More LOVE NEVER DIES REVIEWS...including NY TIMES- Page 2

[theevilgumby]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 8:39am

And it just got 5 stars from what's on stage and 4 from dailyexpress. Odd mix again.

[Ed_Mottershead]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 9:51am

After reading Brantley's review, there lingers one question in my mind -- did he like it?

[ThankstoPhantom]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 9:55am

It's obvious that he didn't. Read between the lines.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 11:29am

I thought that Webber was not one to do revisions.

Huh? He's revised virtually every show he's ever written. Some shows more than once. Listen to the four recordings of Tell Me on a Sunday from Song and Dance. Or the LuPone and Close recordings of Sunset Boulevard. Jeeves, Evita, Joseph, JCS, Cats, Phantom, Starlight Express, even shows with only one recording have been revised such as Aspects of Love, Whistle Down the Wind and Beautiful Game. Webber revises everything. Especially after the first recording is released.

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 11:41am

The improvement between the LuPone and Close recordings of Sunset is absolutely enormous. I thought the show had a lot of problems when I listened to the Close recording, but the LuPone recording just sounded like one of the worst shows I've ever listened to. All of the best little moments were added between the London and LA production.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 1:11pm

I prefer the LuPone version. I especially loathe the histrionics added to The Lady's Paying ("Not some platinum BLONDE BITCH!!"). It's way too over the top, especially so soon in the story. Every Movie's a Circus is ok, but unnecessary to the plot. And though it has nothing to do with revisions, I just can't listen to Close in that recording at all. The vocals are too weak and the dialogue moments get too be too ridiculous. Her crying jags cause capillaries to burst from so much eye-rolling. It's just a repeat of her Dangerous Liaisons moment when she discovers Malkovich bit the dust in a duel against Keanu Reeves.

The only improvement made in the LA version I can think of is the very end.

[RoslynReynolds]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 1:20pm

Are you people freakin' stupid? Brantley's
review is an outright pan:


"This poor sap of a show feels as eager to be walloped as a clown in a carnival dunking booth."


Duh.

[Ed_Mottershead]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 3:31pm

I was being sarcastic. It was one of the most negative reviews I've ever seen by Brantley.

[speedjeans]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 4:46pm

So, Holbee, the reviews of some of the world's toughest critics are in, they're mixed, and like almost every show, some major pub, swings a few standard deviations from the mean, and one is to take YOUR singular opinion as spot on?

As far as Brantley goes, the Times Theater reviews have become as irrelevant as their op-eds. In the end, audiences decide. The great era of "poison pens" like Frank Rich and John Simon is dead.

Hits and flops are created in cyberpace by millions of anonymous entities, not by critics. NO ONE at the time saw the original POTO earning more than "Star Wars".

I can't believe anyone actually goes to a show or stays home based on reviews or the chatter of people on forums.

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 4:49pm

Hits and flops are created in cyberpace by millions of anonymous entities, not by critics. NO ONE at the time saw the original POTO earning more than "Star Wars".

Didn't Phantom not even have its own website until 1995 or so (meaning the phans had their own around 1994ish)? It was a hit long before that.

I can't believe anyone actually goes to a show or stays home based on reviews or the chatter of people on forums.

I can. Heard of Yelp?

[Auggie27]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 5:03pm

Must respectfully disagree with Mister Matt on SUNSET. I thought they made radical improvements, the one over-the-top line quoted aside. All of the studio material seemed fresher, musically more compelling, and Norma's lead-in to "With One Look" is far stronger. The LuPone recording has its assets, but I saw the show in LA after hearing it, with Close, and saw a substantially improved piece. I don't know that LOVE will benefit from mere tinkering; sounds like an overhaul is needed.

But Lloyd Webber famously alters shows once open. He even dropped the signature power ballad, "Only He" from STARLIGHT in the ll o'clock spot. When I saw the show in London, I thought it was bizarre to be missing.

[beautywickedlover]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 5:08pm

Entertainment Weekly gave it a C.

"It's tempting to apply the same verdict to Lloyd Webber's own long years spent trying to bring this frequently clunky and clumsy sequel to the stage. It's tempting to apply the same verdict to Lloyd Webber's own long years spent trying to bring this frequently clunky and clumsy sequel to the stage.

The music isn't the only element that seems like a rehashed parade of pastiche and throbbing crashing-chord melodies. The title song is a direct lift, note for note, of 'Our Kind of Love' from Lloyd Webber's 2000 musical The Beautiful Game, while other numbers quote or invoke earlier scores by the composer, from Phantom to Whistle Down the Wind (like a bizarrely inappropriate rock number 'The Beauty Underneath').

Lloyd Webber's score isn't the only element of the production that's unable to shake the ghosts of Phantoms past. Bob Crowley's garish, suggestive designs (augmented by video projections by Jon Driscoll) are no match for the sumptuously opulent theatricality of Maria Bjornson's work on the original.

The performers at least are up to the task — that is, within the confines of the characters they've been asked to animate. Of course, three of the five top-billed actors have performed the same role in productions of the original Phantom. Karimloo brings a full-voiced vigour to the Phantom, and Boggess offers a shimmering soprano that threatens to pierce the eardrums. Sadly, though, the show never manages to pierce the heart."

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20350095,00.html

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 5:39pm

He even dropped the signature power ballad, "Only He" from STARLIGHT in the ll o'clock spot. When I saw the show in London, I thought it was bizarre to be missing.

