October 22, 2010, 10:57 am
‘Phantom’ Sequel Going Underground While Changes Are Made
By DAVE ITZKOFF
Detractors of the “Phantom of the Opera” sequel, “Love Never Dies” — it has a few — who would like to see that Andrew Lloyd Webber musical shut down are about to get their wish, for a few days anyway. The West End production of “Love Never Dies” at the Adelphi Theater will close from Nov. 22 through Nov. 25 while its producers make changes to the show, the Web site Official London Theater reported.
In a statement at that site, Mr. Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group says, “Some changes were written up over the summer and destined for the Australian production, and as they make improvements to the show we’d be mad not to put them into the Adelphi.”
The statement did not describe those changes, but The Daily Mail of London reported that the lyricist Charles Hart, who worked with Mr. Lloyd Webber on the original “Phantom” as well as “Aspects of Love,” reworked some lyrics for “Love Never Dies,” and that the theater producer Bill Kenwright “will help put right some of its problems, which include the much-troubled ending.”
The Australian production of “Love Never Dies” is scheduled to open in Melbourne in May; its Broadway production has been indefinitely postponed from spring 2011.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/phantom-sequel-going-underground-while-changes-are-made/
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Producers find no space in the city for a plethora of big-budget musicals
Michaela Boland, National arts writer
From: The Australian
October 16, 2010 12:00AM
There aren't enough venues for the number of theatrical blockbusters heading our way
DURING the past decade Sydney was the home of musical theatre in Australia. The city boasts the nation's biggest population, the most tourists and the headquarters of leading media organisations.
Without too much trouble these attributes have been harnessed on many occasions to launch multimillion-dollar shows that have then travelled the nation and, at their best, toured internationally. Shows such as Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story Live on Stage, The Boy From Oz and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: The Musical all opened in Sydney before national tours and an eventual tilt at the West End or Broadway, or both.
Disney Theatrical Australia elected to open The Lion King at the Capitol Theatre in Haymarket, Sydney, in 2004.
The producers of Billy Elliot the Musical in 2007 chose the same theatre for the Australian debut of their West End-hatched musical, a third version of which later opened on Broadway.
But now that has changed.
Andrew Lloyd Webber this week announced he had chosen Australia for the international debut of Love Never Dies, his sequel to The Phantom of the Opera.
The musical takes up the love story between the Phantom of the Paris Opera House and the object of his obsession, soprano Christine Daae, 10 years later at Coney Island in New York. Love Never Dies opened in London in March to mixed reviews.
The Australian version will be reworked by an Australian creative team led by director Simon Phillips and, if the new version works, Lloyd Webber's The Really Useful Group will consider Broadway. Love Never Dies, however, will open at Melbourne's Regent Theatre in May.
Likewise, Disney's second Australian musical Mary Poppins is now ensconced at Melbourne's Regent Theatre.
Jersey Boys, Wicked and Hairspray, the three other big expensive musicals in Australia, also opened in Melbourne.
The state government's Victorian Major Events Company offers enticements to lure the shows south and producers wax lyrical about the marketing support it provides.
The Really Useful Group managing director Tim McFarlane says: "It was always a very particular thing about the association of the Phantom and Melbourne." The original The Phantom of the Opera opened in Melbourne in 1990.
"That was really the prime motivator, but when you add on top of that the support you get in Melbourne as well from VMEC, Melbourne City Council, Tourism Victoria and patrons it is compelling," he says.
But there's another side to the story. Impresarios find Sydney downright hostile. "It's dire, it's really difficult to get a set of dates [in Sydney]. The problem is every show has to play Sydney and Melbourne to get its money back," producer John Frost says.
Producers all want their show to land at the 2000-seat Capitol Theatre, which boasts a busy city locale and street awnings that inform shoppers at the nearby bustling market that their show is in residence.
Second choice is the Star City Casino Lyric Theatre, which is comfortable and convenient but not exactly glamorous. Third choice for most producers is the Theatre Royal, where Jersey Boys is proving to be a hit despite limited street awnings, hectic one-way King Street traffic, dinky decor and the frequent rumbling of the subterranean railway.
By listing those three theatres, it implies there are choices available to producers in Sydney, but in this turbulent economy where well-made shows are finding strong audiences despite A-reserve tickets selling for $145, each of those theatres is booked.
The Capitol has bookings until 2015; the Lyric, which recently closed for three months for renovations, is just as busy.
Frost, who this year toured the play Calendar Girl, is producer of Wicked and Doctor Zhivago, which will open at the Lyric Theatre on February 19 next year.
He is developing musicals of An Officer and a Gentleman and Dream Lover, the Bobby Darin Story and he is producer of Fame the Musical, which premiered at Melbourne's Regent Theatre in April before a season in Brisbane.
Fame opened at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney on Thursday but only after a break necessitated by the fact there was no space in the city. Wicked was at the Capitol, Jersey Boys had booked the Theatre Royal and the Lyric was being renovated.
Enforced hiatuses on the national touring circuit are hitherto rare and always undesirable.
Wicked is in hiatus now. Having wrapped in Sydney, it cannot open in Brisbane until January.
Frost says he minimises costs by contracting cast and crew for each season, rather than for the entire run of the show, but they still need to re-rehearse before each season.
"I'm working as far out as 2014 and 2015, it's really hard to get dates, everyone's feeling it," he says. "Doctor Zhivago is only playing eight weeks in Sydney because it was all it could get, eight weeks in the whole year."
Next year Sydney theatres will prove to be a bigger logjam than this year.
Mary Poppins opens at the Capitol Theatre in May, the same month Hairspray is scheduled to arrive at the Lyric, and if Jersey Boys does as well in Sydney as it did in Melbourne, it will remain at the Theatre Royal until at least mid-year.
Love Never Dies had better work in Melbourne because a Sydney transfer will be impossible for some time. Likewise for the comic Broadway jukebox musical Rock of Ages, which opens at Melbourne's Comedy Theatre next April.
Global Creatures, the Australian company behind the Walking with Dinosaurs live show, which is scheduled to return for a national tour in April, is fortunate it plays arenas.
Canada's Cirque du Soleil will also tap the buoyant Australian economy next year with a return arena tour of Saltimbanco.
Frost says the solution is to build another theatre in Sydney, but that will take seven years. It's a job that should begin soon, however, because the Sydney Opera House's Opera Theatre is in need of substantial renovation, which will force out the Australian Ballet and Opera Australia for at least 18 months, probably longer.
McFarlane says the problem is not confined to Sydney, "theatre availability around the country for the next few years is really tough".
The producers of a new musical theatre production based on Olivia Newton-John's movie Xanadu have come up with a solution, however.
Xanadu will undergo a national tour from March next year in a 2000-seat grand chapiteau.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/producers-find-no-space-in-the-city-for-a-plethora-of-big-budget-musicals/story-e6frg6z6-1225939063690
From: The Australian
October 16, 2010 12:00AM
There aren't enough venues for the number of theatrical blockbusters heading our way
DURING the past decade Sydney was the home of musical theatre in Australia. The city boasts the nation's biggest population, the most tourists and the headquarters of leading media organisations.
Without too much trouble these attributes have been harnessed on many occasions to launch multimillion-dollar shows that have then travelled the nation and, at their best, toured internationally. Shows such as Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story Live on Stage, The Boy From Oz and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: The Musical all opened in Sydney before national tours and an eventual tilt at the West End or Broadway, or both.
Disney Theatrical Australia elected to open The Lion King at the Capitol Theatre in Haymarket, Sydney, in 2004.
The producers of Billy Elliot the Musical in 2007 chose the same theatre for the Australian debut of their West End-hatched musical, a third version of which later opened on Broadway.
But now that has changed.
Andrew Lloyd Webber this week announced he had chosen Australia for the international debut of Love Never Dies, his sequel to The Phantom of the Opera.
The musical takes up the love story between the Phantom of the Paris Opera House and the object of his obsession, soprano Christine Daae, 10 years later at Coney Island in New York. Love Never Dies opened in London in March to mixed reviews.
The Australian version will be reworked by an Australian creative team led by director Simon Phillips and, if the new version works, Lloyd Webber's The Really Useful Group will consider Broadway. Love Never Dies, however, will open at Melbourne's Regent Theatre in May.
Likewise, Disney's second Australian musical Mary Poppins is now ensconced at Melbourne's Regent Theatre.
Jersey Boys, Wicked and Hairspray, the three other big expensive musicals in Australia, also opened in Melbourne.
The state government's Victorian Major Events Company offers enticements to lure the shows south and producers wax lyrical about the marketing support it provides.
The Really Useful Group managing director Tim McFarlane says: "It was always a very particular thing about the association of the Phantom and Melbourne." The original The Phantom of the Opera opened in Melbourne in 1990.
"That was really the prime motivator, but when you add on top of that the support you get in Melbourne as well from VMEC, Melbourne City Council, Tourism Victoria and patrons it is compelling," he says.
But there's another side to the story. Impresarios find Sydney downright hostile. "It's dire, it's really difficult to get a set of dates [in Sydney]. The problem is every show has to play Sydney and Melbourne to get its money back," producer John Frost says.
Producers all want their show to land at the 2000-seat Capitol Theatre, which boasts a busy city locale and street awnings that inform shoppers at the nearby bustling market that their show is in residence.
Second choice is the Star City Casino Lyric Theatre, which is comfortable and convenient but not exactly glamorous. Third choice for most producers is the Theatre Royal, where Jersey Boys is proving to be a hit despite limited street awnings, hectic one-way King Street traffic, dinky decor and the frequent rumbling of the subterranean railway.
By listing those three theatres, it implies there are choices available to producers in Sydney, but in this turbulent economy where well-made shows are finding strong audiences despite A-reserve tickets selling for $145, each of those theatres is booked.
The Capitol has bookings until 2015; the Lyric, which recently closed for three months for renovations, is just as busy.
Frost, who this year toured the play Calendar Girl, is producer of Wicked and Doctor Zhivago, which will open at the Lyric Theatre on February 19 next year.
He is developing musicals of An Officer and a Gentleman and Dream Lover, the Bobby Darin Story and he is producer of Fame the Musical, which premiered at Melbourne's Regent Theatre in April before a season in Brisbane.
Fame opened at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney on Thursday but only after a break necessitated by the fact there was no space in the city. Wicked was at the Capitol, Jersey Boys had booked the Theatre Royal and the Lyric was being renovated.
Enforced hiatuses on the national touring circuit are hitherto rare and always undesirable.
Wicked is in hiatus now. Having wrapped in Sydney, it cannot open in Brisbane until January.
Frost says he minimises costs by contracting cast and crew for each season, rather than for the entire run of the show, but they still need to re-rehearse before each season.
"I'm working as far out as 2014 and 2015, it's really hard to get dates, everyone's feeling it," he says. "Doctor Zhivago is only playing eight weeks in Sydney because it was all it could get, eight weeks in the whole year."
Next year Sydney theatres will prove to be a bigger logjam than this year.
Mary Poppins opens at the Capitol Theatre in May, the same month Hairspray is scheduled to arrive at the Lyric, and if Jersey Boys does as well in Sydney as it did in Melbourne, it will remain at the Theatre Royal until at least mid-year.
Love Never Dies had better work in Melbourne because a Sydney transfer will be impossible for some time. Likewise for the comic Broadway jukebox musical Rock of Ages, which opens at Melbourne's Comedy Theatre next April.
Global Creatures, the Australian company behind the Walking with Dinosaurs live show, which is scheduled to return for a national tour in April, is fortunate it plays arenas.
Canada's Cirque du Soleil will also tap the buoyant Australian economy next year with a return arena tour of Saltimbanco.
Frost says the solution is to build another theatre in Sydney, but that will take seven years. It's a job that should begin soon, however, because the Sydney Opera House's Opera Theatre is in need of substantial renovation, which will force out the Australian Ballet and Opera Australia for at least 18 months, probably longer.
McFarlane says the problem is not confined to Sydney, "theatre availability around the country for the next few years is really tough".
The producers of a new musical theatre production based on Olivia Newton-John's movie Xanadu have come up with a solution, however.
Xanadu will undergo a national tour from March next year in a 2000-seat grand chapiteau.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/producers-find-no-space-in-the-city-for-a-plethora-of-big-budget-musicals/story-e6frg6z6-1225939063690
Phantom fans say love should die
By Cassie White
Updated October 15, 2010 13:53:00
Andrew Lloyd Webber's sequel to Phantom Of The Opera may not be the cash cow the Victorian Government had hoped for Melbourne, after it was dropped from Broadway and received scathing reviews in London.
Victoria is paying to bring Webber's Love Never Dies to Melbourne, where it will show at the Regent Theatre from May 2011.
But the production was delayed twice from its Broadway debut, then eventually dropped all together, and has been panned by critics in the US and London where it played at the Adelphi Theatre.
So the Victorian Government's decision to bring it to Melbourne has left some wondering why taxpayers should fund a stage show that no-one else wants.
When making the announcement, Victorian Government Minister Tim Holding said the production could add millions of dollars to Melbourne's economy.
"Over the last four years, blockbuster theatre shows such as Wicked, Jersey Boys and, currently, Mary Poppins have drawn hundreds of thousands of interstate and overseas visitors to Melbourne ensuring that our hotels, restaurants and famous retail precincts are busy throughout the year," he said.
"Securing the Australian premiere of Love Never Dies strengthens Melbourne's position as the theatre capital of Australia."
The script for Love Never Dies was written by British author Ben Elton and the Australian production will be revamped - led by Simon Phillips and choreographed by Graeme Murphy.
Phillips told The Age that the changes will boost the production's chances of succeeding in Australia.
"There are significant changes to the plot ... This makes it shorter with the longueurs chopped and allows the show to cut to the chase," he said.
But the existence of Love Never Dies has outraged some Phantom Of The Opera fans so much that they have created an anti-sequel group called Love Should Die (LSD).
One LSD member - who wishes to remain anonymous to avoid being harassed by fans of the sequel - cannot believe the Government has paid to bring it here.
"I'm appalled, I really am. It hasn't been stated how much money the Government is spending but I'm assuming it's a fair amount and I just can't believe they haven't looked into this properly before saying they'd fund it," she said.
"To me they couldn't have, because they would have seen that it's not doing any good in England, it was to open in America and it's not doing that now, so we're just going to be another experiment with it opening here.
"They're going to change some or all of the story to make it better; now if they have to do that to a musical isn't that telling the Government something? I just don't get why they haven't looked into it properly and thought 'no, our money can go better elsewhere'."
She describes the sequel as a "complete contradiction" to Phantom Of The Opera.
"It goes against everything that the first musical was. I wasn't against the idea of a sequel, I just thought it didn't need one in some ways because it had an ending and everyone who sees it goes away with their own views on how it ended, or what might have happened," she said.
"With the sequel, it comes along and tells you how it ended and it's just wrong in every way. The characters are wrong; the Phantom is now this namby-pamby person, Raoul's a drunk and a gambler, Christine's a whore, Meg's a killer - it's just ridiculous.
"I do realise people's lives can change in 10 years but this storyline is like a really bad fan fiction and it's just wrong.
"To me it's like Webber had this goal where he wanted to do a sequel regardless and just went bang, bang, bang there you go."
The Australian's theatre critic, Alice Croggon, says it is a mystery why the Victorian Government chose Love Never Dies after its poor track record overseas.
"It's good that the Victorian Government is interested in bringing productions like this to Melbourne and I don't want to criticise their enthusiasm for making Melbourne a cultural destination, which is what this is all about; bringing tourists in and big commercial events," she said.
"[But] it's slightly baffling that they've chosen this production though, it has to be admitted.
"Some of the English reviews have been hilarious. The West End Whingers christened it 'Paint Never Dries' and they weren't alone. It got pretty consistently bad reviews and not just from the critics.
"Online there were Phantom Of The Opera fans who [posted] hundreds of pages of mainly negative responses to the opera, which isn't such a good thing. So it certainly hasn't gone down especially well."
Mr Holding's office did not return ABC News Online's calls.
First posted October 15, 2010 13:32:00
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/15/3039506.htm?site=melbourne
Updated October 15, 2010 13:53:00
Andrew Lloyd Webber's sequel to Phantom Of The Opera may not be the cash cow the Victorian Government had hoped for Melbourne, after it was dropped from Broadway and received scathing reviews in London.
Victoria is paying to bring Webber's Love Never Dies to Melbourne, where it will show at the Regent Theatre from May 2011.
But the production was delayed twice from its Broadway debut, then eventually dropped all together, and has been panned by critics in the US and London where it played at the Adelphi Theatre.
So the Victorian Government's decision to bring it to Melbourne has left some wondering why taxpayers should fund a stage show that no-one else wants.
When making the announcement, Victorian Government Minister Tim Holding said the production could add millions of dollars to Melbourne's economy.
"Over the last four years, blockbuster theatre shows such as Wicked, Jersey Boys and, currently, Mary Poppins have drawn hundreds of thousands of interstate and overseas visitors to Melbourne ensuring that our hotels, restaurants and famous retail precincts are busy throughout the year," he said.
"Securing the Australian premiere of Love Never Dies strengthens Melbourne's position as the theatre capital of Australia."
The script for Love Never Dies was written by British author Ben Elton and the Australian production will be revamped - led by Simon Phillips and choreographed by Graeme Murphy.
Phillips told The Age that the changes will boost the production's chances of succeeding in Australia.
"There are significant changes to the plot ... This makes it shorter with the longueurs chopped and allows the show to cut to the chase," he said.
But the existence of Love Never Dies has outraged some Phantom Of The Opera fans so much that they have created an anti-sequel group called Love Should Die (LSD).
One LSD member - who wishes to remain anonymous to avoid being harassed by fans of the sequel - cannot believe the Government has paid to bring it here.
"I'm appalled, I really am. It hasn't been stated how much money the Government is spending but I'm assuming it's a fair amount and I just can't believe they haven't looked into this properly before saying they'd fund it," she said.
"To me they couldn't have, because they would have seen that it's not doing any good in England, it was to open in America and it's not doing that now, so we're just going to be another experiment with it opening here.
"They're going to change some or all of the story to make it better; now if they have to do that to a musical isn't that telling the Government something? I just don't get why they haven't looked into it properly and thought 'no, our money can go better elsewhere'."
She describes the sequel as a "complete contradiction" to Phantom Of The Opera.
"It goes against everything that the first musical was. I wasn't against the idea of a sequel, I just thought it didn't need one in some ways because it had an ending and everyone who sees it goes away with their own views on how it ended, or what might have happened," she said.
"With the sequel, it comes along and tells you how it ended and it's just wrong in every way. The characters are wrong; the Phantom is now this namby-pamby person, Raoul's a drunk and a gambler, Christine's a whore, Meg's a killer - it's just ridiculous.
"I do realise people's lives can change in 10 years but this storyline is like a really bad fan fiction and it's just wrong.
"To me it's like Webber had this goal where he wanted to do a sequel regardless and just went bang, bang, bang there you go."
The Australian's theatre critic, Alice Croggon, says it is a mystery why the Victorian Government chose Love Never Dies after its poor track record overseas.
"It's good that the Victorian Government is interested in bringing productions like this to Melbourne and I don't want to criticise their enthusiasm for making Melbourne a cultural destination, which is what this is all about; bringing tourists in and big commercial events," she said.
"[But] it's slightly baffling that they've chosen this production though, it has to be admitted.
