Love Never Dies/Paint Never Dries – the next Mega-Musical flop of Andrew Lloyd Webber

Posted by davidallen on November 15, 2010 · 7 Comments 

Have you heard?! There are ad’s on the teeve! it’s on trams
and buses in Melbourne! the internet has gone nuts with the news!
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s next major musical Love Never
Dies is opening in Melbourne in May 2010! Buy your
tickets now!!!

… Well that’s one way of looking at
it.

Alternatively you could listen to the rumours of the
creative difficulty the show is having. Hear about the mediocre
London ticket sales beyond the collosal advance. You could watch
the cast and creative team desert the production as soon as their
contracts/pocketbooks allow. You could note well that the West End
cast dubbed their show Paint Never Dries
backtage during rehearsals. You could observe the contnuous delays
for Broadway opening dates and the fact that the show has been
deemed so creatively flawed that two rival versions are to be
presented, one in Toronto and one in Melbourne. Winner takes to
Broadway. Or you could listen to the cast recording…

In 1998 the great Dame Kiri Te Kanawa performed a song
tentatively termed an aria for a potential Phantom of
the Opera sequel. The tune later morphed into the title
aria of “Love Never Dies” – all the same its
fun to watch the diva sing, with supreme sucess, some of the worst
lyrics ever written for music theatre.

It’s
difficult to put into words how I feel about this musical.
The Phantom of the Opera is by no means my
favourite musical. It had a profound impact on me when I saw it,
age nine, in Melbourne, mostly because it was so extravangant and
yet so accessible. Phantom is a hummable show.
True, the score is repetitive and overuses standard themes to the
point where musical purists like myself want to hurl! That said,
audiences like it, because it becomes fond and familiar. It’s just
like something they’ve heard before – and they have! Love
Never Dies has been highly criticised for it’s weak book
(plot) and shoddy lyrics. I’ll go further and say that the score is
unworthy also. Why? It’s not hummable! Clearly Andrew Lloyd Webber
has lost sight over the years of just what has made his shows so
popular. While putting together “a lush musical extravganza” he has
clearly attempted to write some serious musical theatre – and in
doing so has created a tangled muddle of songs that really don’t
fit together at all. No ones asking for recycled
Phantom themes. Just some good themes full
stop would be a start! Anything relateable that can be grasped
throughout the show as a sign of what is to come – a tool to build
the tension or the characters…
Love Never Dies has none of those things. But
then how can it? It’s a sequel of a musical entitled The
Phantom of the OPERA… set in a vaudeville-era Coney
Island and the main venue: a musical hall. That’s fine, but writing
a score to match… Not a good idea – and here’s why! There are
very few good sequels. The ones that work do
so because they take popular characters or stories and provide a
realistic extension of them within the world they inhabit. It’s all
about atmosphere and backstory. Love Never
Dies takes a rich collection of characters and a vivid
chain of events past and promptly does its best to re-write them
all! Characters are altered completely, and crucial pieces of
Phantom lore are carelessly tossed aside for
the sake of a new narrative that is by no means superior. In brief,
it is not at all convincing or realitsic. Point One: I am not
at all convinced that Christine would ever have had sex with the
Phantom. By the end of Phantom I, he was a
crazed, obsessive murderer, stripped back and revealed as somewhat
pathetic, to whom Christine was ready to show nothing but pity.
Love Never Dies attempts to establish that
Christine and the Phantom had sex the night before her marriage to
Raoul and conceived a child in so doing. Presuming that Christine
is saintly/horny enough to overlook the Phantom’s hideous facial
deformity (I know I wouldn’t be!), irregardless, why would she make
love to a vicious psychopath? The show sidesteps this question by
saying that passion took over. Uh huh. Point Two: How do you solve
a problem like Raoul? At the end of Phantom I,
Christine and Raoul waltz off into the sunset to the tunes of “All
I Ask of You”, ready to live happily ever after. Their courtship,
though somewhat tumultuous, has been successful and they’re off to
get married. At the beginning of Love Never
Dies, Raoul is introduced as an angry drunkard who has
gambled his fortune away. By all means create a plot that deals
with the harsh reality of fairy-tale endings failing miserably. But
making such a cosmic leap without due process is just stupid! A
single song could have fixed Raoul. It’s attempted in the prissy
“Look With Your Heart” – unsuccessfully. A song more like “The Road
You Didn’t Take” from the musical Follies
might have been more up to the task. At any rate, an explanation is
due, from both parties, as to just how Christine and Raoul’s
relationship messed up so badly! Point Three: Keeping
the Mesdames Giry was A BIG MISTAKE! This was Ben Elton’s handiwork
- and oh dear! Madame Giry turns out to serve little to no purpose
within the narrative. In the first show, the Giry’s acted almost
like narrators, kept the story moving along and dealing with any
critical exposition. In Love Never Dies they
serve only to get in the way. Madame Giry broods and acts like she
is manipulating events and information to the advantage of various
parties. She isn’t. Meg Giry besically takes the place of Carlotta
in the narrative. She’s a performer, clearly substandard to the
benchmark (Christine), who wants to be treated like a star and
lusted after by everyone, including the Phantom. Why is never
really dealt with. Oh and at the end she inexplicably takes the
place of the Phantom within the narrative and becomes the obsessed
psychopath. She’s jealous of Christine for winning the Phantom’s
attention. Okay. Why?! Point Four: The Phantom of the Opera was a
psychopath obsessed with a beautiful woman who ran away after it
became clear to him that she would never return his affections (the
kiss at the end of the first musical establishes that).
Love Never Dies gets two things wrong. First,
the psychopath is forgotten, and a brooding matinee idol takes his
place, without any form of explanation as to how this miraculous
transformation has taken place! Second, the obsession with
Christine is back, stronger than ever, only now it’s realistic.
How? They had sex, remember? Uh huh.

