The unstoppable avalanche of claims and counter-claims on Love Never Dies is reaching a crescendo, as the show prepares to welcome its first reviewers tomorrow and on Monday, before the official opening on Tuesday.
As Michael Coveney - author of the best biography of Lloyd Webber - pointed out in a blog yesterday, “Everyone I know seems 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.”
The way this process has been (mis)managed is part of the problem.
If you live by hype, you can die by hopes dashed. And as I am quoted saying in a feature in today’s Daily Express, Andrew Lloyd Webber is “on a hiding to nothing because how do you improve on the most successful work in entertainment history?”
He is a victim of his own previous successes. As I also say, “People judge him by a unique standard. 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.”
According to a news story in today’s Times, Love Never Dies may, however, be able to “stake an unwanted claim to theatre history. [It] may well be the most pre-emptively vilified show yet.”
The Times goes on to quote The Stage’s own news editor Alistair Smith, who says that this level of criticism “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.”
Lloyd Webber’s team is trying to listen, though. Lloyd Webber’s producer Andre Ptaszynski is quoted commenting, “All the online comment was confirming what we knew was wrong. 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.”
I’m looking forward to seeing if he is right when I see it again on Tuesday. But meanwhile there’s a more serious problem of overcoming the negative feedback now, and trying to create a more positive buzz around it. Even the generally supportive Michael Coveney points out in his blog, ” 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.”
But while today’s Daily Express feature reiterates some of the difficulties the show has run into, you wouldn’t guess it from the one in today’s Daily Mail, whose headline declares that the show “is already being hailed as even better” than its predecessor. Who are they reading? Could it be their own columnist Baz Bamigboye? (After seeing the first preview, he breathlessly reported in a blog entry, “A few nips and tucks will be done and the final few moments are being re-thought but it’s all there. The score is brilliant.Sad fool that I am ,I’m humming it as I write this blog just outside the Adelphi. If they can get the bits that didn’t quite work tonight right then they’ve got the most enormous hit… There’s a line in Love Never Dies about the music entering your soul. I think that happened to me tonight.”)
Actually, there’s also been support from the unusual quarter of The Guardian, whose Tanya Gold went behind-the-scenes in yesterday’s paper. She also goes to the first preview and reports, “What can I say about Phantom 2? I loved it. Of course I did.” (I can see it on the billboards outside the theatre already). But what will Michael Billington —and the rest of the critical pack — think? Producer Ptaszynski is not holding his breath to find out. According to The Times, “Dates are pencilled in for the US, Asia and Australia, pending a decision likely to be based ‘more on popular reaction than critical reaction’,” according to Ptaszynski. “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.”
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The Beautiful Game ran a year but did it make any money? How full were the houses? And as for Sunset Boulevard it may have run two years but the same question applies ..if a show runs a long time and plays to half full houses and fails to make money for its investors - is it a success? The Woman in White ran for awhile as well..Thanks to Phantom & Cats ALW has more than enough money to think of a show, write it and produce it in a very short period of time - and because he owns the theatres he can run them for as long as he wants. The jury ( both popular and critical) is still out on LND , and while they may announce productions around the world , those can evaporate in the same way the simultaneous openings which were originally announced did. It's clear that the hype machine is hard at work , it'll be interesting to see if the marketing ideas from 20 years ago can still be effective in a different world with many more entertainment options.
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA needs NO sequel.
http://facebook.com/luvshoulddie
http://twitter.com/loveshoulddie
Bless his deranged soul, he doesn't give up does he.
Love Never Dies (Adelphi Theatre) is without doubt an event, it has attracted more comment and more debate than any new musical in recent years. One of the reasons for this is because it is that rare phenomenon in the 21st Century, a new British musical opening in London and produced by a UK based producer and composer.
To take a look at the show in a serious critical light involves cutting through the Phantom fans, who even as the show announced felt that secure evenings at Her Majesty’s or at The Majestic in NYC were threatened by a continuation of story and score. One needs to reflect on what the British musical actually is, and in an era post Martin Guerre if the British theatre is again capable of making a musical that has a cultural impact beyond the confines of the Thames.