"Some of the English reviews have been hilarious. The West End Whingers christened it 'Paint Never Dries' and they weren't alone. It got pretty consistently bad reviews and not just from the critics.
"Online there were Phantom Of The Opera fans who [posted] hundreds of pages of mainly negative responses to the opera, which isn't such a good thing. So it certainly hasn't gone down especially well."
Mr Holding's office did not return ABC News Online's calls.
First posted October 15, 2010 13:32:00
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/15/3039506.htm?site=melbourne
Phantom success goes on
Robin Usher
October 13, 2010
MELBOURNE'S status as Australia's natural home for musical theatre has taken a big leap forward with the decision by English composer Andrew Lloyd Webber to choose it as the home for a new production of his sequel to the world's most successful show, The Phantom of the Opera.
It means the current London production of Love Never Dies will have served as the out-of-town tryout for the revised Melbourne version, to open at the Regent Theatre next May.
''This will be a completely new show,'' Lloyd Webber said via video link from London yesterday to a media conference in Parliament House's Queen's Hall. ''Melbourne is the place I have chosen to develop this production and there is every chance it could go on to Broadway.''
He added there was also the prospect of touring to Asian capitals, if it worked.
The multimillion-dollar production will have an all-Australian backstage team led by Simon Phillips, the outgoing artistic director of the Melbourne Theatre Company and director of the home-grown international success Priscilla: the Musical, which is about to open in Toronto before a New York season next year.
The choreographer is internationally acclaimed Graeme Murphy and the set and costume designer is award-winning Gabriela Tylesova, who has worked for both the MTC and Opera Australia.
The show opened in London to mixed reviews last March and although it is still doing good business its proposed transfer to New York has been cancelled.
Tourism Minister Tim Holding said it was a coup for Melbourne to attract the show which, if successful, could add more than $40 million to Victoria's economy.
''Over the past four years blockbuster shows such as Wicked, Jersey Boys and Mary Poppins have drawn hundreds of thousands of interstate and overseas visitors to Melbourne,'' he said. ''We worked very hard to bring this show here.''
He said it was a tribute to the strategy adopted by the Victorian Major Events Company to be able to have several large-scale musicals running successfully at the same time.
Auditions for Love Never Dies begin on October 25. Lloyd Webber will be here in January to decide on final casting and will return in April as the production nears completion.
Phillips said from Toronto, where he is finishing rehearsals for the new Priscilla season, that the stakes were high with the new show, but improvements to the story increased the chances for success.
''There are significant changes to the plot,'' he said. ''This makes it shorter with the longueurs chopped and allows the show to cut to the chase.''
The story, by Ben Elton, is set on New York's Coney Island where Lloyd Webber says the Phantom has fled to be ''a freak amongst freaks'' 10 years after the famous chandelier crashed to the floor of the Paris Opera.
He said the character was obviously older but still charismatic with a voice to die for. His love, Christine, is a world-famous soprano in a failing marriage to Raoul. ''She is a marvellous singer but the acting demands are more complex.''
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/opera/phantom-success-goes-on-20101012-16hsh.html
October 13, 2010
MELBOURNE'S status as Australia's natural home for musical theatre has taken a big leap forward with the decision by English composer Andrew Lloyd Webber to choose it as the home for a new production of his sequel to the world's most successful show, The Phantom of the Opera.
It means the current London production of Love Never Dies will have served as the out-of-town tryout for the revised Melbourne version, to open at the Regent Theatre next May.
''This will be a completely new show,'' Lloyd Webber said via video link from London yesterday to a media conference in Parliament House's Queen's Hall. ''Melbourne is the place I have chosen to develop this production and there is every chance it could go on to Broadway.''
He added there was also the prospect of touring to Asian capitals, if it worked.
The multimillion-dollar production will have an all-Australian backstage team led by Simon Phillips, the outgoing artistic director of the Melbourne Theatre Company and director of the home-grown international success Priscilla: the Musical, which is about to open in Toronto before a New York season next year.
The choreographer is internationally acclaimed Graeme Murphy and the set and costume designer is award-winning Gabriela Tylesova, who has worked for both the MTC and Opera Australia.
The show opened in London to mixed reviews last March and although it is still doing good business its proposed transfer to New York has been cancelled.
Tourism Minister Tim Holding said it was a coup for Melbourne to attract the show which, if successful, could add more than $40 million to Victoria's economy.
''Over the past four years blockbuster shows such as Wicked, Jersey Boys and Mary Poppins have drawn hundreds of thousands of interstate and overseas visitors to Melbourne,'' he said. ''We worked very hard to bring this show here.''
He said it was a tribute to the strategy adopted by the Victorian Major Events Company to be able to have several large-scale musicals running successfully at the same time.
Auditions for Love Never Dies begin on October 25. Lloyd Webber will be here in January to decide on final casting and will return in April as the production nears completion.
Phillips said from Toronto, where he is finishing rehearsals for the new Priscilla season, that the stakes were high with the new show, but improvements to the story increased the chances for success.
''There are significant changes to the plot,'' he said. ''This makes it shorter with the longueurs chopped and allows the show to cut to the chase.''
The story, by Ben Elton, is set on New York's Coney Island where Lloyd Webber says the Phantom has fled to be ''a freak amongst freaks'' 10 years after the famous chandelier crashed to the floor of the Paris Opera.
He said the character was obviously older but still charismatic with a voice to die for. His love, Christine, is a world-famous soprano in a failing marriage to Raoul. ''She is a marvellous singer but the acting demands are more complex.''
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/opera/phantom-success-goes-on-20101012-16hsh.html
Search for a Phantom of the Opera star
Sally Bennett
From: Herald Sun
October 14, 2010 12:00AM
THE search for the next Phantom has begun.
Love Never Dies, the sequel to Phantom of the Opera, will open at Melbourne's Regent Theatre next May.
The creative team for the all-Australian production is in place, all that's needed now is to find the stars.
Love Never Dies creator Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber said yesterday that all roles were up for grabs and he had no one in mind for the lead yet. "But I know exactly what we need," he said. "He's got to be a really charismatic figure and he's got to have a voice to die for.
"Of course Christine (the female lead) has got to be beautiful ... and she has to be the most marvellous singer."
Nationwide auditions for Love Never Dies, which fast-forwards the Phantom story 10 years, begin on October 25.
Possible candidates to play the Phantom include crooner David Campbell and theatre stars Bobby Fox (Jersey Boys) and Mitchell Butel (Avenue Q).
Female contenders for the lead role of Christine could include opera singers Annette O'Halloran and Taryn Fiebig.
The Australian production of Love Never Dies has a dream creative team in Simon Phillips as director, Graeme Murphy as choreographer and Gabriela Tylesova as set and costume designer.
It will come straight to Melbourne from London, where it made its world premiere in March.
Sir Andrew said he was excited about Phillips directing the show.
"Musical theatre today is international and it's about working with the best people in the best situations," he said in a broadcast from London to Melbourne's Parliament House for yesterday's launch.
"I'm really excited about the possibility of working with very talented people."
Sir Andrew said he would spend a lot of time in Australia from January until the premiere.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/search-for-a-phantom-of-the-opera-star/story-e6frf96f-1225938361783
From: Herald Sun
October 14, 2010 12:00AM
THE search for the next Phantom has begun.
Love Never Dies, the sequel to Phantom of the Opera, will open at Melbourne's Regent Theatre next May.
The creative team for the all-Australian production is in place, all that's needed now is to find the stars.
Love Never Dies creator Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber said yesterday that all roles were up for grabs and he had no one in mind for the lead yet. "But I know exactly what we need," he said. "He's got to be a really charismatic figure and he's got to have a voice to die for.
"Of course Christine (the female lead) has got to be beautiful ... and she has to be the most marvellous singer."
Nationwide auditions for Love Never Dies, which fast-forwards the Phantom story 10 years, begin on October 25.
Possible candidates to play the Phantom include crooner David Campbell and theatre stars Bobby Fox (Jersey Boys) and Mitchell Butel (Avenue Q).
Female contenders for the lead role of Christine could include opera singers Annette O'Halloran and Taryn Fiebig.
The Australian production of Love Never Dies has a dream creative team in Simon Phillips as director, Graeme Murphy as choreographer and Gabriela Tylesova as set and costume designer.
It will come straight to Melbourne from London, where it made its world premiere in March.
Sir Andrew said he was excited about Phillips directing the show.
"Musical theatre today is international and it's about working with the best people in the best situations," he said in a broadcast from London to Melbourne's Parliament House for yesterday's launch.
"I'm really excited about the possibility of working with very talented people."
Sir Andrew said he would spend a lot of time in Australia from January until the premiere.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/search-for-a-phantom-of-the-opera-star/story-e6frf96f-1225938361783
Brand New Australian Production for Love Never Dies
Mebourne has stolen the march on Sydney yet again, with the premiere of another musical blockbuster.
Stage Whispers Editor Neil Litchfield attended the media briefing at the Queen's Hall in Victoria's Parliament House.
Andrew Lloyd Webber today announced, via satellite link from London, that Australia will have an all new production of Love Never Dies, his continuation of the story of The Phantom of the Opera, with a new, Australian creative team.
Simon Phillips will direct the production, which begins previews at Melbourne's Regent Theatre in May 2011. Graeme Murphy will choreograph and the production will have a new design by Gabriela Tylesova.
After a preliminary speech from Victoria's Minister for the Arts Tim Holding listing the numerous sporting and cultural events taking place in Victoria, Lloyd Webber joked about following Tiger Woods into Melbourne with Love Never Dies.
Mr Holding was evasive about the precise amount the Victorian Government has paid to secure the production, but stressed that the flow-on benefits to the Victorian economy from interstate and regional tourism more than justified the outlay.
When host Ray Martin asked Lloyd Webber why Australia and why Melbourne, he replied:
"I have always had a very special relationship with Australia for my musicals. One particularly was Jesus Christ Superstar which, when it opened on Broadway, I was never very happy with. It was only when it came to Australia that it really took off. Of course the London production of Jesus Christ Superstar, directed by Jim Sharman, was based on the Australian one. So when Tim (McFarlane) said to me that Simon Phillips wanted to direct it, I just said, let’s do it."
Martin subsequently asked if Melbourne was going to become the new pre-Broadway, given that clearly there are changes he wants to make before going to New York or Los Angeles.
Lloyd Webber responded.
"No, I think that Melbourne will be the place where we can really finally develop the production I wanted to do. I don’t see it in any sense as an off-Broadway situation, any more than Jesus Christ Superstar, which opened originally in Sydney of course, then became the London production.
"I think today that musical theatre is international, and that it’s about working with the best people in the best possible situations. To think about London and Broadway as where you’re going to do something is out of date now. Some of the best theatre that’s happening around the world now is happening in places that are miles away from London or Broadway, so I’m really excited about the possibility of working with two really talented people. I’m not interested in talking about London or Broadway, just getting the best possible how and the best possible result."
Among Lloyd Webber's many Australian connections, Martin mentioned Ben Elton, now a Perth resident, in connection with the show's book.
"Ben is an old friend of mine," he replied, "and when we were talking about doing the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, it was Ben who unlocked the story for me. I think the production that we’re going to be doing in Melbourne is going to take the story even further than we did in London. There’s one crucial thing which we’re going to make even more exciting. The whole thing is going to be, for me, like it’s a new show reborn."
All this discussion skirted politely around, yet pointed clearly to, the fact that the show, which received a disappointing critical response to its West End production in March, is undergoing quite a makeover.
Nationwide auditions commence in a fortnight, on Monday October 25, with Andrew Lloyd Webber visiting Australia for the final round of auditions in January, returning in April when the finishing touches are being put on the production. The auditions will follow conventional lines. Despite the success of reality TV auditions for the leads in recent Lloyd Webber West End productions, Australian networks haven't shown any interest.
Asked if there was a chance that if he loved our stars here, he might take them to Broadway, Lloyd Webber replied, “Well we didn’t do too badly with Sunset Boulevard with Hugh Jackman. Artists come from everywhere. That’s the extraordinary thing about today.”
Image: Andrew Lloyd Webber by satellite from London
loveneverdies.com.au/
http://www.stagewhispers.com.au/news/brand-new-australian-production-love-never-dies
Stage Whispers Editor Neil Litchfield attended the media briefing at the Queen's Hall in Victoria's Parliament House.
Andrew Lloyd Webber today announced, via satellite link from London, that Australia will have an all new production of Love Never Dies, his continuation of the story of The Phantom of the Opera, with a new, Australian creative team.
Simon Phillips will direct the production, which begins previews at Melbourne's Regent Theatre in May 2011. Graeme Murphy will choreograph and the production will have a new design by Gabriela Tylesova.
After a preliminary speech from Victoria's Minister for the Arts Tim Holding listing the numerous sporting and cultural events taking place in Victoria, Lloyd Webber joked about following Tiger Woods into Melbourne with Love Never Dies.
Mr Holding was evasive about the precise amount the Victorian Government has paid to secure the production, but stressed that the flow-on benefits to the Victorian economy from interstate and regional tourism more than justified the outlay.
When host Ray Martin asked Lloyd Webber why Australia and why Melbourne, he replied:
"I have always had a very special relationship with Australia for my musicals. One particularly was Jesus Christ Superstar which, when it opened on Broadway, I was never very happy with. It was only when it came to Australia that it really took off. Of course the London production of Jesus Christ Superstar, directed by Jim Sharman, was based on the Australian one. So when Tim (McFarlane) said to me that Simon Phillips wanted to direct it, I just said, let’s do it."
Martin subsequently asked if Melbourne was going to become the new pre-Broadway, given that clearly there are changes he wants to make before going to New York or Los Angeles.
Lloyd Webber responded.
"No, I think that Melbourne will be the place where we can really finally develop the production I wanted to do. I don’t see it in any sense as an off-Broadway situation, any more than Jesus Christ Superstar, which opened originally in Sydney of course, then became the London production.
"I think today that musical theatre is international, and that it’s about working with the best people in the best possible situations. To think about London and Broadway as where you’re going to do something is out of date now. Some of the best theatre that’s happening around the world now is happening in places that are miles away from London or Broadway, so I’m really excited about the possibility of working with two really talented people. I’m not interested in talking about London or Broadway, just getting the best possible how and the best possible result."
Among Lloyd Webber's many Australian connections, Martin mentioned Ben Elton, now a Perth resident, in connection with the show's book.
"Ben is an old friend of mine," he replied, "and when we were talking about doing the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, it was Ben who unlocked the story for me. I think the production that we’re going to be doing in Melbourne is going to take the story even further than we did in London. There’s one crucial thing which we’re going to make even more exciting. The whole thing is going to be, for me, like it’s a new show reborn."
All this discussion skirted politely around, yet pointed clearly to, the fact that the show, which received a disappointing critical response to its West End production in March, is undergoing quite a makeover.
Nationwide auditions commence in a fortnight, on Monday October 25, with Andrew Lloyd Webber visiting Australia for the final round of auditions in January, returning in April when the finishing touches are being put on the production. The auditions will follow conventional lines. Despite the success of reality TV auditions for the leads in recent Lloyd Webber West End productions, Australian networks haven't shown any interest.
Asked if there was a chance that if he loved our stars here, he might take them to Broadway, Lloyd Webber replied, “Well we didn’t do too badly with Sunset Boulevard with Hugh Jackman. Artists come from everywhere. That’s the extraordinary thing about today.”
Image: Andrew Lloyd Webber by satellite from London
loveneverdies.com.au/
http://www.stagewhispers.com.au/news/brand-new-australian-production-love-never-dies
Monday, September 27, 2010
Dark Knight Of The Soul
Today:
41,290 hits after 4 years precisely!!
Yay!
Edit: Same day as Google's b'day, I never knew that
41,290 hits after 4 years precisely!!
Yay!
Edit: Same day as Google's b'day, I never knew that
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Spider-Man's sticky figures
Costly B'way show may tour big arenas
Last Updated: 5:31 AM, May 14, 2010
Posted: 12:32 AM, May 14, 2010
Michael Riedel
MY favorite $50 mil lion target is swinging back into view.
"Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" (and bankrupt the theater) will go into rehearsals this summer, begin previews in October and open in November, theater sources say.
And by January, I bet it'll be the biggest financial disaster in Broadway history.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
First the news: Patrick Page has been offered the role of the Green Goblin. He'll replace Alan Cumming, who withdrew from the production a few weeks ago, citing scheduling conflicts.
Page is an old hand at being green and mean. He created the title role in "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas."
Director Julie Taymor spent the week auditioning actresses to play Mary Jane. Taymor's first choice, Evan Rachel Wood, withdrew from the production last year, also because of "scheduling conflicts."
Cute little Reeve Carney is still on board as Spider-Man. I guess he's the only original cast member with nothing better to do.
As for the money, it is, believe it or not, in place. Michael Cohl, who was brought in by Bono, the show's composer, to sort out the financial mess, has put up a big chunk of it, and work has resumed at the Hilton Theatre, which has been torn apart to accommodate the gigantic set.
But Cohl doesn't want to be on the hook for the whole show, so he's quietly trying to lay off as much of his investment as he can.
If you're a stage-struck sucker, I hear you can get into "Spider-Man" for about $11 million.
"They're calling everybody," says a veteran producer. "They don't want to carry the whole thing on their backs."
The finances are, of course, laughable.
The show's weekly running cost is $850,000. And that's before royalty payments. Factor those in, and the weekly nut jumps to more than $1 million. A person who's crunched the numbers says "Spider-Man" will have to run five years -- at full capacity, and by selling lots of premium-priced seats -- just to earn back the $50 million production cost.
"It's a fantasy," this person says. "How many shows sell out every seat at every performance for five straight years?"
Cohl and his co-producers, including Marvel Comics, know this is true. And when they speak to potential suckers -- I mean investors -- they admit the show is unlikely to pay back on Broadway. But they say they'll clean up on the road.
Their plan is to launch the show here and then send it out on tour. But it's not going to play 1,500-seat theaters: It's going to play 10,000-seat sports arenas.
"They're trying to sell it as a rock concert," says a producer. "But you're not going to sell out a 10,000-seat basketball stadium unless Bono and The Edge are playing the songs. Basically, it's gotta be a U2 concert. Nobody's going to sit in nosebleed seats to see a Broadway musical."
"Spider-Man" collapsed last summer when David Garfinkle, the hapless lead producer, failed to come up with the money. Other, more experienced producers took a look at the show but concluded that the finances were "insane" (as one said at the time) and that, when it came to budget-busting spending, Taymor was worse than Greece.
Not a whole lot has changed since. True, Garfinkle's been sidelined and Cohl's now in charge. But even he's not going to rein in Taymor.
And when "Spider-Man" goes into previews -- and once overtime for the hordes of stagehands kicks in -- watch that production cost soar to $60 million.
Bono and The Edge better tune up their guitars.
michael.riedel@nypost.com
http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/theater/spider_man_sticky_figures_FMvwejmJ4Ndm220au85j0M
Last Updated: 5:31 AM, May 14, 2010
Posted: 12:32 AM, May 14, 2010
Michael Riedel
MY favorite $50 mil lion target is swinging back into view.
"Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" (and bankrupt the theater) will go into rehearsals this summer, begin previews in October and open in November, theater sources say.
And by January, I bet it'll be the biggest financial disaster in Broadway history.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
First the news: Patrick Page has been offered the role of the Green Goblin. He'll replace Alan Cumming, who withdrew from the production a few weeks ago, citing scheduling conflicts.