I liked Only He, but in the original, the melody was used in I Am the Starlight, Only He and Only You, all in the second act alone. It was a bit much. I actually like Next Time You Fall in Love, which replaced the Only He/Only You material in 1992. And I absolutely LOVE the song Crazy added to the first act. So much better than the schlocky Engine of Love. There was also a number in the Broadway production called Silver Dollar, but I'm not familiar with that tune.

[beautywickedlover]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 6:01pm

Variety also didn't like it:

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117942377.html?categoryId=33&cs=1

[neal1b]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 7:39pm

...So now.. just because the newspapers say it is bad show.. it is a "bad" show? If the newspapers told you to jump off a bridge would you do that?

[TMedeiros17]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 7:45pm

It's simply a matter of opinion.

[sondheimboy2]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 8:02pm

"The title song is a direct lift, note for note, of 'Our Kind of Love' from Lloyd Webber's 2000 musical The Beautiful Game,"

Which I find annoying because it's the only song that he's written in years that I like.

Though, he wrote it originally for the Phantom sequel and tucked it into "Beatiful Game" when the Phantom sequel stalled. Dame Kiri TeKanawa sings it on a Lloyd-Webber tribute special and it and "Our Kind of Love" get sung on that tribute special that was filmed in China with Elaine Paige.

[Dre2387]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 10:07pm

Sounds like ALW should have listened to his cat when it shredded the score the first time.

Totally agree. I was so happy when I heard that that had happened. Smart kitty.

Updated On: 3/10/10 at 10:07 PM

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 10:12pm

"...So now.. just because the newspapers say it is bad show.. it is a "bad" show? If the newspapers told you to jump off a bridge would you do that?"

How does following the reviews for an anticipated new show make all of us sheep?

[speedjeans]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 10:19pm

"The Times review is one of the funniest things I've read in a long time."

Maybe you need to read more.

[speedjeans]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 10:35pm

1995 was 15 years ago--which for all practical purposes might as well have been in the 16th century. The fact that people do go to a show or not go to a show based on the comments of individuals who squat on "yelp" does not in any way mitigate my curiosity as to why one would. Then, of course, perhaps I put more stock in my own affinities or aversions than concensus.

Something interests me or it doesn't. It's immediate and visceral. I saw 30 seconds of Jeff Bridges in a trailer long before the "Crazy Heart" was released and before there was a whisper of the "O" word. I wanted to see it. I didn't need anyone to tout it for me.

Twenty years or so ago when Steppenwolf brought "Grapes of Wrath" to Broadway, all i had to know was that Gary Sinese was going to give Tom Joad a shot and Frank Galati was directing. Frank Rich's ultimately verbose "Good cop-bad cop" review would have been immaterial to me had I now seen it first in previews.

My point is, I guess, there is almost a fetishistic interest on this board and others like it in the perceptions of critics.

Perhaps a cast member of Lincoln Center's 50th-Anniversary retake of "Our Town" said it better when she told the late Spalding Gray (about critics) "You don't really read them do you?"


Updated On: 3/10/10 at 10:35 PM

[speedjeans]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 10:50pm

The paradox, Neal1lb" is that the reviews are quite clearly mixed--almost schizophrenically so--and yet, reading some of the posts here, with their Cherrypicked, "And Variety panned it also", you would think the consensus was it is a bad show.

One would think the diverse opinions would make the show seem more compelling to see so the theatergoer could decide the matter for his or herself. Not surprisingly, there are some here who will let Brantley make that call for them.

I wonder how many people here would spurge for "Carrie" if it resurfaces given the fact that it is considered one of the biggest busts in the history of the Genre and lest we forget here were some of the early pans of "Wicked":

Brantley: "Wicked does not, alas, speak hopefully for the future of the Broadway musical."

Linda Weiner: "Overproduced, overblown, confusingly dark and laboriously ambitious jumble."

Variety (Isherwood): ("Wicked is...a strenuous effort to be all things to all people (that) tends to weigh down this lumbering, overstuffed $14 million production.

New York Daily News: "It's such a Wicked waste of talent".

New Yorker: "The show's twenty-two songs were written by Stephen Schwartz, and not one of them is memorable."

Now, Sir Andrew is having his feet held to the fire. My guess is this musical already has enough good ink behind it to find an audience here and make a lot of noise--even if a critic is tempted to use that threadbare cliche "Phantastic" in a demeaning way.

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 10:53pm

1995 was 15 years ago--which for all practical purposes might as well have been in the 16th century.

That's what I'm saying. The internet may have kept Phantom a hit, but it didn't make it one.

[speedjeans]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 11:02pm

Good point. My belief is people are starting to get that newspapers have agendas (even concerning the arts) and the people have caught on. Sondheim, good; LLoyd-Webber, bad.

Just look what's going on at the Met right now: "The Revelation" of the season is a dissonant Kafka-like nightmare called "The Nose". Check out the reviews:They're boffo. Then check out the plot. My guess is a lot of people will read them, think "This is just a little to out there for me" and go--because it has struck a chord with critics who may have seen La Boheme one too any times.

I'm betting the reviews of people on forums are considerably less glowing.

[romgitsean]

Posted: 3/10/10 at 11:09pm

I would agree in that ALW shoulda listened to his cat and rule #9 of Not Since Carrie...

DON'T DO SEQUELS!