Lloyd Webber and the term musical theatre are synonymous, but even here there is a juxtaposition, with his scores for Joseph, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, Starlight Express, The Phantom of the Opera and Sunset Boulevard (version two) Lloyd Webber is clearly not working in what Hammerstein, Sondheim or Jason Robert Brown, Michael John LaChuisa would term or even recognise as a musical theatre construct. What Lloyd Webber writes is a hybrid version of Operetta, taking the forms of driving score, lush (if occasionally derivative) melody and two dimensional characters that move the action from emotional or constructional point to point. The form that was pioneered by Offenbach, Lehar, Sullivan, German and then to a lesser know extent by Victor Herbert, Rudolf Friml and in the UK fused with musical comedy by A.P Herbert and Vivian Ellis. The very construct and product that Lloyd Webber produces is anachronistic, and it is only from this point that one can hope to critically evaluate his work. He is a lone wolf, there is nothing else in London, or in New York for that matter, that reflects his style.
When theatre critics head next week to see “a new musical” they are in actual fact going to se “an operetta”, a confection that is possibly twenty five years out of date in terms of narrative construction, musical score and style and is based firmly on concepts nearly a century old. Only in the UK where no major theatre really develops new musical theatre dramaturgically can Love Never Dies, be seen as culturally significant, the marketing, the hype and the comment seem to be exposing it for what it is a rumble of operetta thunder from a more bombastic age, this kind of British musical died at The Prince Edward with Martin Guerre in 1996 and no amount of head scratching, audience blaming, TV outings or sequel products will make those heady days of the 1980’s and 1990’s return, as much as out theatre owners and pension-ready producers and composers would like them to.
Well said John. It's as if ALW walks into the room in the 21st century to write a musical in the same way that he wrote a musical in 1980 - as if nothing has changed - tastes, audience expectations, the "sound" of theatre music etc. For him, time has stood still in the sort of product he is delivering. Similarly, in 1979 Alan Jay Lerner with Carmelina and Jerry Herman with The Grand Tour had shows that could've been written in the 50's or 60's - they hadn't changed with the times - they thought they could just go on writing shows with a particular musical theatre vocabulary forever. Herman opened himself up tot he changing times with La Cage , Lerner didn't - think how much richer Phantom 1 would've been if his collaboration with ALW worked out. And now ALW is the grand old man and his great "innovation" for the musical theatre has left the streets scattered with well-intentioned but crappy musicals taken from (mostly) public domain sources.. It's a shame that no one was able to galvanzie ALW (and this Phantom) into fashioning a show that is not a reflection of 80's operretta but into something more vital and energized. Sadly that's the case for virtually all practioners of the contemporary British musical theatre.
All this Lloyd Webber blathering about blogs and the digital age.Grrr.I have read 6 reviews this morning and most damn with faint praise,not one is saying kill to get a ticket.But you wouldn't anyway.With Phantom Mk II I wondered "WHY?" - I also wondered did Rodgers and Hammerstein -say after the huge success of "Sound of Music" think- mmm shall we knock one out about Maria 10 years on with a new kiddie and a Nasty complex? I don't think so,they were ORIGINAL.The most singly annoying thing about Paint Never Dries-ha ha good one Phans- was the pure greed and disdain shown to public in not having reduced price previews yet tinkering in all of them -I read the ending was changed 3 times.Oh and not having a Name or two to light up the Marquee.Boggess and Karimloo just doesn't do it for me. At least the original Masked crypt-dweller Crawford had a following and inevitably drew punters in in the first place.Previous writers are correct,ALW is in a time warp.
What a stinker of review in NYT. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/theater/10love.html
Now, I have not seen Love Never Dies. I am not qualified to comment on the singing, acting or writing. In fact, if it was nothing to do with Phantom, I would probably think it sounded fairly good.
However, they have made the characters act like-well, like they're different people. I know this from people who have seen it, and read the book it's based on. The characters are not the well-loved Meg, Erik, Christine and Raoul. (Although whether Raoul is loved by Phans is questionable), but they are apparently entirely new, slightly deranged copies.
This is a huge disapointment to Phans everywhere. They should have made a sequel which actually remained true to the first musical-or, better yet, the book. Instead, they present us with this. Is Andrew Lloyd Webber trying to make all the Phans hate him?