Page is an old hand at being green and mean. He created the title role in "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas."
Director Julie Taymor spent the week auditioning actresses to play Mary Jane. Taymor's first choice, Evan Rachel Wood, withdrew from the production last year, also because of "scheduling conflicts."
Cute little Reeve Carney is still on board as Spider-Man. I guess he's the only original cast member with nothing better to do.
As for the money, it is, believe it or not, in place. Michael Cohl, who was brought in by Bono, the show's composer, to sort out the financial mess, has put up a big chunk of it, and work has resumed at the Hilton Theatre, which has been torn apart to accommodate the gigantic set.
But Cohl doesn't want to be on the hook for the whole show, so he's quietly trying to lay off as much of his investment as he can.
If you're a stage-struck sucker, I hear you can get into "Spider-Man" for about $11 million.
"They're calling everybody," says a veteran producer. "They don't want to carry the whole thing on their backs."
The finances are, of course, laughable.
The show's weekly running cost is $850,000. And that's before royalty payments. Factor those in, and the weekly nut jumps to more than $1 million. A person who's crunched the numbers says "Spider-Man" will have to run five years -- at full capacity, and by selling lots of premium-priced seats -- just to earn back the $50 million production cost.
"It's a fantasy," this person says. "How many shows sell out every seat at every performance for five straight years?"
Cohl and his co-producers, including Marvel Comics, know this is true. And when they speak to potential suckers -- I mean investors -- they admit the show is unlikely to pay back on Broadway. But they say they'll clean up on the road.
Their plan is to launch the show here and then send it out on tour. But it's not going to play 1,500-seat theaters: It's going to play 10,000-seat sports arenas.
"They're trying to sell it as a rock concert," says a producer. "But you're not going to sell out a 10,000-seat basketball stadium unless Bono and The Edge are playing the songs. Basically, it's gotta be a U2 concert. Nobody's going to sit in nosebleed seats to see a Broadway musical."
"Spider-Man" collapsed last summer when David Garfinkle, the hapless lead producer, failed to come up with the money. Other, more experienced producers took a look at the show but concluded that the finances were "insane" (as one said at the time) and that, when it came to budget-busting spending, Taymor was worse than Greece.
Not a whole lot has changed since. True, Garfinkle's been sidelined and Cohl's now in charge. But even he's not going to rein in Taymor.
And when "Spider-Man" goes into previews -- and once overtime for the hordes of stagehands kicks in -- watch that production cost soar to $60 million.
Bono and The Edge better tune up their guitars.
michael.riedel@nypost.com
http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/theater/spider_man_sticky_figures_FMvwejmJ4Ndm220au85j0M
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Batman: Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You (They linked to Dark Knight Of The Soul)
Batman: Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You
The Dark Knight is hitting the stage -- no, not the sound stage.
by Jim Vejvoda
US, April 25, 2010 - Move over, Phantom. Here comes Batman.
Warner Bros., DC Comics, and two of the companies behind the touring stage shows Walking With Dinosaurs and Mamma Mia! are in the early stages of developing Batman Live, a stage show rendition of the Dark Knight Detective. But according to The Hollywood Reporter, don't expect the Dark Knight to burst into showtunes or grace the Great White Way. "The show is neither a musical nor a Broadway-bound theatrical production but rather an elaborate arena production aimed at kids and families," said the trade.
Animation vets Alan Burnett (Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Green Lantern: First Flight) and Stan Berkowitz (Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, Justice League: The New Frontier) are crafting the script, which will reportedly feature multiple villains.
THR adds that Batman Live will debut either in 2012 after Christopher Nolan's Batman 3 opens or sometime prior to it in 2011.
Years ago, former Batman director Tim Burton tried to stage Batman: The Musical but the project was aborted.
http://au.movies.ign.com/articles/108/1086029p1.html
The Dark Knight is hitting the stage -- no, not the sound stage.
by Jim Vejvoda
US, April 25, 2010 - Move over, Phantom. Here comes Batman.
Warner Bros., DC Comics, and two of the companies behind the touring stage shows Walking With Dinosaurs and Mamma Mia! are in the early stages of developing Batman Live, a stage show rendition of the Dark Knight Detective. But according to The Hollywood Reporter, don't expect the Dark Knight to burst into showtunes or grace the Great White Way. "The show is neither a musical nor a Broadway-bound theatrical production but rather an elaborate arena production aimed at kids and families," said the trade.
Animation vets Alan Burnett (Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Green Lantern: First Flight) and Stan Berkowitz (Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, Justice League: The New Frontier) are crafting the script, which will reportedly feature multiple villains.
THR adds that Batman Live will debut either in 2012 after Christopher Nolan's Batman 3 opens or sometime prior to it in 2011.
Years ago, former Batman director Tim Burton tried to stage Batman: The Musical but the project was aborted.
http://au.movies.ign.com/articles/108/1086029p1.html
Warner Bros., DC Comics developing 'Batman Live' stage show (exclusive)
April 25, 2010
A Batman stage show soon might be swooping to a town near you.
Warner Bros. and DC Comics are in the early stages of developing a tour, tentatively titled "Batman Live" and starring the Caped Crusader, working with Nick Grace Management and Water Lane Prods., companies behind the popular "Walking With Dinosaurs" and "Mamma Mia!" touring shows.
The show is neither a musical nor a Broadway-bound theatrical production but rather an elaborate arena production aimed at kids and families.
Alan Burnett, a longtime animation veteran whose credits include Batman and Superman television shows as well as such animated movies as "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" and "Green Lantern: First Flight," is writing the story and script. The logline is being kept under wraps, but it's known that the show will feature numerous villains.
Warner Bros. Consumer Products is spearheading the project, whose deals with NGM and WLP are licensing agreements. Other partners might come aboard.
The credentials of NGM and WLP are well-known in the stage world. The award-winning "Dinosaurs" show, for example, boasted intricate dinos and sets, and the tours generated tens of millions of dollars, consistently ranking near the top of Pollstar's annual ranking.
No timeline for the "Batman" show is set, though one scenario involves aiming to come out after Christopher Nolan's third "Batman" movie in 2012. Another scenario has it opening in 2011.
Mounting any type of stage production featuring a superhero can be tricky -- just look at the on-again, off-again Spider-Man Broadway musical -- but Batman could be the first DC Comics character with his own touring stage show. His erstwhile colleague Superman was the center of a Broadway show in 1966, but it closed after a few months despite fairly positive reviews.
Warners' consumer products division declined comment.
Burnett is repped by the Arlook Group.
http://www.heatvisionblog.com/2010/04/batman-live-stage-show-warner-bros-dc-comics.html
A Batman stage show soon might be swooping to a town near you.
Warner Bros. and DC Comics are in the early stages of developing a tour, tentatively titled "Batman Live" and starring the Caped Crusader, working with Nick Grace Management and Water Lane Prods., companies behind the popular "Walking With Dinosaurs" and "Mamma Mia!" touring shows.
The show is neither a musical nor a Broadway-bound theatrical production but rather an elaborate arena production aimed at kids and families.
Alan Burnett, a longtime animation veteran whose credits include Batman and Superman television shows as well as such animated movies as "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" and "Green Lantern: First Flight," is writing the story and script. The logline is being kept under wraps, but it's known that the show will feature numerous villains.
Warner Bros. Consumer Products is spearheading the project, whose deals with NGM and WLP are licensing agreements. Other partners might come aboard.
The credentials of NGM and WLP are well-known in the stage world. The award-winning "Dinosaurs" show, for example, boasted intricate dinos and sets, and the tours generated tens of millions of dollars, consistently ranking near the top of Pollstar's annual ranking.
No timeline for the "Batman" show is set, though one scenario involves aiming to come out after Christopher Nolan's third "Batman" movie in 2012. Another scenario has it opening in 2011.
Mounting any type of stage production featuring a superhero can be tricky -- just look at the on-again, off-again Spider-Man Broadway musical -- but Batman could be the first DC Comics character with his own touring stage show. His erstwhile colleague Superman was the center of a Broadway show in 1966, but it closed after a few months despite fairly positive reviews.
Warners' consumer products division declined comment.
Burnett is repped by the Arlook Group.
http://www.heatvisionblog.com/2010/04/batman-live-stage-show-warner-bros-dc-comics.html
Saturday, March 13, 2010
'Phantom' menace: Sequel is shaky
Webber show off to rough start in UK
Last Updated: 11:59 AM, March 12, 2010
Posted: 3:53 AM, March 12, 2010
Michael Riedel
At the opening of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Love Never Dies" Tuesday night, I ran right into the composer's wife, Madeleine.
Beautiful and clever, Madeleine's always quick with a quip.
"Michael," she said, smiling. "You've come a long way -- to trash us."
No, no, Madeleine. I'm just here to report on the premiere and dole out a little gossip. We'll leave the trashing to the Internet chatters -- whose early salvo, "Paint Never Dries," will haunt this show forever -- and the critics, some of whom have taken up their assignment with gusto. The Times of London, The Evening Standard and The New York Times dismissed this $12 million sequel to "The Phantom of the Opera" as an unsalvageable wreck.
But other critics enjoyed it. The Telegraph raved about the score and the creepy production; The Independent called it "phabulous."
Response among insiders was mixed as well. A New York investor announced, "I can kiss my 25,000-pound investment goodbye." Another said, "Great score, but there's a lot of tweaking to do." A top London producer added, "They've got to work on the story. It's so predictable."
"Love Never Dies," set to open on Broadway in November, takes the Phantom to Coney Island, where he runs a freak show. Still obsessed with Christine, he lures her to New York. She arrives with her husband, Raoul, who's a drunken gambler, and her son, Gustave, whose father may be Raoul or -- de-da-de-dum! -- the Phantom. (Said a wag, "They should call it 'Who's Your Daddy?' ")
That the musical's generating such a grab-bag response may be due to the fact that even some of the creators don't think it's ready yet. The Americans on board -- director Jack O'Brien ("Hairspray") and choreographer Jerry Mitchell ("Legally Blonde") -- were frustrated that they had only two weeks of previews to stage such a huge spectacle. They begged for more time, sources say, but Lloyd Webber's minions were concerned that postponing the opening would generate even more negative chatter.
And the previews were rocky. Anyone who works on a Lloyd Webber show will tell you there's always a moment when the Great Man throws a Great Fit. During a rehearsal of "Woman in White," the leading lady spoke a note instead of singing it and Lloyd Webber threatened to take his score home. (I'm told they now keep two copies of a Lloyd Webber score in the pits of his shows as a precaution.)
On "Love Never Dies," he reportedly became so frustrated, he muttered, "I'm just going to write a check for 10 million pounds and close the show."
He's also butted heads with O'Brien, who's no pushover. O'Brien once told the ensemble to play their parts subtly. Then Lloyd Webber came around and said everybody should play it up. An exasperated O'Brien, sources say, threw up his hands and said, "I don't know what he wants!"
There's a rumor swirling here that O'Brien and Mitchell may leave the show before it opens in New York. (It's said they took the job for the money, although I refuse to believe anyone would work on an Andrew Lloyd Webber show for anything but the art.) Hal Prince, who directed the original "Phantom," is whispered to be waiting in the wings.
I ran that by Andre Ptaszynski, who runs Lloyd Webber's empire, The Really Useful Group. He said, "The mention of Hal Prince is a stunner to Andrew and me. No such thing was anywhere on the radar. Why would it be? We love Jack and are very pleased with his work, though, as is often the case, there is a further mile to go."
Ptaszynski also said the creators met Wednesday to pore over the reviews and "discussed the work we and Jack would like to do before the show opens on Broadway."
A big issue, sources say, is the opening scene, which is slow and confusing.
Another, much deeper problem is the Phantom himself. In the original, he's mysterious, sensual and terrifying. This time around, he cries a lot. And his first entrance isn't an entrance. He's at a piano, scribbling. He's got a killer first song -- the soaring " 'Til I Hear You Sing Once More" -- but he needs a thrilling entrance. (In the original, he materializes in the mirror.) When I mentioned this to someone working on the show, he snapped, "Tell that to Jack O'Brien."
Ramin Karimloo, who plays the Phantom, sings beautifully, but as critics have mentioned, he's bland. You come expecting Michael Crawford and you get Gerard Butler's stand-in.
Nobody here thinks the mixed verdict will stop Lloyd Webber from bringing "Love Never Dies" to Broadway. He's the richest composer in theater history precisely because he's thumbed his nose at the critics and gone straight to the people who matter: the paying public.
But it's clear there's work to be done. And from what I'm hearing, it's going to be a white-knuckle ride. Just like the Cyclone at Coney Island.
michael.riedel@nypost.com
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/theater/webber_show_off_to_rough_start_in_ppIUFX4Nca3lULbFTAkZNN
Last Updated: 11:59 AM, March 12, 2010
Posted: 3:53 AM, March 12, 2010
Michael Riedel
At the opening of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Love Never Dies" Tuesday night, I ran right into the composer's wife, Madeleine.
Beautiful and clever, Madeleine's always quick with a quip.
"Michael," she said, smiling. "You've come a long way -- to trash us."
No, no, Madeleine. I'm just here to report on the premiere and dole out a little gossip. We'll leave the trashing to the Internet chatters -- whose early salvo, "Paint Never Dries," will haunt this show forever -- and the critics, some of whom have taken up their assignment with gusto. The Times of London, The Evening Standard and The New York Times dismissed this $12 million sequel to "The Phantom of the Opera" as an unsalvageable wreck.
But other critics enjoyed it. The Telegraph raved about the score and the creepy production; The Independent called it "phabulous."
Response among insiders was mixed as well. A New York investor announced, "I can kiss my 25,000-pound investment goodbye." Another said, "Great score, but there's a lot of tweaking to do." A top London producer added, "They've got to work on the story. It's so predictable."
"Love Never Dies," set to open on Broadway in November, takes the Phantom to Coney Island, where he runs a freak show. Still obsessed with Christine, he lures her to New York. She arrives with her husband, Raoul, who's a drunken gambler, and her son, Gustave, whose father may be Raoul or -- de-da-de-dum! -- the Phantom. (Said a wag, "They should call it 'Who's Your Daddy?' ")
That the musical's generating such a grab-bag response may be due to the fact that even some of the creators don't think it's ready yet. The Americans on board -- director Jack O'Brien ("Hairspray") and choreographer Jerry Mitchell ("Legally Blonde") -- were frustrated that they had only two weeks of previews to stage such a huge spectacle. They begged for more time, sources say, but Lloyd Webber's minions were concerned that postponing the opening would generate even more negative chatter.
And the previews were rocky. Anyone who works on a Lloyd Webber show will tell you there's always a moment when the Great Man throws a Great Fit. During a rehearsal of "Woman in White," the leading lady spoke a note instead of singing it and Lloyd Webber threatened to take his score home. (I'm told they now keep two copies of a Lloyd Webber score in the pits of his shows as a precaution.)
On "Love Never Dies," he reportedly became so frustrated, he muttered, "I'm just going to write a check for 10 million pounds and close the show."
He's also butted heads with O'Brien, who's no pushover. O'Brien once told the ensemble to play their parts subtly. Then Lloyd Webber came around and said everybody should play it up. An exasperated O'Brien, sources say, threw up his hands and said, "I don't know what he wants!"
There's a rumor swirling here that O'Brien and Mitchell may leave the show before it opens in New York. (It's said they took the job for the money, although I refuse to believe anyone would work on an Andrew Lloyd Webber show for anything but the art.) Hal Prince, who directed the original "Phantom," is whispered to be waiting in the wings.
I ran that by Andre Ptaszynski, who runs Lloyd Webber's empire, The Really Useful Group. He said, "The mention of Hal Prince is a stunner to Andrew and me. No such thing was anywhere on the radar. Why would it be? We love Jack and are very pleased with his work, though, as is often the case, there is a further mile to go."
Ptaszynski also said the creators met Wednesday to pore over the reviews and "discussed the work we and Jack would like to do before the show opens on Broadway."
A big issue, sources say, is the opening scene, which is slow and confusing.
Another, much deeper problem is the Phantom himself. In the original, he's mysterious, sensual and terrifying. This time around, he cries a lot. And his first entrance isn't an entrance. He's at a piano, scribbling. He's got a killer first song -- the soaring " 'Til I Hear You Sing Once More" -- but he needs a thrilling entrance. (In the original, he materializes in the mirror.) When I mentioned this to someone working on the show, he snapped, "Tell that to Jack O'Brien."
Ramin Karimloo, who plays the Phantom, sings beautifully, but as critics have mentioned, he's bland. You come expecting Michael Crawford and you get Gerard Butler's stand-in.
Nobody here thinks the mixed verdict will stop Lloyd Webber from bringing "Love Never Dies" to Broadway. He's the richest composer in theater history precisely because he's thumbed his nose at the critics and gone straight to the people who matter: the paying public.
But it's clear there's work to be done. And from what I'm hearing, it's going to be a white-knuckle ride. Just like the Cyclone at Coney Island.
michael.riedel@nypost.com
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/theater/webber_show_off_to_rough_start_in_ppIUFX4Nca3lULbFTAkZNN
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Andrew Lloyd Webber insists it’ll be all right on the night
From The Times
March 6, 2010
Ben Hoyle, Arts Correspondent
Some of the most successful musicals of all time would never have survived to become long-running favourites if they had premiered in the digital age, according to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The Times reported yesterday that although Love Never Dies — his sequel to The Phantom of the Opera — does not open until Tuesday, it has already been denounced by so-called “phans” all over the globe. Some have seen the West End preview, but many have not.
Speaking yesterday during rehearsals at the Adelphi Theatre, on the Strand in London, he said that the internet had made life much more difficult for anyone trying to bring an ambitious new stage production to the public.
He says that Love Never Dies is one of the best things he has ever done. “It’s the score that I’ve put the most into,” he said. “Those people that have heard it think that we are trying to do something completely new. Tim [Rice, his writing partner on many of his early hits, but not this musical] thinks it’s one of the best librettos I’ve ever had. I don’t think anything like this has been created for a long while.”
Love Never Dies, which moves the action on ten years and transports it from Paris to Coney Island, New York, has been developing for years.
But with days to go until the opening night, it clearly irks him that the show is having to do battle with the internet, where fan sites and theatre chat rooms act as a global echo chamber for a minority of opinionated audience members, as well as providing an easy opportunity for industrial sabotage.
“What we really have to consider is all this stuff on the net,” he said. “It’s a very worrying situation for anybody now who’s opening any kind of play or musical.”
“Three years ago I was alerted [to the potential for sabotage] with somebody else’s musical theatre production. It was discovered by various machinery that another producer was knocking it [on the internet]. Everybody knows a little about this in the theatre.
“At that time I put a ban out to everybody who was working directly or indirectly with me that we will not post anything on the web to do with any production in the West End because it’s very dangerous.”
Does he believe that this practice is still widespread? “Yes.” Does it explain some of the comments aimed at Love Never Dies? “No.”
The evidence collected by Lloyd Webber’s digital team suggests that the critics with “vested interests” in this case are not rival producers but “phans”. He suspects that they are people who have seen the original Phantom hundreds of times and have developed an obsessive relationship with the show.
“What’s happening is that this small number of people have now got this marketplace where they can be the Benedict Nightingale [The Times’s veteran chief theatre critic] of the day.”
