.

Liz Robertson and Summer Strallen, always assets in whatever musical they appear, are more or less lost in the confusion of the first act (things improve marginally in the second) and one’s heart goes out to them, as it does to the usually excellent Joseph Millson as Raoul. The dashing hero of Phantom of the Opera is here reduced to an alcoholic loser with as little flesh and blood on him as a transparent projection on a scrim. Call it the show’s most thankless Raoul.

Though Jack O’Brien’s direction is more assured in the show’s less cluttered second half, he never manages to make us care about anything that’s happening; and as for Jerry Mitchell’s choreography, I can only ask ‘What choreography?’ Did I miss something?

Which leaves Bob Crowley’s sets and costumes and Jon Driscoll’s projection designs. They’re by far the best things in an evening that thinks it’s an opera but actually, is just another poor musical.

I left the theatre humming the proverbial scenery – oh, and the first four notes of The Apartment.

CLIVE HIRSCHHORN. Courtesy of This Is London.

Love Never Dies – round-up of press reviews

Book tickets to Love Never Dies at the Adelphi Theatre in London

Love Never Dies – Adelphi Theatre – Reviews Round-up

We’ve had the bitter blogs, the Lord’s rebukes and hysterical Phans. We’ve had the angst over reviewing before the opening night, the power of bloggers to bring down a show, the puns, the clogged forums and the slightly desperate clamour of the press to seek out a good old-fashioned theatrical disaster story.

And now, following tonight’s glittering first night at the Adelphi Theatre, the national newspaper critics give us their thoughts on Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s latest musical, Love Never Dies.

STAR RATINGS

The Telegraph

The Guardian

Bloomberg

The Independent

The Times

OPENING THOUGHTS

GU: There is much to enjoy in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical…. the problems lie within the book, chiefly credited to Lloyd Webber himself and Ben Elton, which lacks the weight to support the imaginative superstructure.

IN: [The] mix of the heart-stopping and the stomach-lurching (a true kinaesthetic experience) characterises some of the best sequences in Love Never Dies,

TE: What I have no doubt about whatever is that this is Lloyd Webber’s finest show since the original Phantom, with a score blessed with superbly haunting melodies and a yearning romanticism that sent shivers racing down my spine.

DM: Love may never die but West End shows will come perilously close to disaster unless they have some oompf and bongo — and preferably a decent tune — in the first 15 minutes. Love Never Dies, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sequel to Phantom Of The Opera, is as slow to motor as a lawnmower at spring’s first cut.

TI: Oh, how time and a dismally implausible plot have altered him [the Phantom] and his life.

VA: The trouble with “Love Never Dies” is that while a couple of melodies deliver, the show doesn’t. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sequel to “The Phantom of the Opera” wants to be a tragic romance, but it’s simply torpid. Only a radical rewrite will give it even the remotest chance of emulating its predecessor.

ON THE CREATIVES

TE: [Jack O’Brien’s production] seems entirely in tune with Lloyd Webber’s vision… Bob Crowley’s designs, though not as opulent as those of Maria Björnson in the original, and lacking the breathtaking panache of the collapsing chandelier and the candlelit boat-trip across the underground lake, are nevertheless constantly inventive, including clever use of video, a riot of writhing art nouveau, and splendidly creepy animated models in the phantom’s eyrie.

IN: What is in no doubt is the technical excellence of Jack O’Brien’s seamlessly fluent, sumptuous (and sometimes subtle) production… Bob Crowley’s design and Jack O’Brien’s direction have a beautiful kaleidoscopic fluidity.

GU: While offering a spectacular eyeful, O’Brien’s production is also unafraid of simplicity: the staging of the climactic number, with Christine advancing down to the shell-shaped footlights, could hardly be more direct… Crowley’s designs offer a beguiling mix of new technology and art nouveau… Paule Constable’s lighting adds to the show’s visual appeal: she lends a Hopper-like gloom to a sub-pier bar and gives a broadwalk vista a Renoiresque glow.

TI: Visually, there’s nothing to match the marvels that Maria Bjornson created with murk, candles and vast curtains in the original Phantom, but Bob Crowley successfully evokes much of Phantasma, helped by projections of spooky horses on carousels.

ON RAMIN & SIERRA

IN: Ramin Karimloo may not be a physically imposing enough presence as the Phantom, but his marvellously supple voice can run the gamut from a seductive guttural whisper to the full blare of frustrated passion. Looking gorgeous in a range of stylish period-outfits, Sierra Boggess’s Christine boasts a voice that can pool and purl quietly and then knock you dead with her towering rendition of the climactic title number.

TE: Ramin Karimloo and Sierra Boggess sing superbly as the Phantom and Christine, with a real spark between them. Boggess is especially fine in the soaring title song, and Karimloo deftly combines menace and vulnerability throughout. Meanwhile Joseph Millson memorably captures the self-destructive Raoul.

GU: From my distant seat in row O, the performances seemed fine. Ramin Karimloo’s Phantom may not have the tragic quality of Michael Crawford’s prototype but that is hardly his fault: the character is now more a mildly disabled Kane (of the Wellesian variety) than a social pariah. Sierra Boggess also displays a strong, vibrant soprano as Christine. Summer Strallen as the vengeful Meg and Liz Robertsan as her creepy, Mrs Danvers-like mum are both strongly defined.

DM: Sierra Boggess, as Christine, is the production’s great joy — its show saver. She has a soprano of porcelain precision and her scene 4 duet with 10-year-old Gustave (excellent Harry Child), brushed by harp, is the first of three quick songs which rescue the evening.

