LOVE NEVER DIES on PBS tonight?? Where? — Page 2

"Special mention to the makeup. That slicked back hair that the Phantom has isn't real. I won't say why you would think otherwise lest I spoil a key scene, but I had to watch the special features just to see the actor out of makeup to be sure."

It's the exactly same as the original production. The Phantom wears a bald cap with a sparse, white wig on top of it, and the dark wig on top of that. If you watch the unmasking in the original production, she not only takes his mask off, but also takes the dark wig off, which is how he ends up with the 'cancer look'.

Although, the make-up is nowhere near as severe in LND since they never show it. It looks like minor appliances. The first thing I noticed was that his lip was not swollen, but only painted to look deformed.

---

Updated On: 6/3/12 at 07:57 PM

I still haven't caught the Australian version, but I was just wondering...a couple of poster mentioned the OLCR - is it actually the original London cast on the recording? I had thought it was a studio production, which just happened to feature some of the leads. No?

---

Tons of SPOILERS:

The Good: The directing and staging was nothing short of brilliant. The set and costumes were also lovely. I particularly liked some of the Coney Island costumes though I confess I wasn't around in 1905 and don't know much about early 20th century Coney Island to know if it the depiction was even remotely accurate. I'm assuming it wasn't but it still looked pretty regardless. The orchestrations also sounded beautiful.

The scene where the Phantom takes Gustave to his dreamland was a huge hot mess. I say that as a term of endearment though as I actually enjoyed the scenes and the superfluous costumes though I had no idea what was going on.

Meg Giry is far more fleshed out than she is in The Phantom of the Opera. She has a lot of conflicting emotions about wanting to meet old friends and her own selfish desires and failure to live up her mother's expectations. Her story arc is by far the most interesting.


The Bad:
Raoul and Christine's relationship is entirely uninteresting. There's nothing about Raoul that makes me care one way or another what happens to him. In The Phantom of the Opera, we have scenes that depict him as sympathetic and loving (like when Christine looks at a picture of her father) but in Love Never Dies we see him as mostly self-absorbed husband and as a terrible, uncaring father. I'm not really sure if I'm supposed to be upset or happy about his fate and this is a serious issue with the book. The one moment that's supposed to evoke sympathy for the character (the first song of Act 2) falls largely flat because it comes out of nowhere and he doesn't really offer any solution to how to become a better husband.

I still don't understand the three "people" that are supposed to be the Phatom's cronies. It could've been interesting if they were fleshed out to be anything other than random henchmen but I'm not sure why they attempted to make characterizations of people we're never really introduced to. It comes off as just being desperate for people to talk about something. Also, since the show has incredible, gaping plot holes and moves at a snail's pace, they are mainly used as a device to get the show moving.

Gustave could be a story arc that would provide some tension but we can see almost as soon as he enters the stage that he's the Phatom's son. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be so predictable but it makes the payoff at the big scene at the end fall incredibly flat. His evolved view of the Phantom from fear to love/respect is essentially the same tired storyline we see with Christine in Phantom although the twist at the end of Phantom with Christine choosing Raoul leaves a certain degree of intrigue. The ending of Love Never Dies has none of that.

The Ugly:

The score is Webber at his worst. I actually don't hate the Phantom score like some on here do though I could never listen to it more than once in a short period of time as it is incredibly repetitive. Love Never Dies magnifies all of Webber's worst problems. There are only so many ballads we can take that all sound the same without losing interest or meaning. In Phantom, Webber tries out patience, here, he shatters it.

The lyrics are even worse. They're horribly predictable and juvenile and really are in embarrassment surrounded by such an opulent production. Insipid, sappy lyrics about hearts and choices and love and death aren't engaging or insightful. Repeated over and over again, it just becomes unbearable.

The book is perhaps even worse. Apart from the interesting arc Meg has that I described above, every other character is predictable, one-dimensional, and just boring. The Phantom had intrigue at the beginning of the show as he watched over the Coney Island dancers but by the end of all of the aura and magic of the Phantom seems to be evaporated. As many have noted, in the Phantom of the Opera, the Phantom is only on stage for a very short period of time and thus there is a tremendous amount of dramatic tension as he appears seemingly out of nowhere and has this omnipresence that haunts the Paris Opera House but also the Majestic Theatre. There's basically one uninteresting storyline - the Phantom tries to bring Christine to America. Everything else feels derivative and we know exactly how the one storyline will pan out from the very beginning.

Killing Christine should have been dramatic but it didn't really evoke any emotions. I confess I was genuinely surprised as I thought if anyone would die it would be the Phantom to really close out the show but alas Webber wants to perhaps leave room for yet another sequel. I never found her character to be particularly exciting and Love Never Dies evaporates any of the compassion we may have felt for her in the Phantom of the Opera like during the graveyard scene.