What they ignore is that previews are not the same thing as the finished article, Lloyd Webber added. Audiences should understand that they are watching a work in progress. “It is a problem now because if you go back in history, I dread to think what anybody would have said about the first preview of Cats, or, frankly, Les Misérables, which was a huge undertaking and wasn’t right at the beginning.
“Cameron [Mackintosh] and Trevor Nunn bravely got it through and, despite not very good reviews, it turned into one of the biggest musicals of all time. If anybody [with access to the internet] had seen the first preview of Cats I think it would have been closed.
The internet has changed the rules of the game and it has fallen to Love Never Dies to test the water. “Wicked, which is probably the biggest musical in the world right now, when that started there were a lot of Wizard of Oz fans who objected to it,” says Lloyd Webber.
“There’s a whole sad culture around the world of people who seem to only live by the old Phantom of the Opera,” he said. “But I suspect in a year’s time most of those, if they come to see thiss, will understand and enjoy it.”
Lloyd Webber is fully aware that a flop could tarnish his most successful creation, but he is quietly confident ahead of Tuesday night’s world premiere, whatever the critics decide.
“Phantom got some terrible reviews. The Sunday Times called it “masked balls” and that was it. But the point is that by opening night we knew we were away. I will know on Tuesday whether we’ve got a worldwide hit or not.”
Audiences might be best advised to hold off a little bit longer if they wish to see the new show at its best.
“There’s an old adage,” Lloyd Webber said, rather surprisingly. “Never go and see a musical until a month after it opens.”
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/article7052118.ece
March 6, 2010
Ben Hoyle, Arts Correspondent
Some of the most successful musicals of all time would never have survived to become long-running favourites if they had premiered in the digital age, according to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The Times reported yesterday that although Love Never Dies — his sequel to The Phantom of the Opera — does not open until Tuesday, it has already been denounced by so-called “phans” all over the globe. Some have seen the West End preview, but many have not.
Speaking yesterday during rehearsals at the Adelphi Theatre, on the Strand in London, he said that the internet had made life much more difficult for anyone trying to bring an ambitious new stage production to the public.
He says that Love Never Dies is one of the best things he has ever done. “It’s the score that I’ve put the most into,” he said. “Those people that have heard it think that we are trying to do something completely new. Tim [Rice, his writing partner on many of his early hits, but not this musical] thinks it’s one of the best librettos I’ve ever had. I don’t think anything like this has been created for a long while.”
Love Never Dies, which moves the action on ten years and transports it from Paris to Coney Island, New York, has been developing for years.
But with days to go until the opening night, it clearly irks him that the show is having to do battle with the internet, where fan sites and theatre chat rooms act as a global echo chamber for a minority of opinionated audience members, as well as providing an easy opportunity for industrial sabotage.
“What we really have to consider is all this stuff on the net,” he said. “It’s a very worrying situation for anybody now who’s opening any kind of play or musical.”
“Three years ago I was alerted [to the potential for sabotage] with somebody else’s musical theatre production. It was discovered by various machinery that another producer was knocking it [on the internet]. Everybody knows a little about this in the theatre.
“At that time I put a ban out to everybody who was working directly or indirectly with me that we will not post anything on the web to do with any production in the West End because it’s very dangerous.”
Does he believe that this practice is still widespread? “Yes.” Does it explain some of the comments aimed at Love Never Dies? “No.”
The evidence collected by Lloyd Webber’s digital team suggests that the critics with “vested interests” in this case are not rival producers but “phans”. He suspects that they are people who have seen the original Phantom hundreds of times and have developed an obsessive relationship with the show.
“What’s happening is that this small number of people have now got this marketplace where they can be the Benedict Nightingale [The Times’s veteran chief theatre critic] of the day.”
What they ignore is that previews are not the same thing as the finished article, Lloyd Webber added. Audiences should understand that they are watching a work in progress. “It is a problem now because if you go back in history, I dread to think what anybody would have said about the first preview of Cats, or, frankly, Les Misérables, which was a huge undertaking and wasn’t right at the beginning.
“Cameron [Mackintosh] and Trevor Nunn bravely got it through and, despite not very good reviews, it turned into one of the biggest musicals of all time. If anybody [with access to the internet] had seen the first preview of Cats I think it would have been closed.
The internet has changed the rules of the game and it has fallen to Love Never Dies to test the water. “Wicked, which is probably the biggest musical in the world right now, when that started there were a lot of Wizard of Oz fans who objected to it,” says Lloyd Webber.
“There’s a whole sad culture around the world of people who seem to only live by the old Phantom of the Opera,” he said. “But I suspect in a year’s time most of those, if they come to see thiss, will understand and enjoy it.”
Lloyd Webber is fully aware that a flop could tarnish his most successful creation, but he is quietly confident ahead of Tuesday night’s world premiere, whatever the critics decide.
“Phantom got some terrible reviews. The Sunday Times called it “masked balls” and that was it. But the point is that by opening night we knew we were away. I will know on Tuesday whether we’ve got a worldwide hit or not.”
Audiences might be best advised to hold off a little bit longer if they wish to see the new show at its best.
“There’s an old adage,” Lloyd Webber said, rather surprisingly. “Never go and see a musical until a month after it opens.”
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/article7052118.ece
Lloyd Webber sequel incurs scorn of online ‘phans’
From The Times
March 5, 2010
Ben Hoyle, Arts Correspondent
Opening night is still four days away but Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sequel to The Phantom of the Opera is already threatening to stake an unwanted claim to theatre history.
Love Never Dies may well be the most pre-emptively vilified show yet. Vicious verdicts began popping up online immediately after previews started at the Adelphi in London on February 22. They have kept coming, attacking the singing, the music, the lyrics, the story by Ben Elton and Frederick Forsyth, the set, the ticket prices and various endings tried so far.
Perhaps the internet and the borderline obsessive protectiveness that many people feel towards the original musical made that inevitable. Before anyone had seen the show, die-hard “phans” were bombarding the inboxes of theatre critics and reporters in London and New York with complaints about its very existence.
One influential theatre blog parodied the show as “Paint Never Dries”, describing it as tedious and gloomy with inaudible singing and an “interminably drawn-out finale”. The discussion boards of the theatre news website What’s On Stage (owned by Lloyd Webber’s company The Really Useful Group) had 62 pages of comments as of yesterday afternoon, viewed more than 70,000 times. The most recent posting, from someone who declared themself to be a “big fan” of the original, called the show “appalling, appalling, appalling”.
Alistair Smith, news editor of The Stage, said that the industry has been taken aback by the criticism. “I think this is a genuine new phenomenon and we can’t yet tell what effect it will have [on the show’s prospects]. There are probably only two shows that people are this obsessed with: Phantom and Les Misérables. These people develop a sense of ownership and feel it’s their show, not the composer’s.”
Those obsessive audiences are the bedrock of the original Phantom’s success. As the publicity material puts it, Phantom is “the most succesful single piece of entertainment of all time” with a box office gross of more than £2 billion. Lloyd Webber has not had a hit on anything like that scale since but neither has anybody else. He is sufficiently aware of the threat posed to the global target market by the criticism to have a team of people analysing the online chatter for him.
Andre Ptaszynski, chief executive of The Really Useful Group and a producer for Love Never Dies, said that negative online reviews “probably can be really damaging” but after a difficult start 80 per cent of the total comment was favourable.“All the online comment was confirming what we knew was wrong,” he said. “On Monday two weeks ago they were saying, ‘the last scene is really dreadful’. It was the first time we’d done it in front of an audience . But we have tried at least three versions since and now it really works.” The show has taken advance bookings of £9 million on a production cost of £6 million. Dates are pencilled in for the US, Asia and Australia, pending a decision likely to be based “more on popular reaction than critical reaction”, he said. “Andrew has been one of the easiest targets in popular cultural life for decades. Critics often take the high ground and ignore that his work is incredibly popular.”
Previous Lloyd Webber premieres
Jesus Christ Superstar, New York, October 14, 1971: “It all rather resembled one’s first sight of the Empire State Building. Not at all uninteresting but somewhat unsurprising and of minimal artistic value. The total effect is brilliant but cheap”
Aspects of Love, London, April 17, 1989: “The opening number, Love Changes Everything, consists of a blandly repeated six-note phrase over two chords. Another innocuous little phrase accompanies George’s favourite slogan, ‘Life goes on, love is free’. Lloyd Webber then goes on to exploit this as if he had hit on the Grail motif from Parsifal”
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/article7050528.ece
March 5, 2010
Ben Hoyle, Arts Correspondent
Opening night is still four days away but Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sequel to The Phantom of the Opera is already threatening to stake an unwanted claim to theatre history.
Love Never Dies may well be the most pre-emptively vilified show yet. Vicious verdicts began popping up online immediately after previews started at the Adelphi in London on February 22. They have kept coming, attacking the singing, the music, the lyrics, the story by Ben Elton and Frederick Forsyth, the set, the ticket prices and various endings tried so far.
Perhaps the internet and the borderline obsessive protectiveness that many people feel towards the original musical made that inevitable. Before anyone had seen the show, die-hard “phans” were bombarding the inboxes of theatre critics and reporters in London and New York with complaints about its very existence.
One influential theatre blog parodied the show as “Paint Never Dries”, describing it as tedious and gloomy with inaudible singing and an “interminably drawn-out finale”. The discussion boards of the theatre news website What’s On Stage (owned by Lloyd Webber’s company The Really Useful Group) had 62 pages of comments as of yesterday afternoon, viewed more than 70,000 times. The most recent posting, from someone who declared themself to be a “big fan” of the original, called the show “appalling, appalling, appalling”.
Alistair Smith, news editor of The Stage, said that the industry has been taken aback by the criticism. “I think this is a genuine new phenomenon and we can’t yet tell what effect it will have [on the show’s prospects]. There are probably only two shows that people are this obsessed with: Phantom and Les Misérables. These people develop a sense of ownership and feel it’s their show, not the composer’s.”
Those obsessive audiences are the bedrock of the original Phantom’s success. As the publicity material puts it, Phantom is “the most succesful single piece of entertainment of all time” with a box office gross of more than £2 billion. Lloyd Webber has not had a hit on anything like that scale since but neither has anybody else. He is sufficiently aware of the threat posed to the global target market by the criticism to have a team of people analysing the online chatter for him.
Andre Ptaszynski, chief executive of The Really Useful Group and a producer for Love Never Dies, said that negative online reviews “probably can be really damaging” but after a difficult start 80 per cent of the total comment was favourable.“All the online comment was confirming what we knew was wrong,” he said. “On Monday two weeks ago they were saying, ‘the last scene is really dreadful’. It was the first time we’d done it in front of an audience . But we have tried at least three versions since and now it really works.” The show has taken advance bookings of £9 million on a production cost of £6 million. Dates are pencilled in for the US, Asia and Australia, pending a decision likely to be based “more on popular reaction than critical reaction”, he said. “Andrew has been one of the easiest targets in popular cultural life for decades. Critics often take the high ground and ignore that his work is incredibly popular.”
Previous Lloyd Webber premieres
Jesus Christ Superstar, New York, October 14, 1971: “It all rather resembled one’s first sight of the Empire State Building. Not at all uninteresting but somewhat unsurprising and of minimal artistic value. The total effect is brilliant but cheap”
Aspects of Love, London, April 17, 1989: “The opening number, Love Changes Everything, consists of a blandly repeated six-note phrase over two chords. Another innocuous little phrase accompanies George’s favourite slogan, ‘Life goes on, love is free’. Lloyd Webber then goes on to exploit this as if he had hit on the Grail motif from Parsifal”
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/article7050528.ece
Phantom phone calls
Michael Coveney:
Everyone I know seeems to have seen Love Never Dies already, and comment on the score is flowing freely through the newspapers and on the blogosphere.
Critics have listened to the score and the Press previews are starting on Saturday.
So once again the whole idea of a First Night next Tuesday is a wash-out. And the peculiar thrill of being able to say “I was there” when the show opened is blown away on the wind.
I know from reliable colleagues like Baz Bamigboye and Edward Seckerson that the new score is a peach, Well, I know it for myself and, without preempting later critical comment, I am intensely looking forward to hearing “live” the eerie dissonance of the song the Phantom can’t express until, ten years after they parted, he hears Christine sing again.
The title song of “Love Never Dies” is in its third incarnation. I first heard it at Lloyd Webber’s fiftieth birthday party, when Kiri Te Kanawa sang it to lyrics by Don Black (”The Heart is Slow to Learn”).
Then it cropped up again in The Beautiful Game, lyrics by Ben Elton, as “Our Kind of Love.” And now Glenn Slater’s lyrics return the song to the dramatic context is was written for, when the Phantom sequel was a twinkle in the composer’s eye.
All great composers re-write their main material. Prokofiev’s opera The Fiery Angel comes back as his brilliant Third Symphony. Beethoven and Rossini never wasted and wanted not.
So Lloyd Webber is merely following some familiar precedents. Making a joke of this, someone spots Oscar Hammerstein in the popular throng at the fairground.
But he’s also been liberated, I think, by this new fairground setting on Coney Island, with hurdy-gurdies and lovely girlies, a fantatstically complex and interesting quartet deep into the second act, and the pounding rock of “Beauty Underneath” that sounds like a Bonnie Tyler song, very much in Whistle Down the Wind mode.
I’m a bit worried by the crude melodrama of the denouement, and disappointed to learn that Bob Crowley’s design is based on projections rather than mechanical structures, but one can only judge that sort of thing in performance.
But the revelation of the Phantom’s tryst with Christine on her wedding eve in the opera house, their one night of guilty passion, is beautifully unravelled in “Beneath a Moonless Sky.”
I agree with those who don’t think much of the title, and the absence of star names could still hurt the show. Mind you, what show, I asked myself when I stood outside the Adelphi last night before the opening of Private Lives next door at the Vaudeville.
There’s no front of house, no buzz, no-one buying tickets, no sign of anything.
It wasn’t like that first time round. The Phantom of the Opera opened at Her Majesty’s on Thursday 9 October 1986, with a thrilling star performance by Michael Crawford in the title role; it was a night of sex, glamour, wonderful costumes and soaring melody, something missing from the West End for quite some time back then.
Even before Crawford was announced — on a lunchtime radio news programme, I seem to recall - the title song had been recorded as a video by Ken Russell and launched on Terry Wogan’s television chat show. The recording was made by Sarah Brightman and Steve Harley, of Cockney Rebel fame, and it climbed to Number Seven in the charts.
Simultaneously, Cliff Richard joined Sarah in releasing “All I Ask of You” as a single. Then Crawford — who really was a very big star — was announced, and the box office went crazy, and stayed that way for twenty years.
The late, much lamented designer Maria Bjornson, who has been touchingly evoked by Lloyd Webber in the pre-publicity, always maintained that the power of Phantom as a love story was down to the fact that Lloyd Webber never possessed Sarah completely.
He loved her, of course, and they were married probably in order for him to write the show. There was also the ghost of his dead father in there somewhere, the angel of music, perhaps.
It remains to be seen if the composer has reactivated that inspiration in quite the same way, or perhaps even gone beyond it. We shan’t know for sure till the middle of next week.
http://blogs.whatsonstage.com/2010/03/04/phantom-phone-calls/
Everyone I know seeems to have seen Love Never Dies already, and comment on the score is flowing freely through the newspapers and on the blogosphere.
Critics have listened to the score and the Press previews are starting on Saturday.
So once again the whole idea of a First Night next Tuesday is a wash-out. And the peculiar thrill of being able to say “I was there” when the show opened is blown away on the wind.
I know from reliable colleagues like Baz Bamigboye and Edward Seckerson that the new score is a peach, Well, I know it for myself and, without preempting later critical comment, I am intensely looking forward to hearing “live” the eerie dissonance of the song the Phantom can’t express until, ten years after they parted, he hears Christine sing again.
The title song of “Love Never Dies” is in its third incarnation. I first heard it at Lloyd Webber’s fiftieth birthday party, when Kiri Te Kanawa sang it to lyrics by Don Black (”The Heart is Slow to Learn”).
Then it cropped up again in The Beautiful Game, lyrics by Ben Elton, as “Our Kind of Love.” And now Glenn Slater’s lyrics return the song to the dramatic context is was written for, when the Phantom sequel was a twinkle in the composer’s eye.
All great composers re-write their main material. Prokofiev’s opera The Fiery Angel comes back as his brilliant Third Symphony. Beethoven and Rossini never wasted and wanted not.
So Lloyd Webber is merely following some familiar precedents. Making a joke of this, someone spots Oscar Hammerstein in the popular throng at the fairground.
But he’s also been liberated, I think, by this new fairground setting on Coney Island, with hurdy-gurdies and lovely girlies, a fantatstically complex and interesting quartet deep into the second act, and the pounding rock of “Beauty Underneath” that sounds like a Bonnie Tyler song, very much in Whistle Down the Wind mode.
I’m a bit worried by the crude melodrama of the denouement, and disappointed to learn that Bob Crowley’s design is based on projections rather than mechanical structures, but one can only judge that sort of thing in performance.
But the revelation of the Phantom’s tryst with Christine on her wedding eve in the opera house, their one night of guilty passion, is beautifully unravelled in “Beneath a Moonless Sky.”
I agree with those who don’t think much of the title, and the absence of star names could still hurt the show. Mind you, what show, I asked myself when I stood outside the Adelphi last night before the opening of Private Lives next door at the Vaudeville.
There’s no front of house, no buzz, no-one buying tickets, no sign of anything.
It wasn’t like that first time round. The Phantom of the Opera opened at Her Majesty’s on Thursday 9 October 1986, with a thrilling star performance by Michael Crawford in the title role; it was a night of sex, glamour, wonderful costumes and soaring melody, something missing from the West End for quite some time back then.
Even before Crawford was announced — on a lunchtime radio news programme, I seem to recall - the title song had been recorded as a video by Ken Russell and launched on Terry Wogan’s television chat show. The recording was made by Sarah Brightman and Steve Harley, of Cockney Rebel fame, and it climbed to Number Seven in the charts.
Simultaneously, Cliff Richard joined Sarah in releasing “All I Ask of You” as a single. Then Crawford — who really was a very big star — was announced, and the box office went crazy, and stayed that way for twenty years.
The late, much lamented designer Maria Bjornson, who has been touchingly evoked by Lloyd Webber in the pre-publicity, always maintained that the power of Phantom as a love story was down to the fact that Lloyd Webber never possessed Sarah completely.
He loved her, of course, and they were married probably in order for him to write the show. There was also the ghost of his dead father in there somewhere, the angel of music, perhaps.
It remains to be seen if the composer has reactivated that inspiration in quite the same way, or perhaps even gone beyond it. We shan’t know for sure till the middle of next week.
http://blogs.whatsonstage.com/2010/03/04/phantom-phone-calls/
ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER: I STILL TAKE RISKS
Friday March 5,2010
By Simon Edge
THE feverish atmosphere is almost unprecedented but not quite in the way the marketing people wanted. Next Tuesday sees the official opening of Love Never Dies, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s massively hyped sequel to his stage musical The Phantom Of The Opera, and it’s clear the show has a maze of dripping catacombs to wade through if it’s to win critical or commercial success.
The first preview was cancelled due to “technical demands” and since then advance audiences have clogged internet bulletin boards with negative feedback. Much of this comes not from Lord Lloyd-Webber’s usual detractors but from diehard Phantom fans who think a sequel is sacrilege. One reviewer reports getting daily e-mails as part of a guerrilla campaign to influence the notices, saying: “This has never happened to me in 26 years as a professional critic.”