TI: Even though Sierra Boggess’s sweet but never sickly Christine gets a bit piercing when her high-note flutterings hit the vocal stratosphere, it also pleases the ear, as do several other numbers — though usually with a major-key lilt, never with the danger and dissonance that the Phantom tale would seem to demand. Beside, say, the Elephant Man, Karimloo’s urbane, melodic, not-so-sinister Phantom might be Cary Grant.

THE MUSIC

GU: The score is one of the composer’s most seductive… At his very best – as in Joseph, Jeeves, The Phantom of the Opera and Sunset Boulevard – Lloyd Webber’s melodic inventiveness matches the material; here you have a welter of great tunes in search of a strong story. But at least the American setting gives Lloyd Webber the chance to explore a variety of musical idioms.

IN: the splendour of the orchestra which pours forth Lloyd Webber’s dark-hued, yearning melodies as if its life depended on them.

TE: The music is a constant pleasure, lavishly orchestrated and ranging from deliciously pert vaudeville numbers to those thrillingly romantic love songs, by way of an eerie dissonant waltz and a sudden unexpected blast of full-on prog-rock.

DM: The Entr’acte asserts Lloyd Webber at his most soupily sumptuous and the second half is far better. His music crests in a breaking chord when Christine is staring into her dressing-room mirror, trying to decide between her loves.

ON THE BLOGGERS

GU: I should say that I have no truck with those ghoulish groupies who’ve seen The Phantom of the Opera 852 times and regard any sequel as equivalent to painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa. No masterpiece has been besmirched

TE: I have received furious emails from fans or, as they style themselves, “Phans” of the original Phantom of the Opera, still running in the West End more than 23 years after it first opened, telling me that the new piece is a travesty. And there is no doubt that Love Never Dies seems like a relic of another age. Gloomy-doomy, largely through-sung musicals like this have in recent years been superseded in public affection by a welcome return to musical comedy in such shows as Hairspray, Sister Act and the latest hit, Legally Blonde. In the midst of a recession, will audiences fork out top dollar for two-and-a half hours of dark Gothic imaginings, seething passion, and in the final scene, sudden violent death?

TI: The blogosphere has been teeming with views of Lloyd Webber’s long-awaited Phantom II. For some, Love Never Dies is “Paint Never Dries”, and for others the composer is at his musical best. I tend to agree with both factions.

ON THE BOOK

GU: What the show lacks, in a nutshell, is narrative tension. For Christine, having discovered her employer’s true identity, the big question is “to sing or not to sing?”. The result is a foregone conclusion.

TE: It seems extraordinary that it should have taken four hands to write the not especially complex book, among them Lloyd Webber, Ben Elton, and Frederick Forsyth, while Glenn Slater’s lyrics strike me as serviceable rather than inspired.

DM: That core justification — the romantic gubbins — is badly lacking. In the end you conclude that she simply seeks out suffering to improve her art.

TI: So where’s the tension in Ben Elton and Lloyd Webber’s book? That’s not helped by a narrative that might have been part-written by Ibsen’s ghost, there’s so much earnest poring over the past. But mainly it comes from Christine’s one-time friend Meg (Summer Strallen) who has also moved to Coney Island and aims to be the belle of all this balls.

ON ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER

IN: In a sense, Lloyd Webber has become hoist by his own petard. Having over-petted the public, he is now being badly mauled by a section of it – the Phantom fanatics who feel that they own the original more than he does. On both counts (casting and the right to do what he likes with his own material), Lloyd Webber has, for once, the moral high ground here.

TE: There is something personal about Lloyd Webber’s relationship with the Phantom, as if in the character of the tortured and deformed composer he is confronting something of his own inner darkness. The character might just be a terrifying self-portrait, hanging in the attic of his imagination.

IN: It’s revealing that Andrew Lloyd Webber, who has cast leading roles in his most recent ventures by public vote on reality TV talent show, has not allowed the public anywhere near his casting decisions for Love Never Dies. This rather exposes how low-risk those TV experiments have been, geared as they have been to fairly safe properties such as The Sound of Music and Oliver!.

FINAL THOUGHTS

IN: The ending (which I won’t give away) feels phoney in the unconvincing completeness of its resolution. It makes what has preceded it abruptly feel a good deal less than the sum of its parts and cries out for more ambiguity. In short, it should be “phixed”.

GU: The show has much to commend it and the staging is a constant source of iridescent pleasure. But, as one of the lyrics reminds us, “diamonds never sparkle bright unless they are set just right”. Although Lloyd Webber’s score is full of gems, in the end a musical is only as good as its book. With a libretto to match the melodies, this might have been a stunner rather than simply a good night out.

TE: The show may ultimately prove too strange, too dark, too tormented to become a massive popular hit, but I suspect its creepy allure will linger potently in the memory when frothier shows have been long forgotten.

DM: The night ends with a death scene so long that it may only reignite the euthanasia debate… So: a hit? Not quite. It is too much an also-ran to the prequel, and its opening is too stodgy. But if it is a miss, it is — like Christine — a noble miss, noble because Lloyd Webber’s increasingly operatic music tries to lift us to a higher plane.

TI: Where’s the menace, the horror, the psychological darkness? For that I recommend a trip to Her Majesty’s, not the Adelphi.

VA: At the moment, watching the sequel only makes you appreciate the achievement of the original.

KEY TO CRITICS:

TE: The Telegraph – Charles Spencer

DM: Daily Mail – Quentin Letts

GU: The Guardian – Michael Billington

BL: Bloomberg – Warwick Thompson

IN: The Independent – Paul Taylor

TI: The Times – Benedict Nightingale

VA: Variety – David Benedict

Other reviews:

Ben Brantley, The New York Times

Book tickets to Love Never Dies at the Adelphi Theatre in London