It’s so funny that I even wondered if the London production was intentionally so, if maybe Jack O’Brien Jerry Mitchell – the show’s original creators, who’ve since left – were hip enough to understand that the show’s strength was in its absurdity. Because it’s impossible to deny: Love Never Dies is hugely, unabashedly fun, and funny. Raoul has been transformed from a dashing young vicomte to a mustache-twirling supervillain.Īnd yet, despite its obvious flaws – its cheesy ballads and failing attempts at creepiness – there is something thrilling about this Phantom, something that is much bigger than the show itself. Meg Giry is now a low-rent dancer on the boardwalk, and an alto.
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In the current film version, Ben Lewis, as the Phantom, plays most of the show in a cartoonish, agonized grimace while Christine, a catatonic Anna O’Byrne, stares straight ahead in a series of feathered, bedeazzled dresses that would make Big Bird jealous. But the style of the show, in both incarnations, is so overwrought that it’s impossible to take it completely seriously. The premise itself – that the Phantom, formerly a menacing murderer, is now a sensitive romantic hero and an eager dad – is nutty enough. Having seen the original version in London in 2010 and now the Australian version on film, I thought it was delicious trash. Y tricks Christine into coming to America to make her American singing debut, there is – naturally – a fraught reunion that puts Christine’s marriage in jeopardy and throws her son’s paternity into question. Christine, his former love, is now married to an alcoholic, down-and-out Raoul, and has a young son. In Love Never Dies, we meet the Phantom ten years after the original story ends, after he’s left France for America and is doing business on the Coney Island boardwalk as Mr. Despite bad reviews, Lloyd Webber seems determined that the show should continue rumors of a Broadway production are still swirling. So we’re talking about total disconnect between artistic intention and audience reception, here.Īndrew Lloyd Webber’s sequel to The Phantom of the Opera is only a couple of years old, but it’s already had several lives – a poorly-reviewed London production, a fully revamped version of that same production, and then the Sydney staging. In a series of pre-show interview clips, the venerable composer describes Love Never Dies as basically the best thing he’s ever written, and maybe the best musical of all time. Granted, I don’t think Andrew Lloyd Webber sees the show that way. So what gives? Why is this show so much fun to hate? Maybe because the hatred is fond in its intentions, sentimental in its regard for Lloyd Webber and his work, and utterly deserved.Īnd maybe it’s because this is the rarest of rare theatrical gems: a truly camp musical. In fact, I think they had a wonderful time – as we did – and would welcome the chance to see Love Never Dies again. And I mean laughing at the film, not with it.īut I don’t think those women disliked the show. Because during the two-hour screening – a recorded version of the show’s recent production in Australia – entire swaths of the theater were laughing. He was not just referring to a group of women sitting in front of us specifically, but to entire sections of the theater. “Ruined by these people from New Jersey.” The first guy was particularly indignant. This continued for a solid five minutes after the film ended. “You should have just left!” came another terse comment from the back.
“You ruined the whole thing!” shouted one guy, across ten rows and an aisle, to the women in front of us. (The last of these screenings happens tomorrow night in theaters across the US.) The screening ended, there were a few moments of prolonged Phantom-ly darkness, and then the lights came up and everyone started yelling.
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This happened to us at a recent film screening of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies at the mammoth AMC movie theater on 42nd Street. When was the last time you saw a show where people started freaking out at each other as soon as the lights came up? And I mean shouting in anger – not in rapture – about what they just saw.
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