There’s no doubt that the 61-year-old Lord Lloyd-Webber of Sydmonton is taking a big risk with the new show. But for someone who has just stared death in the face during a successful battle with prostate cancer the gamble is perhaps not such a big deal.
Lloyd Webber himself stresses that writing Love Never Dies predates his brush with death. “I had completed the score before I learned that I had prostate cancer,” he tells me. “I had long wanted to do a sequel to Phantom and not to any other of my shows because I felt that the way the original show ends is an unfinished story waiting to be told.”
But it’s not hard to relate the steely defiance that characterises his current project with the gritty determination to triumph over a form of cancer that kills one man every 13 minutes.
The original Phantom, which opened in London in 1986, has notched up more than 9,500 performances in the West End alone. It’s also Broadway’s longest-ever running show, has been seen by 100 million people worldwide in 149 cities across 25 countries and can claim to be the most successful single piece of entertainment of all time, surpassing ET, Titanic and Star Wars.
While film studios are always quick to trot out sequels to successful movies the stage musical equivalent is much rarer. Why bother when you can just roll out more productions across the globe? And whereas fans of Star Wars or Batman can be guaranteed to queue up for the next instalments in the franchise, musical theatre obsessives prefer to see the same show over and over – and they don’t want to see it dragged down by a potentially sub-standard follow-up.
SDLqWe feel strongly that Love Never Dies is a completely misguided venture that is a detriment to the story of the original Phantom Of The Opera,” say the organisers of a Facebook group cheekily called Love Should Die.
“It is not in the interest of or desired by the story’s many fans. Virtually everything about the show strikes us as illogical, irrational, offensive and frankly stupid. While there is little that can be done at this stage to stop the show from reaching the stage at all we aim to provide a platform for the many people out there who maintain that this should never have been given the green light.”
But it’s not surprising that such criticism does not deter a man who has just fought off a life-threatening illness.
The first sign that something was wrong came during the winter of 2008. The father-of-five was rehearsing and recording the score of Love Never Dies at his home in Majorca when he noticed he had a weak bladder. “Throughout the night I was desperate to go to the bathroom,” he recalls. “It was little but far too often. I had an irritating burning sensation, which I put down to a mild infection.”
Back in London he went to his GP for tests but no infection showed up. Only after reading an article about the symptoms of prostate cancer did he go for a specialist consultation and was referred to the private London Clinic for a biopsy. There followed a surreal episode where he was advised to leave by a back door to avoid a gaggle of paparazzi. He assumed they were waiting for him and it was only when he opened the papers the next morning that he realised they really wanted Amy Winehouse, who was suspected of having a boob job at the same clinic.
W hen he did finally get his cancer diagnosis he was urged by his PR team to hush it up and say he was simply run down. But he dismissed this secretive instinct. “Why? I thought. I have prostate cancer. Women talk about breast cancer. Look at Kylie.
“I suspect men are deeply embarrassed about any problem that suggests it affects their libido or masculinity. My specialist is certain that lives are lost because the symptoms can be the kind of stuff that the average macho male is embarrassed by. This is barmy. If the cancer is only in the prostate it is not going to kill you. But once it is big enough to take a trip out of your prostate, walk around your bones, your liver, your spinal cord, other complications begin.”
He decided to have surgery rather than laser treatment but a string of complications, including scarring from a botched appendicitis procedure when he was three years old, meant a relatively simple operation became a painful saga.
But he was eventually given the all-clear. “It is the hugest relief,” he says. “We have arrived at the end of a long journey at the best possible outcome.”
Although he was urged to take things easy he has plunged back into his work, including his latest series for the small screen. “I think the BBC casting series have proved that using television to find stars can work very well for the theatre,” he tells me, referring to the TV talent contests to cast productions of The Sound Of Music, Joseph and Oliver! in which he has emerged as a cuddlier, less scathing version of Simon Cowell.
“Five of our finalists for I’d Do Anything [the Oliver! contest] went on to star in West End productions and I hope we can repeat that success with the new series Over The Rainbow, which will search for a Dorothy to star in a new production of The Wizard Of Oz,” he says.
But his main energies have been channelled into Love Never Dies.
“He’s on a hiding to nothing because how do you improve on the most successful work in entertainment history?” says Mark Shenton, theatre critic of the Sunday Express and the West End’s most influential blogger. “I suspect he’s doing it because Phantom is such a personal story for him. There are obvious autobiographical echoes in a composer becoming obsessed with a soprano, particularly given that Christine in the original show was first played by Sarah Brightman, who was his wife at the time.”
The composer could easily rest on his extraordinary global successes, including Evita, Cats and Starlight Express as well as Phantom, rather than risk the jibes that will accompany failure.
“People judge him by a unique standard,” says Shenton. “The Beautiful Game was considered a flop but it ran for a year. So was Sunset Boulevard, which ran for two years, and Whistle Down The Wind, which ran for three. He has been so successful that people expect him to have huge hits but the truth is the last time he had a blockbuster that went global was Phantom.”
However the sequel, or “continuation” as Lloyd Webber calls it, shapes up on opening night, his willingness to expose himself to failure continues to impress admirers and critics alike. “It takes a lot to write a musical and I think he wants to prove he can still do it,” says one insider, who describes the score of the new show as “amazingly good”, while holding reservations about some of the casting.
“Andrew is remarkable for remaining the same throughout the months of anxiety and pain that his illness has caused him and it’s entirely in character that his determination to triumph over cancer is mirrored in his willingness to take on those who say he can’t do a successful sequel to Phantom,” he says.
Love Never Dies is at the Adelphi Theatre, London. For tickets call 0844 412 4651 or visit www.loveneverdies.com
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/161742/Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-I-still-take-risks-
By Simon Edge
THE feverish atmosphere is almost unprecedented but not quite in the way the marketing people wanted. Next Tuesday sees the official opening of Love Never Dies, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s massively hyped sequel to his stage musical The Phantom Of The Opera, and it’s clear the show has a maze of dripping catacombs to wade through if it’s to win critical or commercial success.
The first preview was cancelled due to “technical demands” and since then advance audiences have clogged internet bulletin boards with negative feedback. Much of this comes not from Lord Lloyd-Webber’s usual detractors but from diehard Phantom fans who think a sequel is sacrilege. One reviewer reports getting daily e-mails as part of a guerrilla campaign to influence the notices, saying: “This has never happened to me in 26 years as a professional critic.”
There’s no doubt that the 61-year-old Lord Lloyd-Webber of Sydmonton is taking a big risk with the new show. But for someone who has just stared death in the face during a successful battle with prostate cancer the gamble is perhaps not such a big deal.
Lloyd Webber himself stresses that writing Love Never Dies predates his brush with death. “I had completed the score before I learned that I had prostate cancer,” he tells me. “I had long wanted to do a sequel to Phantom and not to any other of my shows because I felt that the way the original show ends is an unfinished story waiting to be told.”
But it’s not hard to relate the steely defiance that characterises his current project with the gritty determination to triumph over a form of cancer that kills one man every 13 minutes.
The original Phantom, which opened in London in 1986, has notched up more than 9,500 performances in the West End alone. It’s also Broadway’s longest-ever running show, has been seen by 100 million people worldwide in 149 cities across 25 countries and can claim to be the most successful single piece of entertainment of all time, surpassing ET, Titanic and Star Wars.
While film studios are always quick to trot out sequels to successful movies the stage musical equivalent is much rarer. Why bother when you can just roll out more productions across the globe? And whereas fans of Star Wars or Batman can be guaranteed to queue up for the next instalments in the franchise, musical theatre obsessives prefer to see the same show over and over – and they don’t want to see it dragged down by a potentially sub-standard follow-up.
SDLqWe feel strongly that Love Never Dies is a completely misguided venture that is a detriment to the story of the original Phantom Of The Opera,” say the organisers of a Facebook group cheekily called Love Should Die.
“It is not in the interest of or desired by the story’s many fans. Virtually everything about the show strikes us as illogical, irrational, offensive and frankly stupid. While there is little that can be done at this stage to stop the show from reaching the stage at all we aim to provide a platform for the many people out there who maintain that this should never have been given the green light.”
But it’s not surprising that such criticism does not deter a man who has just fought off a life-threatening illness.
The first sign that something was wrong came during the winter of 2008. The father-of-five was rehearsing and recording the score of Love Never Dies at his home in Majorca when he noticed he had a weak bladder. “Throughout the night I was desperate to go to the bathroom,” he recalls. “It was little but far too often. I had an irritating burning sensation, which I put down to a mild infection.”
Back in London he went to his GP for tests but no infection showed up. Only after reading an article about the symptoms of prostate cancer did he go for a specialist consultation and was referred to the private London Clinic for a biopsy. There followed a surreal episode where he was advised to leave by a back door to avoid a gaggle of paparazzi. He assumed they were waiting for him and it was only when he opened the papers the next morning that he realised they really wanted Amy Winehouse, who was suspected of having a boob job at the same clinic.
W hen he did finally get his cancer diagnosis he was urged by his PR team to hush it up and say he was simply run down. But he dismissed this secretive instinct. “Why? I thought. I have prostate cancer. Women talk about breast cancer. Look at Kylie.
“I suspect men are deeply embarrassed about any problem that suggests it affects their libido or masculinity. My specialist is certain that lives are lost because the symptoms can be the kind of stuff that the average macho male is embarrassed by. This is barmy. If the cancer is only in the prostate it is not going to kill you. But once it is big enough to take a trip out of your prostate, walk around your bones, your liver, your spinal cord, other complications begin.”
He decided to have surgery rather than laser treatment but a string of complications, including scarring from a botched appendicitis procedure when he was three years old, meant a relatively simple operation became a painful saga.
But he was eventually given the all-clear. “It is the hugest relief,” he says. “We have arrived at the end of a long journey at the best possible outcome.”
Although he was urged to take things easy he has plunged back into his work, including his latest series for the small screen. “I think the BBC casting series have proved that using television to find stars can work very well for the theatre,” he tells me, referring to the TV talent contests to cast productions of The Sound Of Music, Joseph and Oliver! in which he has emerged as a cuddlier, less scathing version of Simon Cowell.
“Five of our finalists for I’d Do Anything [the Oliver! contest] went on to star in West End productions and I hope we can repeat that success with the new series Over The Rainbow, which will search for a Dorothy to star in a new production of The Wizard Of Oz,” he says.
But his main energies have been channelled into Love Never Dies.
“He’s on a hiding to nothing because how do you improve on the most successful work in entertainment history?” says Mark Shenton, theatre critic of the Sunday Express and the West End’s most influential blogger. “I suspect he’s doing it because Phantom is such a personal story for him. There are obvious autobiographical echoes in a composer becoming obsessed with a soprano, particularly given that Christine in the original show was first played by Sarah Brightman, who was his wife at the time.”
The composer could easily rest on his extraordinary global successes, including Evita, Cats and Starlight Express as well as Phantom, rather than risk the jibes that will accompany failure.
“People judge him by a unique standard,” says Shenton. “The Beautiful Game was considered a flop but it ran for a year. So was Sunset Boulevard, which ran for two years, and Whistle Down The Wind, which ran for three. He has been so successful that people expect him to have huge hits but the truth is the last time he had a blockbuster that went global was Phantom.”
However the sequel, or “continuation” as Lloyd Webber calls it, shapes up on opening night, his willingness to expose himself to failure continues to impress admirers and critics alike. “It takes a lot to write a musical and I think he wants to prove he can still do it,” says one insider, who describes the score of the new show as “amazingly good”, while holding reservations about some of the casting.
“Andrew is remarkable for remaining the same throughout the months of anxiety and pain that his illness has caused him and it’s entirely in character that his determination to triumph over cancer is mirrored in his willingness to take on those who say he can’t do a successful sequel to Phantom,” he says.
Love Never Dies is at the Adelphi Theatre, London. For tickets call 0844 412 4651 or visit www.loveneverdies.com
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/161742/Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-I-still-take-risks-
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Check this out
Most interesting, most interesting indeed
http://www.garygoddard.com/hospitality-design/phantasy-resort-and-casino/
Ryan.
http://www.garygoddard.com/hospitality-design/phantasy-resort-and-casino/
Ryan.
New Phantom's shaping up nicely
By Baz Bamigboye
Last updated at 1:22 AM on 26th February 2010
Andrew Lloyd Webber's score for Love Never Dies soars and I can't get it out of my head - but as 'the good lord' himself observed after the first preview on Monday, 'there's still work to be done'.
He added: 'We're halfway there.'
When I returned to the show on Wednesday some changes had been put in, but director Jack O'Brien, lyricist Glenn Slater, designer Bob Crowley, choreographer Jerry Mitchell and others are concentrating on getting the prologue and the ending right.
They want to trim the prologue to get to a number called The Coney Island Waltz faster.
The ending, which I'm not giving away here, is clumsy and the best minds in theatreland are trying to fathom how to re-stage it.
There are also other moments in Act 1 that are being re-examined, particularly when audiences first see the Phantom. It's an underwhelming moment. We've got to be knocked out by it!
The first song Ramin Karimloo's Phantom sings is Till I Hear You Sing and it's a plaintive cry to see Christine Daae again.
He 'aches down to the core' because he hasn't heard her sing for ten years.
And while Karimloo has a fabulous baritone that stops the show, he doesn't have the showbusiness artistry that Michael Crawford displayed as the original stage Phantom.
That's being worked on.
Sierra Boggess is a true star with Broadway smarts and when she comes on in the second act to sing the title song, she knocks it out of the park, to use the parlance of one of my theatrical friends. It's a terrific melody, beautifully sung.
I've mentioned this in passing before, but the composer explains in the programme how he wrote Love Never Dies (Slater penned the lyrics years later) a long time ago and used it for a song recorded by Kiri Te Kanawa under the title The Heart Is Slow To Learn.
He later used the chorus of the melody for a number in The Beautiful Game, but it was cut.
It fits in just fine as Love Never Dies. Lloyd Webber has created melodies that will last. The creative team have a lot of work to do in different areas but they are confident they will have it all done by official opening night of March 9.
'It's not as if we have songs and storylines to rewrite. It's a question of staging and tweaking,' was how it was put to me.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1253858/Madonna-signs-Abbie-Cornish-new-film-Edward-VIIIs-abdication.html#ixzz0gcWUXqYQ
Last updated at 1:22 AM on 26th February 2010
Andrew Lloyd Webber's score for Love Never Dies soars and I can't get it out of my head - but as 'the good lord' himself observed after the first preview on Monday, 'there's still work to be done'.
He added: 'We're halfway there.'
When I returned to the show on Wednesday some changes had been put in, but director Jack O'Brien, lyricist Glenn Slater, designer Bob Crowley, choreographer Jerry Mitchell and others are concentrating on getting the prologue and the ending right.
They want to trim the prologue to get to a number called The Coney Island Waltz faster.
The ending, which I'm not giving away here, is clumsy and the best minds in theatreland are trying to fathom how to re-stage it.
There are also other moments in Act 1 that are being re-examined, particularly when audiences first see the Phantom. It's an underwhelming moment. We've got to be knocked out by it!
The first song Ramin Karimloo's Phantom sings is Till I Hear You Sing and it's a plaintive cry to see Christine Daae again.
He 'aches down to the core' because he hasn't heard her sing for ten years.
And while Karimloo has a fabulous baritone that stops the show, he doesn't have the showbusiness artistry that Michael Crawford displayed as the original stage Phantom.
That's being worked on.
Sierra Boggess is a true star with Broadway smarts and when she comes on in the second act to sing the title song, she knocks it out of the park, to use the parlance of one of my theatrical friends. It's a terrific melody, beautifully sung.
I've mentioned this in passing before, but the composer explains in the programme how he wrote Love Never Dies (Slater penned the lyrics years later) a long time ago and used it for a song recorded by Kiri Te Kanawa under the title The Heart Is Slow To Learn.
He later used the chorus of the melody for a number in The Beautiful Game, but it was cut.
It fits in just fine as Love Never Dies. Lloyd Webber has created melodies that will last. The creative team have a lot of work to do in different areas but they are confident they will have it all done by official opening night of March 9.
'It's not as if we have songs and storylines to rewrite. It's a question of staging and tweaking,' was how it was put to me.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1253858/Madonna-signs-Abbie-Cornish-new-film-Edward-VIIIs-abdication.html#ixzz0gcWUXqYQ
'Phantom' lives to 'Love' again
Musical sequel wades into high-risk waters
By DAVID BENEDICT
The longest runner in Broadway history and London's second-longest after world record holder "Les Miserables," "The Phantom of the Opera" has amassed global grosses of more than $2.63 billion. With box office revenues higher than for any film or stage play in history, including "Titanic," "E.T." and "Star Wars," it has been seen in 144 cities in 27 countries by more than 100 million people.
Thus the most daunting problem for Andrew Lloyd Webber's follow-up, "Love Never Dies," is great expectations.
The official line from Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group is that the latest musical is not a sequel but a "continuation" of "The Phantom of the Opera."
And small wonder -- outside of three "Nunsense" follow-ups, musical theater has never pulled off a hit sequel. The shortlived "The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public" and the even shorter "Bring Back Birdie" (four perfs) stand as evidence.
On the plus side, Lloyd Webber's £6 million ($9.25 million) new tuner arrives with a readymade marketing hook via all those potential ticketbuyers who have already bought into the story -- having experienced "the brilliant original," the phrase currently emblazoning London posters for "Phantom."
Helmer Jack O'Brien ("Hairspray," "The Coast of Utopia") has been on board for about 2 1/2 years. He's clear-eyed about the pros and cons of this unique property.
"No one will thank us for doing this," he tells Variety. "I have said that since the beginning. This is not something you do as a lark, without a sense of responsibility. Whatever one thinks of the first show, it has gone into the imaginative repertoire of its audience."
O'Brien points out that according to Lloyd Webber, when "Phantom" opened in 1986, the smart money was on rival tuner "Chess." The latter premiered five months earlier but only managed a run just shy of three years. "'Phantom' just slipped in," says O'Brien. "Then whatever happened, happened."
He believes the original's global success means the new show will be scrutinized "probably unfairly," but O'Brien remains buoyant. The book -- on which he worked alongside a slew of collaborators past and present including Frederick Forsyth, Ben Elton and lyricist Glenn Slater -- is set 10 years after "Phantom" amid the eerie fairgrounds of Coney Island. The aim is not unlike the sequel-meets-prequel approach of "The Godfather Part II," which improved upon the original.
These days, Lloyd Webber is arguably more famous as a showbiz mogul than as a composer (his most recent new tuner, "The Woman in White," was not a financial success). Not only did he produce Jeremy Sams' hit revival of "The Sound of Music," he made himself immensely visible -- and successful -- as "The Lord" on primetime BBC TV, judging talent shows that cast leads in his productions. (Lloyd Webber will revisit that role later this year, casting his forthcoming revamp of "The Wizard of Oz," skedded for 2011.)
For "Love Never Dies," he has eschewed TV casting, instead hiring Ramin Karimloo as the Phantom (he has played the role in the original onstage) with Sierra Boggess ("The Little Mermaid") as Christine.
Lack of TV pre-sell, however, hasn't harmed bookings. Where "The Woman in White," opened in London in 2004 to a $4.6 million advance, "Love Never Dies" currently stands at $12.3 million. That said, the figure wilts in comparison with Cameron Mackintosh's 2009 "Oliver!" revival, which opened to a record-breaking $23 million.