So? Overall assessment. Hated the book, the score, and the lyrics. Everything else ranged from decent to excellent but it's hard to have a good musical when the three main components of the musical are lacking. To be honest, the Phantom of the Opera, which I would rate as an average show (nowhere near deserving of everything that's happened to it but not as bad as some on here suggest) far surpasses Love Never Dies in almost every way.

---

^I saw it at home and I liked it. The plot is silly and contrived, and the characters are so completely different from their Phantom counterparts that it's difficult to accept as any kind of plausible continuation of the original story, but the music is pretty and the show is pretty to look at.

I definitely prefer this version to the one that opened in London. All the revisions are for the better and the slight lyric changes here and there are an improvement, but it still needs more work to venture out of "juvenile" and "embarrassing" as broadwaydevil stated. It probably won't ever get the attention that it needs, but if he's going to revise something I'd rather Webber focus on that scaled down chamber version of The Woman in White that was supposed to tour a while ago.

Updated On: 6/4/12 at 12:53 AM

I also saw it at home and liked it.

But as I said earlier, the quality of the BD was fantastic. I'm sure that added to my opinion.

---

Well, Time Rice's sucked too so maybe he's right on the money.

---

Interesting that you pick up on Meg's "arc". It's a very poorly written role, but Sharon Millerchip is a great actress.

It's an enjoyable show, but it's terrible.

I saw the show in London and then watched the Australian film and the new production is definitely an improvement. I think the only change I did not like was moving Til I Hear You Sing to the top of the show. It breaks the momentum of the first act and there really was no point in changing its placement.

But at least the staging for The Beauty Underneath was much better. I still hate the song, but at least the ridiculous London staging was scrapped, which still holds the record as the WORST production number I've ever seen in the West End or Broadway.

The score does have some lovely moments. Coney Island Waltz, Dear Old Friend, Til I Hear You Sing and Beneath a Moonless Sky are quite good, some even beautiful. But too much of the score borrowed heavily from Woman in White, so if you're familiar with that score, it's a disappointment to hear the incidental music recycled so blatantly. Obviously, Lloyd Webber never plans to return to Woman in White. I really prefer Our Kind of Love to Love Never Dies, though. I think this version is too choppy and I really hate it set in a soprano range after having seen Hannah Waddingham belt it to the rafters closing night of Beautiful Game.

Worst lyrics ever? No, I've heard worse (much as I love the music to Miss Saigon, Maltby's lyrics often make me want to strangle him). The biggest problem with the lyrics is trying to work through that awful plot Webber wanted. Ridiculous as the plot for Phantom of the Opera is, it is set against a backdrop of lush gothic opulence, and coupled with a more simplistic story, it is easier to mask its plot with stunning visuals. The Australian production certainly did a better job with this, but nothing can eradicate the cliched soap-opera twists and that convoluted ending (which was different than in London, if I remember correctly). Unfortunately, I think this show has peaked and is best left behind.

---

I made it though nearly twenty minutes, but I had to turn it off. The plot was going absolutely nowhere, and the lyrics were so banal it was painful to listen to. I stuck it out until Christine showed up, but I have a major pet peeve about minor characters "overselling" how amazing and fantastic a major characters are. So listening to the press freaking out about Christine while waiting for her to get off the boat was unbearable. It was just incredibly poorly written, and it seemed like the show didn't trust its leading actress to show us how good she was.

Haha, good way to put it. I just hit the second pledge break and I think I'm the only one of these characters who actually remembers what happened at the Paris Opera.

This version of Raoul is straight out of fanfic. All he needs is to be obsessed with clothes and act like Percy in The Scarlet Pimpernel.

---

Among ALW's work, I rank Love Never Dies at the bottom, maybe on the same level as Starlight Express. I think the music is a little better than Starlight Express, but the story is worse. Did you get that? Worse. Book. Than. Starlight. Express. Whistle Down the Wind is a pretty horrendous book too, but that could perhaps be rewritten to be much better, I think. Love Never Dies is like one of those math problems you used to get in school, and the answer was "No solution"

For a while I was content to think of it as its own thing, not related to Phantom, but just some crazy guy on Coney Island. Act 1 is bearable that way. At least it builds to something. But act 2 is really about nothing... pointless and could be told in 5 minutes. And the whole Meg thing? That ending? Just not big enough to justify a night out at the theatre.

Updated On: 6/11/12 at 09:04 PM

How long could it take them to find the time to edit out pledge breaks?? I know KCTS in Seattle have no plans to air it as of yet, either.

^lol. Bootlegs were making the rounds when the DVD was first released in early February in the Philippines and Germany.

Updated On: 6/21/12 at 11:19 PM