Really Useful Group chief executive Andre Ptaszynski tells Variety the show needs to take $50.9 million to fully recoup. In the 1,500-seat Adelphi Theater, that will take a year. But RUG owns the much larger London Palladium and Theater Royal Drury Lane. Why not choose either of those?
"Essentially, it's a love story and so it needs a more intimate space that will make it more fulfilling for the audience," Ptaszynski says. "And if it works, it's likely to sit longer and more happily in a smaller theater."
One of the key factors determining the hoped-for longevity of "Love Never Dies" is the surrounding economic and cultural climate.
The design and sheer spectacle of both "Les Miz" and "Phantom" helped define their era within a booming economy. Attendances in both London and Gotham have unexpectedly risen during the recession, but the chances of a new, non-jukebox show sticking around are slim. With the exception of the phenomenon that is "Wicked," the survivors these days are either back-catalog tuners like "Mamma Mia!" or Disney's revamps of its movies, "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King." Even those have lately shown less traction -- witness "The Little Mermaid" and "Tarzan."
As with most grand-scale tuners, "Love Never Dies" has had pre-opening problems, beginning with the aborted idea of near-simultaneous openings in London, New York and Shanghai, dreamed up 15 months ago by Ptaszynski and Lloyd Webber.
"After a couple of months, we realized the folly of our ways," Ptaszynski says.
The new rollout for the show allows more room to maneuver.
"We expect to announce a late fall opening on Broadway," Ptaszynski says. "There's lots of working time in the spring if needed."
The show's March 9 London preem was postponed from six months earlier to allow for a comprehensive redesign and reorchestration. Then, a surprisingly brief technical rehearsal period in the theater forced the cancellation of the first preview. At the subsequent first performance, a technical hitch caused everything to grind to a temporary halt.
That, however, is par for the course for new tuners. During the original "Cats" rehearsals Judi Dench was forced to withdraw from the role of Grizabella when she snapped her Achilles tendon -- which is how Elaine Paige got to sing "Memory."
One thing is certain. The show has a buzz. When details of the forthcoming CD appeared online, hundreds of the original's self-styled "Phans" began blogging feverishly, trying to work out the plot from song titles.
Whatever the pressure, as O'Brien tells it, he's not frightened.
"I'm exhilarated. Getting over, around and past the success of the original will be a kind of victory," he says.
What sort of victory remains to be seen.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118015808.html?categoryId=15&cs=1
By DAVID BENEDICT
The longest runner in Broadway history and London's second-longest after world record holder "Les Miserables," "The Phantom of the Opera" has amassed global grosses of more than $2.63 billion. With box office revenues higher than for any film or stage play in history, including "Titanic," "E.T." and "Star Wars," it has been seen in 144 cities in 27 countries by more than 100 million people.
Thus the most daunting problem for Andrew Lloyd Webber's follow-up, "Love Never Dies," is great expectations.
The official line from Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group is that the latest musical is not a sequel but a "continuation" of "The Phantom of the Opera."
And small wonder -- outside of three "Nunsense" follow-ups, musical theater has never pulled off a hit sequel. The shortlived "The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public" and the even shorter "Bring Back Birdie" (four perfs) stand as evidence.
On the plus side, Lloyd Webber's £6 million ($9.25 million) new tuner arrives with a readymade marketing hook via all those potential ticketbuyers who have already bought into the story -- having experienced "the brilliant original," the phrase currently emblazoning London posters for "Phantom."
Helmer Jack O'Brien ("Hairspray," "The Coast of Utopia") has been on board for about 2 1/2 years. He's clear-eyed about the pros and cons of this unique property.
"No one will thank us for doing this," he tells Variety. "I have said that since the beginning. This is not something you do as a lark, without a sense of responsibility. Whatever one thinks of the first show, it has gone into the imaginative repertoire of its audience."
O'Brien points out that according to Lloyd Webber, when "Phantom" opened in 1986, the smart money was on rival tuner "Chess." The latter premiered five months earlier but only managed a run just shy of three years. "'Phantom' just slipped in," says O'Brien. "Then whatever happened, happened."
He believes the original's global success means the new show will be scrutinized "probably unfairly," but O'Brien remains buoyant. The book -- on which he worked alongside a slew of collaborators past and present including Frederick Forsyth, Ben Elton and lyricist Glenn Slater -- is set 10 years after "Phantom" amid the eerie fairgrounds of Coney Island. The aim is not unlike the sequel-meets-prequel approach of "The Godfather Part II," which improved upon the original.
These days, Lloyd Webber is arguably more famous as a showbiz mogul than as a composer (his most recent new tuner, "The Woman in White," was not a financial success). Not only did he produce Jeremy Sams' hit revival of "The Sound of Music," he made himself immensely visible -- and successful -- as "The Lord" on primetime BBC TV, judging talent shows that cast leads in his productions. (Lloyd Webber will revisit that role later this year, casting his forthcoming revamp of "The Wizard of Oz," skedded for 2011.)
For "Love Never Dies," he has eschewed TV casting, instead hiring Ramin Karimloo as the Phantom (he has played the role in the original onstage) with Sierra Boggess ("The Little Mermaid") as Christine.
Lack of TV pre-sell, however, hasn't harmed bookings. Where "The Woman in White," opened in London in 2004 to a $4.6 million advance, "Love Never Dies" currently stands at $12.3 million. That said, the figure wilts in comparison with Cameron Mackintosh's 2009 "Oliver!" revival, which opened to a record-breaking $23 million.
Really Useful Group chief executive Andre Ptaszynski tells Variety the show needs to take $50.9 million to fully recoup. In the 1,500-seat Adelphi Theater, that will take a year. But RUG owns the much larger London Palladium and Theater Royal Drury Lane. Why not choose either of those?
"Essentially, it's a love story and so it needs a more intimate space that will make it more fulfilling for the audience," Ptaszynski says. "And if it works, it's likely to sit longer and more happily in a smaller theater."
One of the key factors determining the hoped-for longevity of "Love Never Dies" is the surrounding economic and cultural climate.
The design and sheer spectacle of both "Les Miz" and "Phantom" helped define their era within a booming economy. Attendances in both London and Gotham have unexpectedly risen during the recession, but the chances of a new, non-jukebox show sticking around are slim. With the exception of the phenomenon that is "Wicked," the survivors these days are either back-catalog tuners like "Mamma Mia!" or Disney's revamps of its movies, "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King." Even those have lately shown less traction -- witness "The Little Mermaid" and "Tarzan."
As with most grand-scale tuners, "Love Never Dies" has had pre-opening problems, beginning with the aborted idea of near-simultaneous openings in London, New York and Shanghai, dreamed up 15 months ago by Ptaszynski and Lloyd Webber.
"After a couple of months, we realized the folly of our ways," Ptaszynski says.
The new rollout for the show allows more room to maneuver.
"We expect to announce a late fall opening on Broadway," Ptaszynski says. "There's lots of working time in the spring if needed."
The show's March 9 London preem was postponed from six months earlier to allow for a comprehensive redesign and reorchestration. Then, a surprisingly brief technical rehearsal period in the theater forced the cancellation of the first preview. At the subsequent first performance, a technical hitch caused everything to grind to a temporary halt.
That, however, is par for the course for new tuners. During the original "Cats" rehearsals Judi Dench was forced to withdraw from the role of Grizabella when she snapped her Achilles tendon -- which is how Elaine Paige got to sing "Memory."
One thing is certain. The show has a buzz. When details of the forthcoming CD appeared online, hundreds of the original's self-styled "Phans" began blogging feverishly, trying to work out the plot from song titles.
Whatever the pressure, as O'Brien tells it, he's not frightened.
"I'm exhilarated. Getting over, around and past the success of the original will be a kind of victory," he says.
What sort of victory remains to be seen.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118015808.html?categoryId=15&cs=1
The man in the mask is back
Elizabeth Renzetti
London — From Saturday's Globe and Mail
This is what the Phantom has brought with him across the Atlantic Ocean: the life-size mannequin of his lost love, Christine Daae; the cunning white mask that covers his disfigurement; his magnificent pipes; and his rage. Oh, yes. The Phantom may have moved to America, but he hasn’t traded his gothic obsession for a golden retriever and a pair of slippers.
Near the beginning of Love Never Dies, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new sequel to Phantom of the Opera, the Phantom, high in his crazy-villain lair above Coney Island, stands in front of his Christine doll and sings a great belter of a song called Till I Hear You Sing Once More. It’s a temple-crumbler, and the audience at a preview at the Adelphi Theatre this week received it with great appreciation.
They could not know that Ramin Karimloo, the young Canadian actor originating the role of the Phantom in this show, once brought equal passion to singing in a Tragically Hip cover band, or that his obsessions extend to hockey, not opera ingenues, or that, unlike the Phantom he has never been driven to murder, but does like driving a motorcycle. He doesn’t hate the world, but does loathe buffets. So no real resemblance to the Phantom, then, except for those pipes. Here is proof of Laurence Olivier’s wise observation: “It’s called acting, dear boy.”’
Next month, when Love Never Dies officially opens in London, the beady eyes of every critic and musical-theatre aficionado will be trained on Karimloo and his co-star, Sierra Boggess. After all, Phantom of the Opera was not merely a musical but – in the producers’ words – “the most successful single piece of entertainment of all time.” In certain quarters, the knives are already drawn; in others, the Kleenex boxes are being stockpiled. It’s a heavy weight to carry for a 31-year-old with no formal vocal training, who is vague about whether he actually graduated from high school, who paid his dues singing on a cruise ship and whose main dream, at one point, was to meet the Hip’s Gord Downie.
“I’m very calm, actually,” says Karimloo. “When I was onstage for the first time in the mask and the makeup, I wasn’t nervous. My stomach wasn’t flipping, I wasn’t worried about opening. I was thinking, ‘I can’t wait for people to see this. I’m ready.’”
The sense of calm is a recent acquisition. Last fall, Lloyd Webber announced the new musical to a packed theatre in London, as the Phantom of the Opera’s bona fides were trotted out like poodles at a dog show: longest-running musical on Broadway, 40 million albums sold, productions in 49 cities, 50 theatre awards. Afterward, Karimloo came out onstage to perform Till I Hear You Sing Once More for the first time in public – and in front of jackal-eyed reporters, no less. “That’s the hardest song I’ve ever had to do,” he says, shaking his head. “I couldn’t sleep the night before.’’
At the same event, Love Never Dies’ veteran director, Jack O’Brien, talked about the difficulty of casting: “Finding the actors to do this was not easy. These are daunting roles, and vocally punishing.”
As it turned out, the producers had to go to America to find Boggess, their Christine, but the Phantom – as is his wont – was hiding right under their noses. Karimloo was playing the title role in the Phantom of the Opera onstage in the London production in 2008 when, one day, he noticed a series of missed calls from his agent on his phone. “Where are you?” the agent shrieked. “Andrew wants to see you at four.” It was 2:30; Karimloo joked that he’d try to make it. He didn’t need to ask who Andrew was.
It was no secret that Lloyd Webber had long been tinkering with a sequel to the Phantom, which opened in London in 1986. That musical, based on the 1911 novel by Gaston Leroux, follows a tormented musical genius who lives in the Paris Opera as he pines after a young singer, murders a couple of annoying people and causes a large light fixture to plummet to the floor. It ends with the Phantom broken and alone.
For the sequel, Lloyd Webber first worked with novelist Frederick Forsyth on a version that had the Phantom moving to Manhattan, but he abandoned that. Later, lyricists Ben Elton and Glenn Slater stepped in. On the afternoon when Karimloo was summoned, he had no idea what he’d be singing for Lloyd Webber. He got to the office, and because he doesn’t read music, had someone sing him the part – one of the new songs, which he then performed for the composer. Lloyd Webber listened intently and said, “That’s how it should be done.’’
It was not a fait accompli. Karimloo sang the new songs at workshops, at Lloyd Webber’s house – all while performing eight shows of the original Phantom every week – and still didn’t know if he had the part. He wondered if they’d cast an unknown for the biggest new role in musical theatre. “Deep down I kept thinking, they’ve at least got to entertain getting a big name for the Phantom.”
Then the call came; he had the part. “That’s when the nerves started,” he says with a laugh. He soon began recording the cast album in London, while performing at night and trying to make time for his wife and two young sons.
Karimloo, whose family moved to Canada from Iran when he was two years old, is trim, handsome, exceedingly polite even by Canadian standards, constantly fretting about “tooting my own horn.” He’s a success story for the American Idol generation: With no vocal training except what he’d learned from rock ’n’ roll, he arrived in London, found an agent and began a steady climb from understudy to leading man.
In looks and temperament he’s less Phantom, more Raoul – the romantic lead in the Phantom and its sequel, a captain-of-the-fencing-team type. (In fact, he was once cast as Raoul in the London production of Phantom, despite the reservations of producer Cameron Mackintosh.)
The new role brings Karimloo full circle: He only became interested in musical theatre after being dragged, with a teenager’s sullenness, to a production of Phantom of the Opera at the old Pantages Theatre in Toronto. It was a revelation. Here was a way to sing like a rock star, and act, and get chicks. Had he never been interested in musical theatre before? He shoots an incredulous look. How many boys love musicals? “Um … no.”
This lifelong devotion to Phantom puts him in a vast company of people, many of whom have seen the musical onstage or on film, and own the CD (and possibly the T-shirt and pillow as well.) A vocal minority of those people have already loudly protested against Love Never Dies, prior to its opening on March 9 (see, for example, the Facebook group Love Should Die). As O’Brien, the director, said at the launch, “No one is going to thank us for doing this. We’re playing around with aspects of people’s memories that are sacrosanct. We’d better know what we’re doing.”
Already, the road has been bumpy. There’s been talk of insufficient preparation time for such a complex production. The initial performances were postponed, and when the first preview finally opened this week, a technical glitch delayed the performance. As well, Lloyd Webber suffered health problems, announcing last fall that he had been treated for prostate cancer.
For almost 20 years, on and off, the composer’s been working on a sequel, ever since Maria Bjornson, Phantom’s designer, had told him she disliked the ending. That ending – with the murderous Phantom sobbing as his true love Christine leaves with drippy Raoul – plagued many of the creative team. “She goes off with the cute guy,” says O’Brien, ““But isn’t the real story between the Phantom and Christine? That’s where the knife goes in. We never find out why he’s so unpleasant.”
Well, if you ask Karimloo, the Phantom’s not unpleasant, just misunderstood – for a clinical reason. The actor likes to come up with a backstory for his characters, and he decided that the explanation for the Phantom’s behaviour – his brilliance and social awkwardness, his obsession, his inability to fit in with the world – stemmed from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism. When he announced this publicly, he received both letters of support from people with Asperger’s, and howls of outrage.
“There was a bit of backlash about that,” Karimloo says. “But I thought, why? I’m not saying he’s a killer because he has Asperger’s. … It humanizes him. That, married with the fact that he’s deformed, was why he was hounded. But the darkness doesn’t come from Asperger’s, his genius and his beauty does.”
In the new production, the Phantom is still a genius, but he’s a little more at home in the world, because he’s chosen to live among the freaks of Coney Island. No lighting fixtures were harmed in the making of the show, but something impressive does drop from the ceiling. And because it’s set at the seaside, and not in a subterranean lair, the Phantom gets his moment in the sun.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/theatre/the-man-in-the-mask-is-back/article1482654/
London — From Saturday's Globe and Mail
This is what the Phantom has brought with him across the Atlantic Ocean: the life-size mannequin of his lost love, Christine Daae; the cunning white mask that covers his disfigurement; his magnificent pipes; and his rage. Oh, yes. The Phantom may have moved to America, but he hasn’t traded his gothic obsession for a golden retriever and a pair of slippers.
Near the beginning of Love Never Dies, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new sequel to Phantom of the Opera, the Phantom, high in his crazy-villain lair above Coney Island, stands in front of his Christine doll and sings a great belter of a song called Till I Hear You Sing Once More. It’s a temple-crumbler, and the audience at a preview at the Adelphi Theatre this week received it with great appreciation.
They could not know that Ramin Karimloo, the young Canadian actor originating the role of the Phantom in this show, once brought equal passion to singing in a Tragically Hip cover band, or that his obsessions extend to hockey, not opera ingenues, or that, unlike the Phantom he has never been driven to murder, but does like driving a motorcycle. He doesn’t hate the world, but does loathe buffets. So no real resemblance to the Phantom, then, except for those pipes. Here is proof of Laurence Olivier’s wise observation: “It’s called acting, dear boy.”’
Next month, when Love Never Dies officially opens in London, the beady eyes of every critic and musical-theatre aficionado will be trained on Karimloo and his co-star, Sierra Boggess. After all, Phantom of the Opera was not merely a musical but – in the producers’ words – “the most successful single piece of entertainment of all time.” In certain quarters, the knives are already drawn; in others, the Kleenex boxes are being stockpiled. It’s a heavy weight to carry for a 31-year-old with no formal vocal training, who is vague about whether he actually graduated from high school, who paid his dues singing on a cruise ship and whose main dream, at one point, was to meet the Hip’s Gord Downie.
“I’m very calm, actually,” says Karimloo. “When I was onstage for the first time in the mask and the makeup, I wasn’t nervous. My stomach wasn’t flipping, I wasn’t worried about opening. I was thinking, ‘I can’t wait for people to see this. I’m ready.’”
The sense of calm is a recent acquisition. Last fall, Lloyd Webber announced the new musical to a packed theatre in London, as the Phantom of the Opera’s bona fides were trotted out like poodles at a dog show: longest-running musical on Broadway, 40 million albums sold, productions in 49 cities, 50 theatre awards. Afterward, Karimloo came out onstage to perform Till I Hear You Sing Once More for the first time in public – and in front of jackal-eyed reporters, no less. “That’s the hardest song I’ve ever had to do,” he says, shaking his head. “I couldn’t sleep the night before.’’
At the same event, Love Never Dies’ veteran director, Jack O’Brien, talked about the difficulty of casting: “Finding the actors to do this was not easy. These are daunting roles, and vocally punishing.”
As it turned out, the producers had to go to America to find Boggess, their Christine, but the Phantom – as is his wont – was hiding right under their noses. Karimloo was playing the title role in the Phantom of the Opera onstage in the London production in 2008 when, one day, he noticed a series of missed calls from his agent on his phone. “Where are you?” the agent shrieked. “Andrew wants to see you at four.” It was 2:30; Karimloo joked that he’d try to make it. He didn’t need to ask who Andrew was.
It was no secret that Lloyd Webber had long been tinkering with a sequel to the Phantom, which opened in London in 1986. That musical, based on the 1911 novel by Gaston Leroux, follows a tormented musical genius who lives in the Paris Opera as he pines after a young singer, murders a couple of annoying people and causes a large light fixture to plummet to the floor. It ends with the Phantom broken and alone.
For the sequel, Lloyd Webber first worked with novelist Frederick Forsyth on a version that had the Phantom moving to Manhattan, but he abandoned that. Later, lyricists Ben Elton and Glenn Slater stepped in. On the afternoon when Karimloo was summoned, he had no idea what he’d be singing for Lloyd Webber. He got to the office, and because he doesn’t read music, had someone sing him the part – one of the new songs, which he then performed for the composer. Lloyd Webber listened intently and said, “That’s how it should be done.’’
It was not a fait accompli. Karimloo sang the new songs at workshops, at Lloyd Webber’s house – all while performing eight shows of the original Phantom every week – and still didn’t know if he had the part. He wondered if they’d cast an unknown for the biggest new role in musical theatre. “Deep down I kept thinking, they’ve at least got to entertain getting a big name for the Phantom.”
Then the call came; he had the part. “That’s when the nerves started,” he says with a laugh. He soon began recording the cast album in London, while performing at night and trying to make time for his wife and two young sons.
Karimloo, whose family moved to Canada from Iran when he was two years old, is trim, handsome, exceedingly polite even by Canadian standards, constantly fretting about “tooting my own horn.” He’s a success story for the American Idol generation: With no vocal training except what he’d learned from rock ’n’ roll, he arrived in London, found an agent and began a steady climb from understudy to leading man.
In looks and temperament he’s less Phantom, more Raoul – the romantic lead in the Phantom and its sequel, a captain-of-the-fencing-team type. (In fact, he was once cast as Raoul in the London production of Phantom, despite the reservations of producer Cameron Mackintosh.)
The new role brings Karimloo full circle: He only became interested in musical theatre after being dragged, with a teenager’s sullenness, to a production of Phantom of the Opera at the old Pantages Theatre in Toronto. It was a revelation. Here was a way to sing like a rock star, and act, and get chicks. Had he never been interested in musical theatre before? He shoots an incredulous look. How many boys love musicals? “Um … no.”
This lifelong devotion to Phantom puts him in a vast company of people, many of whom have seen the musical onstage or on film, and own the CD (and possibly the T-shirt and pillow as well.) A vocal minority of those people have already loudly protested against Love Never Dies, prior to its opening on March 9 (see, for example, the Facebook group Love Should Die). As O’Brien, the director, said at the launch, “No one is going to thank us for doing this. We’re playing around with aspects of people’s memories that are sacrosanct. We’d better know what we’re doing.”
Already, the road has been bumpy. There’s been talk of insufficient preparation time for such a complex production. The initial performances were postponed, and when the first preview finally opened this week, a technical glitch delayed the performance. As well, Lloyd Webber suffered health problems, announcing last fall that he had been treated for prostate cancer.
For almost 20 years, on and off, the composer’s been working on a sequel, ever since Maria Bjornson, Phantom’s designer, had told him she disliked the ending. That ending – with the murderous Phantom sobbing as his true love Christine leaves with drippy Raoul – plagued many of the creative team. “She goes off with the cute guy,” says O’Brien, ““But isn’t the real story between the Phantom and Christine? That’s where the knife goes in. We never find out why he’s so unpleasant.”
Well, if you ask Karimloo, the Phantom’s not unpleasant, just misunderstood – for a clinical reason. The actor likes to come up with a backstory for his characters, and he decided that the explanation for the Phantom’s behaviour – his brilliance and social awkwardness, his obsession, his inability to fit in with the world – stemmed from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism. When he announced this publicly, he received both letters of support from people with Asperger’s, and howls of outrage.
“There was a bit of backlash about that,” Karimloo says. “But I thought, why? I’m not saying he’s a killer because he has Asperger’s. … It humanizes him. That, married with the fact that he’s deformed, was why he was hounded. But the darkness doesn’t come from Asperger’s, his genius and his beauty does.”
In the new production, the Phantom is still a genius, but he’s a little more at home in the world, because he’s chosen to live among the freaks of Coney Island. No lighting fixtures were harmed in the making of the show, but something impressive does drop from the ceiling. And because it’s set at the seaside, and not in a subterranean lair, the Phantom gets his moment in the sun.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/theatre/the-man-in-the-mask-is-back/article1482654/
The man behind the mask: Andrew Lloyd Webber on his new musical Love Never Dies
The Phantom of the Opera is back in the musical Love Never Dies. Andrew Lloyd Webber tells Edward Seckerson how he came up with the story, composed the music and takes criticism
Friday, 26 February 2010
The Lord works in mysterious ways. For years now Andrew Lloyd Webber has nursed the idea of a sequel to his most successful show The Phantom of the Opera, for years Phantom fans have pondered what might have become of him after that “final exit”.
Nightly he vanishes from his subterranean lair deep in the bowels of the Paris Opera House (a.k.a. Her Majesty’s Theatre) leaving only his iconic half-mask as a symbolic reminder of his continuing omnipotence on stages throughout the world: 149 cities across 86 countries. Follow that. Lloyd Webber has.
It’s 10 years on from the fabled “disappearance” and five minutes walk from Her Majesty’s to the Adelphi Theatre where Phantom 2 Love Never Dies is in the final stages of preparation. The man himself – Lloyd Webber, that is – escorts me into the gutted auditorium where an army of technicians and banks of computer screens are rather more suggestive of space exploration than musical theatre. The orchestra will be in situ for the first time and in a couple of hours the show’s big opener will see Coney Island, New York, rise from the ashes of one of its countless fires and reanimate to the strains of a sumptuous bitter-sweet waltz in the grand tradition of Lloyd Webber’s great idol Richard Rodgers’ Carousel.
The Coney Island setting came out of years of think-tanking involving personalities as diverse as Frederick “The Jackal” Forsyth, Ben Elton, the show’s lyricist Glenn Slater and director Jack O’Brien of whom Lloyd Webber says “Anyone directing Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia, Puccini’s Trittico, and Hairspray in one year is someone you have to meet.” Actually it was Ben Elton’s idea to carry all of the original characters forward to the sequel. Their identity was already well established globally, he said, and introducing major new characters into the mix would only muddy the waters. He was right.
So who exactly wrote the book? “Well, with a largely through-sung show it’s harder to say because everybody, the whole creative team, are chipping in with ideas. But obviously once Glenn Slater, our lyricist, came on board and the words themselves started flowing then everything began falling into place and the Coney Island setting became more and more dramatically appealing.”
Coney Island in 1907 was pretty much the eighth wonder of the world. It was the mother of amusement parks, the only good reason, said Freud, for making the long trip across the Atlantic. It was somewhere the Phantom, still pining for his one true love Christine Daaé, could fit right in – a decadent playground of freak shows, escapologists, illusionists, and great showmen. It also happened to be the age of Vaudeville. As settings for musicals go this one was a no-brainer. But establishing Coney Island in the minds and imaginations of audiences for whom it was probably nothing more than the name of some faded fairground was the challenge that eventually gave rise to the show’s dramatic opening.
And there’s a rather nice link here between Phantom’s original designer, the late, lamented, Maria Bjornson – whose famous gold proscenium sculptures brought the Paris Opera to Her Majesty’s Theatre – and Bob Crowley who spirits Coney Island’s world-beating rollercoaster from the mists of time and brings the seedy boardwalk to life before our very eyes. Lloyd Webber recalls that when Coney Island was first mentioned it was Bjornson who excitedly hit upon the idea that the Phantom could now reside in one of Coney’s skyscraping towers. From subterranean to high-rise living – a nice twist. From there he could truly be master of all he surveyed. And so at the start of Love Never Dies he has sent for his songbird Christine who travels to New York with her rather dull husband Raoul (remember him?) and son Gustave not really knowing but surely suspecting who might be behind an invitation for her to perform at Coney Island’s newest attraction Phantasma.
Lloyd Webber’s long-held obsession with this project is matched only by the Phantom’s for Christine (remember it was the second Mrs. Lloyd Webber, Sarah Brightman, who created the role) and as we retire to a quiet room over Rules Restaurant he makes no apologies for being the controlling force behind it. It’s the principal reason why his shows are “through-sung”. He’s not happy if the music isn’t driving the evening.
“If you just want ten songs to fit somebody else’s script then I’m not really the composer for that.” To that end his melodies are the dramatic and emotional fabric of his work and in Love Never Dies – undoubtedly one of his best scores – they are intricately woven.
“Once I had the plot it was fairly obvious to me that the first major melodic strand would have to be the Phantom’s song of yearning for Christine. Another decision I made quite early on was that the title song – which was something I originally wrote with this piece in mind and which was first sung by Kiri Te Kanawa - was going to be Christine’s big performance number and should be kept pretty much exclusively for that moment. Then there was the question of how I should handle the moment when Christine and the Phantom first meet again – and there I took the risky strategy of giving the stage to just them for the best part of 15 minutes. The themes that appear there – including the song “Once Upon Another Time” – would be carried forward towards the eventual dénouement.”
That song, that melody, typifies Lloyd Webber’s musical personality. If it was sung in German (as no doubt it will be one day) it could easily be mistaken for Franz Lehar. In fact I’d go so far as to characterise Lloyd Webber’s work a throwback to a bygone melodic style – more gracious, more opulent. His lyric ballads are surely unsurpassed since the heyday of Ivor Novello, Frederick Loewe and Richard Rodgers. The middle-eight or “release” of “Look with your heart”, another song from the show, is pure Rodgers; it sings and plays like an affectionate homage.
But it’s what I call the emotional memory of these melodies that give them such dramatic potency. The Phantom’s big number in Love Never Dies, “Till I hear you Sing”, is one of the best ballads Lloyd Webber has ever written – an absolute corker – but it stays with you because something about the ache within it won’t let go. When Christine agrees to sing for her mentor one last time she does so to the same tune and the frisson of recognition it engenders makes for a real goosebumps moment. That’s what great melodists do – hard to define but easy to recognise. It’s where the next note seems somehow inevitable the second after you’ve heard it. Rodgers once said “a great melody implies its own harmony” and Lloyd Webber certainly holds true to that maxim.
So where on earth here do these melodies come from? Interestingly he gives me a very similar answer to that which Leonard Bernstein gave me many years ago – that he really has no idea, that the tunes and their attendant harmonies have a habit of creeping up on him while he’s “musing” at the piano. He knows instinctively when he’s hit upon something – it might be the beginnings of a melody, a phrase or two or something more – and even if there is no immediate use for it he’ll write it down and keep it until the right moment calls it to mind. Sometimes the ideas come quickly and easily: “No Matter What” (from Whistle Down the Wind) was one of those – the cash registers were heard ringing before even the last note was down. At other times songs are very much “composed” in response to a specific motivation or brief. With Lloyd Webber’s Eurovision entry “It’s My Time” a catchy hook was not just desirable but required – and anybody that thinks that’s just a bog-standard tune should think again.
I am now doubly curious about the evolution of “ ‘Till I Hear You Sing”: “This took several drafts and it was the tiniest adjustments that made the difference”, says Lloyd Webber. “There are ways it could have gone which would have made it acceptable but ordinary but the use of the flattened 7th made it more intriguing. Other little things like dropping from the key of D to C major affect the listener in ways they can feel but might not be able to identify or explain. I instinctively know when something is right and when it isn’t.”
Actually Lloyd Webber’s melodies readily lend themselves to development but the man himself insists that he is not a symphonic composer but a dramatic one:
“The one thing I have always felt about musical theatre is that it is to an extraordinary degree about construction. Where I have come unstuck sometimes has mostly been to do with the stories not being quite right or not connecting with a contemporary audience. The Woman in White was a perfect example because the central premise, so shocking in Victorian times, didn’t turn a hair with audiences today. I firmly believe that even the greatest theatre songs ever written – like “Some Enchanted Evening” from South Pacific – wouldn’t be known today if they had been in the wrong place of the wrong theatrical vehicle. I once did an album years ago with Sarah Brightman called “The Songs That Got Away” and heard as a collection you’re thinking ‘this is one of the best musicals I’ve ever heard’ but for various reasons each of these songs was buried on account of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. So structure and context are everything – and if you look at a work like Britten’s Peter Grimes there isn’t a wasted or misplaced moment anywhere. As music theatre it’s perfect. Like act two of La Boheme. Anyone considering a career in musical theatre should study that.”
One of the key dramatic moments in Love Never Dies comes when the Phantom starts to recognise an innate kinship with the boy Gustave (echoes of Miles in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw). The tune the boy plays and sings at this point in the show is called “Beautiful” and its eerie Svengali-like chant – truly, subversively, “music of the night” - evolves into one of the principal leitmotifs of the score – quietly sensuous but potentially grand and visionary, too. I am reminded of a very accomplished orchestral piece Aurora by Andrew’s father William Lloyd Webber whose music brother Julian has tirelessly championed over the years.
“It’s interesting you mention that piece because I think it represented a sensuous side to my father’s personality that he was rarely able to show and that I am beginning to realise now was a big influence on me – particularly with this show. It’s made me think about why he was unable to show that side of himself and why I am?.”
There are still those among Lloyd Webber’s detractors who resolutely refuse to acknowledge his talent and doggedly insist that his huge international success is the product of clever global marketing and handfuls of formulaic hit songs liberally reprised. How does he feel about that?
“I always think of something Richard Rodgers said to me when I got to know him slightly towards the end of his life. He told me how depressed he’d got by the reviews for The King and I whose score was compared unfavourably with his previous shows. But even he – perhaps the most gifted popular melodist of them all – realised that it’s not always possible for audiences or for that matter critics to take in what they are hearing on a first or even second hearing. Musical theatre history is littered with bad reviews for now classic pieces. But there’s something else and that’s this: my job is to communicate with my audience and frankly should they be expected to recognise that the ordering of the poems in Cats, for instance, is very precisely structured to create a seamless narrative or that the opening of the show is a mock-fugue? It’s like what you say about the melodies: the effect of those repetitions, whether sung or in underscoring, has an emotional not an intellectual purpose.” The subliminal references to Phantom 1 in Love Never Dies will hopefully make aficionados smile.
After opening Love Never Dies Lloyd Webber has one more pressing date with reality TV when the nation-wide search for the little girl in the gingham frock –Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz – gathers momentum. Lloyd Webber believes that the classic movie has never successfully transferred to the stage because Arlen and Harburg’s songs were too thinly spread. The respective estates have given him special dispensation to create some additional numbers and if that means batting off a succession of Graham Norton “friends of Dorothy” jokes, then it’ll be well worth it. He’s hugely encouraged that these shows appear to have ignited a renewed enthusiasm for musical theatre among the teenage generation. The Wicked audience could now be ready for the prequel.
But back to the year’s biggest opening night. “I’m genuinely excited”, he says, “to see what people make of Love Never Dies because in so many ways it goes much further than the old Phantom did. Without giving anything away about the ending, it’s like I closed a door when I put the last notes down. I don’t think I’ll be able to go any further down this particular musical path – well, not for a while anyway.”
And long, long after that, will people still be humming “‘Till I Hear You Sing”? Of course, they will.
'Love Never Dies' opens at the Adelphi Theatre, London WC2, on 9 March (adelphitheatre.co.uk)
The best of Lloyd Webber: four timeless shows
The Phantom of the Opera
The composer's then wife Sarah Brightman was his muse for this piece a paean of love for her. She played the heroine Christine, a role which struck such a chord with some obsessive fans that they changed their name to Christine. The memorable 'coup de théâtre' of a chandelier seeming to crash into the audience so alarmed the security guard of one visiting royal that he bundled his charge to the floor.
Sunset Boulevard
His most underrated musical. Both dramatically and musically this merited a much longer run and more critical acclaim than it had. But it did give a plum role to actresses of a certain age, from Glenn Close to Petula Clark, with Faye Dunaway being famously rejected by Lloyd Webber.
Cats
Deciding to write a musical around TS Eliot's cat poems was an inspired decision. Trevor Nunn was inspired, too, in his lyrics for the showstopper "Memory", a genuinely moving number, with a little help from Eliot of course. Seats in the auditorium of the New London Theatre that moved added more thrill. It broke all records and only closed because it had reached audience saturation-point.
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Lloyd Webber and his first lyricist Tim Rice at their joyous best. Their love of pure rock'n'roll is evident in this early collaboration, which contains a lot more humour than later works. Revivals reveal it as evergreen.
David Lister
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/the-man-behind-the-mask-andrew-lloyd-webber-on-his-new-musical-love-never-dies-1910817.html
Friday, 26 February 2010
The Lord works in mysterious ways. For years now Andrew Lloyd Webber has nursed the idea of a sequel to his most successful show The Phantom of the Opera, for years Phantom fans have pondered what might have become of him after that “final exit”.
Nightly he vanishes from his subterranean lair deep in the bowels of the Paris Opera House (a.k.a. Her Majesty’s Theatre) leaving only his iconic half-mask as a symbolic reminder of his continuing omnipotence on stages throughout the world: 149 cities across 86 countries. Follow that. Lloyd Webber has.
It’s 10 years on from the fabled “disappearance” and five minutes walk from Her Majesty’s to the Adelphi Theatre where Phantom 2 Love Never Dies is in the final stages of preparation. The man himself – Lloyd Webber, that is – escorts me into the gutted auditorium where an army of technicians and banks of computer screens are rather more suggestive of space exploration than musical theatre. The orchestra will be in situ for the first time and in a couple of hours the show’s big opener will see Coney Island, New York, rise from the ashes of one of its countless fires and reanimate to the strains of a sumptuous bitter-sweet waltz in the grand tradition of Lloyd Webber’s great idol Richard Rodgers’ Carousel.
The Coney Island setting came out of years of think-tanking involving personalities as diverse as Frederick “The Jackal” Forsyth, Ben Elton, the show’s lyricist Glenn Slater and director Jack O’Brien of whom Lloyd Webber says “Anyone directing Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia, Puccini’s Trittico, and Hairspray in one year is someone you have to meet.” Actually it was Ben Elton’s idea to carry all of the original characters forward to the sequel. Their identity was already well established globally, he said, and introducing major new characters into the mix would only muddy the waters. He was right.
So who exactly wrote the book? “Well, with a largely through-sung show it’s harder to say because everybody, the whole creative team, are chipping in with ideas. But obviously once Glenn Slater, our lyricist, came on board and the words themselves started flowing then everything began falling into place and the Coney Island setting became more and more dramatically appealing.”
Coney Island in 1907 was pretty much the eighth wonder of the world. It was the mother of amusement parks, the only good reason, said Freud, for making the long trip across the Atlantic. It was somewhere the Phantom, still pining for his one true love Christine Daaé, could fit right in – a decadent playground of freak shows, escapologists, illusionists, and great showmen. It also happened to be the age of Vaudeville. As settings for musicals go this one was a no-brainer. But establishing Coney Island in the minds and imaginations of audiences for whom it was probably nothing more than the name of some faded fairground was the challenge that eventually gave rise to the show’s dramatic opening.
And there’s a rather nice link here between Phantom’s original designer, the late, lamented, Maria Bjornson – whose famous gold proscenium sculptures brought the Paris Opera to Her Majesty’s Theatre – and Bob Crowley who spirits Coney Island’s world-beating rollercoaster from the mists of time and brings the seedy boardwalk to life before our very eyes. Lloyd Webber recalls that when Coney Island was first mentioned it was Bjornson who excitedly hit upon the idea that the Phantom could now reside in one of Coney’s skyscraping towers. From subterranean to high-rise living – a nice twist. From there he could truly be master of all he surveyed. And so at the start of Love Never Dies he has sent for his songbird Christine who travels to New York with her rather dull husband Raoul (remember him?) and son Gustave not really knowing but surely suspecting who might be behind an invitation for her to perform at Coney Island’s newest attraction Phantasma.
Lloyd Webber’s long-held obsession with this project is matched only by the Phantom’s for Christine (remember it was the second Mrs. Lloyd Webber, Sarah Brightman, who created the role) and as we retire to a quiet room over Rules Restaurant he makes no apologies for being the controlling force behind it. It’s the principal reason why his shows are “through-sung”. He’s not happy if the music isn’t driving the evening.
“If you just want ten songs to fit somebody else’s script then I’m not really the composer for that.” To that end his melodies are the dramatic and emotional fabric of his work and in Love Never Dies – undoubtedly one of his best scores – they are intricately woven.
“Once I had the plot it was fairly obvious to me that the first major melodic strand would have to be the Phantom’s song of yearning for Christine. Another decision I made quite early on was that the title song – which was something I originally wrote with this piece in mind and which was first sung by Kiri Te Kanawa - was going to be Christine’s big performance number and should be kept pretty much exclusively for that moment. Then there was the question of how I should handle the moment when Christine and the Phantom first meet again – and there I took the risky strategy of giving the stage to just them for the best part of 15 minutes. The themes that appear there – including the song “Once Upon Another Time” – would be carried forward towards the eventual dénouement.”
That song, that melody, typifies Lloyd Webber’s musical personality. If it was sung in German (as no doubt it will be one day) it could easily be mistaken for Franz Lehar. In fact I’d go so far as to characterise Lloyd Webber’s work a throwback to a bygone melodic style – more gracious, more opulent. His lyric ballads are surely unsurpassed since the heyday of Ivor Novello, Frederick Loewe and Richard Rodgers. The middle-eight or “release” of “Look with your heart”, another song from the show, is pure Rodgers; it sings and plays like an affectionate homage.
But it’s what I call the emotional memory of these melodies that give them such dramatic potency. The Phantom’s big number in Love Never Dies, “Till I hear you Sing”, is one of the best ballads Lloyd Webber has ever written – an absolute corker – but it stays with you because something about the ache within it won’t let go. When Christine agrees to sing for her mentor one last time she does so to the same tune and the frisson of recognition it engenders makes for a real goosebumps moment. That’s what great melodists do – hard to define but easy to recognise. It’s where the next note seems somehow inevitable the second after you’ve heard it. Rodgers once said “a great melody implies its own harmony” and Lloyd Webber certainly holds true to that maxim.
So where on earth here do these melodies come from? Interestingly he gives me a very similar answer to that which Leonard Bernstein gave me many years ago – that he really has no idea, that the tunes and their attendant harmonies have a habit of creeping up on him while he’s “musing” at the piano. He knows instinctively when he’s hit upon something – it might be the beginnings of a melody, a phrase or two or something more – and even if there is no immediate use for it he’ll write it down and keep it until the right moment calls it to mind. Sometimes the ideas come quickly and easily: “No Matter What” (from Whistle Down the Wind) was one of those – the cash registers were heard ringing before even the last note was down. At other times songs are very much “composed” in response to a specific motivation or brief. With Lloyd Webber’s Eurovision entry “It’s My Time” a catchy hook was not just desirable but required – and anybody that thinks that’s just a bog-standard tune should think again.
I am now doubly curious about the evolution of “ ‘Till I Hear You Sing”: “This took several drafts and it was the tiniest adjustments that made the difference”, says Lloyd Webber. “There are ways it could have gone which would have made it acceptable but ordinary but the use of the flattened 7th made it more intriguing. Other little things like dropping from the key of D to C major affect the listener in ways they can feel but might not be able to identify or explain. I instinctively know when something is right and when it isn’t.”
Actually Lloyd Webber’s melodies readily lend themselves to development but the man himself insists that he is not a symphonic composer but a dramatic one:
“The one thing I have always felt about musical theatre is that it is to an extraordinary degree about construction. Where I have come unstuck sometimes has mostly been to do with the stories not being quite right or not connecting with a contemporary audience. The Woman in White was a perfect example because the central premise, so shocking in Victorian times, didn’t turn a hair with audiences today. I firmly believe that even the greatest theatre songs ever written – like “Some Enchanted Evening” from South Pacific – wouldn’t be known today if they had been in the wrong place of the wrong theatrical vehicle. I once did an album years ago with Sarah Brightman called “The Songs That Got Away” and heard as a collection you’re thinking ‘this is one of the best musicals I’ve ever heard’ but for various reasons each of these songs was buried on account of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. So structure and context are everything – and if you look at a work like Britten’s Peter Grimes there isn’t a wasted or misplaced moment anywhere. As music theatre it’s perfect. Like act two of La Boheme. Anyone considering a career in musical theatre should study that.”
One of the key dramatic moments in Love Never Dies comes when the Phantom starts to recognise an innate kinship with the boy Gustave (echoes of Miles in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw). The tune the boy plays and sings at this point in the show is called “Beautiful” and its eerie Svengali-like chant – truly, subversively, “music of the night” - evolves into one of the principal leitmotifs of the score – quietly sensuous but potentially grand and visionary, too. I am reminded of a very accomplished orchestral piece Aurora by Andrew’s father William Lloyd Webber whose music brother Julian has tirelessly championed over the years.
“It’s interesting you mention that piece because I think it represented a sensuous side to my father’s personality that he was rarely able to show and that I am beginning to realise now was a big influence on me – particularly with this show. It’s made me think about why he was unable to show that side of himself and why I am?.”
There are still those among Lloyd Webber’s detractors who resolutely refuse to acknowledge his talent and doggedly insist that his huge international success is the product of clever global marketing and handfuls of formulaic hit songs liberally reprised. How does he feel about that?
“I always think of something Richard Rodgers said to me when I got to know him slightly towards the end of his life. He told me how depressed he’d got by the reviews for The King and I whose score was compared unfavourably with his previous shows. But even he – perhaps the most gifted popular melodist of them all – realised that it’s not always possible for audiences or for that matter critics to take in what they are hearing on a first or even second hearing. Musical theatre history is littered with bad reviews for now classic pieces. But there’s something else and that’s this: my job is to communicate with my audience and frankly should they be expected to recognise that the ordering of the poems in Cats, for instance, is very precisely structured to create a seamless narrative or that the opening of the show is a mock-fugue? It’s like what you say about the melodies: the effect of those repetitions, whether sung or in underscoring, has an emotional not an intellectual purpose.” The subliminal references to Phantom 1 in Love Never Dies will hopefully make aficionados smile.
After opening Love Never Dies Lloyd Webber has one more pressing date with reality TV when the nation-wide search for the little girl in the gingham frock –Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz – gathers momentum. Lloyd Webber believes that the classic movie has never successfully transferred to the stage because Arlen and Harburg’s songs were too thinly spread. The respective estates have given him special dispensation to create some additional numbers and if that means batting off a succession of Graham Norton “friends of Dorothy” jokes, then it’ll be well worth it. He’s hugely encouraged that these shows appear to have ignited a renewed enthusiasm for musical theatre among the teenage generation. The Wicked audience could now be ready for the prequel.
But back to the year’s biggest opening night. “I’m genuinely excited”, he says, “to see what people make of Love Never Dies because in so many ways it goes much further than the old Phantom did. Without giving anything away about the ending, it’s like I closed a door when I put the last notes down. I don’t think I’ll be able to go any further down this particular musical path – well, not for a while anyway.”
And long, long after that, will people still be humming “‘Till I Hear You Sing”? Of course, they will.
'Love Never Dies' opens at the Adelphi Theatre, London WC2, on 9 March (adelphitheatre.co.uk)
The best of Lloyd Webber: four timeless shows
The Phantom of the Opera
The composer's then wife Sarah Brightman was his muse for this piece a paean of love for her. She played the heroine Christine, a role which struck such a chord with some obsessive fans that they changed their name to Christine. The memorable 'coup de théâtre' of a chandelier seeming to crash into the audience so alarmed the security guard of one visiting royal that he bundled his charge to the floor.
Sunset Boulevard
His most underrated musical. Both dramatically and musically this merited a much longer run and more critical acclaim than it had. But it did give a plum role to actresses of a certain age, from Glenn Close to Petula Clark, with Faye Dunaway being famously rejected by Lloyd Webber.
Cats
Deciding to write a musical around TS Eliot's cat poems was an inspired decision. Trevor Nunn was inspired, too, in his lyrics for the showstopper "Memory", a genuinely moving number, with a little help from Eliot of course. Seats in the auditorium of the New London Theatre that moved added more thrill. It broke all records and only closed because it had reached audience saturation-point.
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Lloyd Webber and his first lyricist Tim Rice at their joyous best. Their love of pure rock'n'roll is evident in this early collaboration, which contains a lot more humour than later works. Revivals reveal it as evergreen.
David Lister
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/the-man-behind-the-mask-andrew-lloyd-webber-on-his-new-musical-love-never-dies-1910817.html
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Love Never Dies: Laying the ghost of the Phantom
Jack O’Brien is the director of Love Never Dies, the follow-up to Phantom, the most successful show in history.
Published: 5:05PM GMT 23 Feb 2010
'You have no idea how much pressure I’m under between now and opening night!” Jack O’Brien tells me, with such a degree of drawling self-composure that you’d swear you could dangle him out of an upper-storey window and he’d barely bat an eyelid.
Actually, albeit that we’re sitting in a dressing-room backstage at the Adelphi theatre, an oasis of hushed tranquillity, I think I can take a reasonably shrewd guess at the frenetic scenario that awaits this seasoned American theatre and opera director the minute we shake hands and part ways.
O’Brien, 70, is tasked with bringing Love Never Dies to the London stage – after which it will open in New York and Melbourne, and, all being well, at various times after that, around the rest of the world, in the steps of the show that spawned it, The Phantom of the Opera.
This isn’t just the follow-up to the most successful musical yet penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It’s the follow-up to the most successful entertainment product in history. If you’re aware of nothing else about Phantom, you know it’s a huge hit, but the stats are awesome: it has enjoyed bigger takings than Star Wars, Titanic, and (so far) Avatar, with earnings of £2 billion; and it has been seen by over 100 million people in more than 25 countries.
Simply put, Love Never Dies is the sequel without equal. If anything, the pressure on O’Brien is greater than that faced by Harold Prince, entrusted with directing Phantom in 1986. As O’Brien reminds me: “The hot number that year was Chess [written by Lloyd Webber’s erstwhile regular collaborator Tim Rice]. Phantom wasn’t anticipated nearly as much as Chess was.”
This time, the anticipation isn’t only greater, it’s distinctly double-edged. Instead of drawing from Gaston Leroux’s 1911 novel about the deformed musical genius who haunts the Paris Opera House, the plot, which jumps from 1881 to 1907 and takes in the fairgrounds of Coney Island, has been conceived from scratch, with input from Frederick Forsyth’s 1999 novel The Phantom of Manhattan, Ben Elton and American lyricist Glenn Slater.
There are those – resentful of Phantom’s juggernaut unstoppability, smarting at its composer’s wealth, or simply unresponsive to Lloyd Webber’s lushly romantic, rock-tinged treatment of Leroux’s melodrama – who would relish the spectacle of Love Never Dies showing up dead on arrival.
Then there are those who are possibly as obsessed with the long-runner as its skulking anti-hero is with the virginal young soprano, Christine, who falls under his spell. And this die-hard contingent are cautious, sceptical, fearful even. At Her Majesty’s, I recently sat next to one such fan, a chap from Munich, who had seen Phantom 25 times, and swore he wouldn’t be seeing Love Never Dies until it had been given the thumbs-up by reviewers.
Towards the new show’s already lurking detractors, O’Brien displays scant regard. “People will say what they want without seeing it, and they’re almost always uninformed.” He sympathises, though, with the apprehension. “We’re not taking this lightly. I have said from the beginning: no one will thank us for doing this. We have to dot every i, and cross every t, in showing why we’re continuing to tell this story.’
Lloyd Webber’s motives, he maintains, are impeccable. “No one had him at gunpoint saying, 'Please come up with something.’ He has thought about this for over 20 years. It has been at the back of his mind, haunting him. If this just was about the franchise, he would have done it years ago. This is about something else.”
What that is, what drives Lloyd Webber’s desire to burrow deeper into the story, involves some guess-work that O’Brien is only partly prepared to indulge in. It hardly escaped notice at the premiere that, with Lloyd Webber’s then wife Sarah Brightman occupying the role of Christine, and Michael Crawford’s misfit Phantom akin to a composer, there was an element of self-portraiture about the business.
'I don’t think there’s any question about that,” he replies. “I don’t make assumptions, but you’d have to be very insensitive not to see this as a curious, mythological parallel universe. I’m aware that there’s a deeply personal template to which I’m not invited that feeds the stream.”
Further than that, he won’t go. But hand on heart, he’ll swear that Lloyd Webber – with lyricist Slater – has delivered the goods, and even trumped the original.
“I think the score is richer and more varied. The colours are more astonishing. There are vaudeville American elements and those great throbbing rock-opera moments, too. He uses everything at his disposal.’’
O’Brien launches into a full-blown aria of appreciation: “We’re in a new country, a new century. From gaslit Paris, we’ve moved into the age of electricity. So there’s a different perspective. We’re picking up, but we’re looking back. The fact that Erik, the Phantom, goes to Coney Island, which at that time was about five times more popular than Las Vegas is today, means that he’s now part of a landscape of people allowed to behave in an unconventional way. That gives him a chance to grow. I don’t know what anyone’s anticipation is but I bet anything they’re going to be really surprised by the direction the story goes in.”
As for the look of the thing, O’Brien adds: “Someone said to me, 'Is there a chandelier moment?’ [referring to the famous first-half climax in Phantom when a chandelier comes crashing to the ground]? I said: 'As far as I’m concerned, the whole evening is going to be a chandelier moment.’’’
For more than 20 years the artistic director of the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California, O’Brien got this potentially mega-lucrative gig almost by chance – meeting Lloyd Webber for a drink in Covent Garden two and a half years ago, while supervising the hit London transfer of Hairspray.
“We had such fun talking, that I got involved in the creation of it at that point.” In his time, O’Brien has had the odd brush with flops – his own musical, The Selling of the President, closed after five performances in 1972. Yet I realise that not once while we’ve been locked in conversation has the slightest look of fear or doubt entered his eyes. This guy knows something we don’t. Yet.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-features/7300428/Love-Never-Dies-laying-the-ghost-of-the-Phantom.html
Published: 5:05PM GMT 23 Feb 2010
'You have no idea how much pressure I’m under between now and opening night!” Jack O’Brien tells me, with such a degree of drawling self-composure that you’d swear you could dangle him out of an upper-storey window and he’d barely bat an eyelid.
Actually, albeit that we’re sitting in a dressing-room backstage at the Adelphi theatre, an oasis of hushed tranquillity, I think I can take a reasonably shrewd guess at the frenetic scenario that awaits this seasoned American theatre and opera director the minute we shake hands and part ways.
O’Brien, 70, is tasked with bringing Love Never Dies to the London stage – after which it will open in New York and Melbourne, and, all being well, at various times after that, around the rest of the world, in the steps of the show that spawned it, The Phantom of the Opera.
This isn’t just the follow-up to the most successful musical yet penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It’s the follow-up to the most successful entertainment product in history. If you’re aware of nothing else about Phantom, you know it’s a huge hit, but the stats are awesome: it has enjoyed bigger takings than Star Wars, Titanic, and (so far) Avatar, with earnings of £2 billion; and it has been seen by over 100 million people in more than 25 countries.
Simply put, Love Never Dies is the sequel without equal. If anything, the pressure on O’Brien is greater than that faced by Harold Prince, entrusted with directing Phantom in 1986. As O’Brien reminds me: “The hot number that year was Chess [written by Lloyd Webber’s erstwhile regular collaborator Tim Rice]. Phantom wasn’t anticipated nearly as much as Chess was.”
This time, the anticipation isn’t only greater, it’s distinctly double-edged. Instead of drawing from Gaston Leroux’s 1911 novel about the deformed musical genius who haunts the Paris Opera House, the plot, which jumps from 1881 to 1907 and takes in the fairgrounds of Coney Island, has been conceived from scratch, with input from Frederick Forsyth’s 1999 novel The Phantom of Manhattan, Ben Elton and American lyricist Glenn Slater.
There are those – resentful of Phantom’s juggernaut unstoppability, smarting at its composer’s wealth, or simply unresponsive to Lloyd Webber’s lushly romantic, rock-tinged treatment of Leroux’s melodrama – who would relish the spectacle of Love Never Dies showing up dead on arrival.
Then there are those who are possibly as obsessed with the long-runner as its skulking anti-hero is with the virginal young soprano, Christine, who falls under his spell. And this die-hard contingent are cautious, sceptical, fearful even. At Her Majesty’s, I recently sat next to one such fan, a chap from Munich, who had seen Phantom 25 times, and swore he wouldn’t be seeing Love Never Dies until it had been given the thumbs-up by reviewers.
Towards the new show’s already lurking detractors, O’Brien displays scant regard. “People will say what they want without seeing it, and they’re almost always uninformed.” He sympathises, though, with the apprehension. “We’re not taking this lightly. I have said from the beginning: no one will thank us for doing this. We have to dot every i, and cross every t, in showing why we’re continuing to tell this story.’
Lloyd Webber’s motives, he maintains, are impeccable. “No one had him at gunpoint saying, 'Please come up with something.’ He has thought about this for over 20 years. It has been at the back of his mind, haunting him. If this just was about the franchise, he would have done it years ago. This is about something else.”
What that is, what drives Lloyd Webber’s desire to burrow deeper into the story, involves some guess-work that O’Brien is only partly prepared to indulge in. It hardly escaped notice at the premiere that, with Lloyd Webber’s then wife Sarah Brightman occupying the role of Christine, and Michael Crawford’s misfit Phantom akin to a composer, there was an element of self-portraiture about the business.
'I don’t think there’s any question about that,” he replies. “I don’t make assumptions, but you’d have to be very insensitive not to see this as a curious, mythological parallel universe. I’m aware that there’s a deeply personal template to which I’m not invited that feeds the stream.”
Further than that, he won’t go. But hand on heart, he’ll swear that Lloyd Webber – with lyricist Slater – has delivered the goods, and even trumped the original.
“I think the score is richer and more varied. The colours are more astonishing. There are vaudeville American elements and those great throbbing rock-opera moments, too. He uses everything at his disposal.’’
O’Brien launches into a full-blown aria of appreciation: “We’re in a new country, a new century. From gaslit Paris, we’ve moved into the age of electricity. So there’s a different perspective. We’re picking up, but we’re looking back. The fact that Erik, the Phantom, goes to Coney Island, which at that time was about five times more popular than Las Vegas is today, means that he’s now part of a landscape of people allowed to behave in an unconventional way. That gives him a chance to grow. I don’t know what anyone’s anticipation is but I bet anything they’re going to be really surprised by the direction the story goes in.”
As for the look of the thing, O’Brien adds: “Someone said to me, 'Is there a chandelier moment?’ [referring to the famous first-half climax in Phantom when a chandelier comes crashing to the ground]? I said: 'As far as I’m concerned, the whole evening is going to be a chandelier moment.’’’
For more than 20 years the artistic director of the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California, O’Brien got this potentially mega-lucrative gig almost by chance – meeting Lloyd Webber for a drink in Covent Garden two and a half years ago, while supervising the hit London transfer of Hairspray.
“We had such fun talking, that I got involved in the creation of it at that point.” In his time, O’Brien has had the odd brush with flops – his own musical, The Selling of the President, closed after five performances in 1972. Yet I realise that not once while we’ve been locked in conversation has the slightest look of fear or doubt entered his eyes. This guy knows something we don’t. Yet.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-features/7300428/Love-Never-Dies-laying-the-ghost-of-the-Phantom.html
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