The official music video for the title aria
“Love Never Dies” – and please note I use the
term “aria” loosely here! – starred Katherine Jenkins. It’s the
only version of this pointless piece of extravagance I can stand.
Throw a beautifully dressed blonde in my face diva-ing out with
sublime grace and skill and suddenly it matters less to me that
nothing else is happening.

The main character
is abysmally mishandled. The Phantom of the original musical was a
realistic creation. A genius who grows up in the labyrinthine Paris
Opera learning to sing, to perform magic tricks and sleights of
hand, write music and create incredible “toys” for himself while
remaining hidden… Hang on, did I say realitsic? Well anyway it’s
fun to imagine that he could have done all of that, and the
elaborate setting makes it possible. Love Never
Dies transfers the Phantom to Coney Island. The idea is
that freaks and monsters and such magical side show technological
attractions (shock and awe) were grist for Coney Island’s mill.
Okay. That I can swallow. The Phantom, with his genius, in this
vibrant atmosphere, becomes an overnight millionaire. Okay. That I
can swallow – just! Now, with millions at his disposal and a
business empire at his command, what does he do to lure Christine
back to his side? He invites her to his theatre to sing. Um,
snore!!!!! If the Phantom must have Christine (and who’s to say he
must?), then really a more sinister plot with more menacing
consequences are in order. The story and the score transform the
Phantom from a character I was interested in, and (once) actually
scared of, a dark, troubled figure who would go to any lengths to
have his way, into a weak romantic figure of little interest or
threat. I’m not saying the Phantom can’t be sexy. I’m saying it’s
not his primary focus. Point Five:
Christine has almost never had any depth. At least in the first
musical she had pluck. In Love Never Dies
she’s a rather conflicted but saintly woman. Imagine Julie Andrews
having to choose between two men (one is a
bastard and one was a bastard) and you have
the plotline. My main gripe with Christine extends by proxy to
Raoul. Together they are the Viscomte and Viscomtess de Chagney.
Why is she performing at a Coney Island Vaudeville Theatre? Or at
all for that matter?!?! The Viscomtess could be Renata Tebaldi and
she would still not perform. She would keep house at the chateau in
the Dordogne and pump out the kids. Point Six: The music is all
wrong! Love Never Dies needs to match its
settings. Fair enough. The Phantom of the
Opera is set in the Paris Opera while Love Never Dies is
set on Coney Island. These two locations require wildly differing
themes. Love Never Dies, however, attempts to
blur the two. The fact that no one explained to Lord Webber why
this wouldn’t work just astounds me! Songs aspiring to a more
operatic feel brush shoulders with vaudeville numbers and
distinctly more modern patter songs that do what patter songs can
only do in a Lloyd Webber show: deliver exposition. It’s an utter
tangle. After the lofty and impressive strains of “Coney Island
Waltz” I was hoping for a highly stylised and thematic score.
Love Never Dies needed to be dark and romantic
and dangerous. Instead it’s broody, dusty and disoriented. There
are stronger moments. Not many though. Okay, so Christine (despite
her title) is the greatest soprano of her age. What is she doing
performing alongside Vaudeville on Coney Island? This problem with
the plot is deeply written into the score. Christine’s final
soaring “Aria” (uh huh) “Love Never Dies” comes after two heavily
music hall-ish performances: “Heaven By the Sea” and “Bathing
Beauties”. It fits into the score as awkwardly as it sounds. Awkward is a good
word here. Love Never Dies is a distinctly
awkward show. Too little has been done here to craft a creatively
convincing narrative with the characters and the information to
hand. The Book is weak and poorly crafted, with little to no
attention to detail with the stories and the characters being dealt
with. This deals the show a crippling blow as it renders it
instantly less convincing. The score is a mess. There is no rhyme
or reason to the music on offer here or its placement within the
construct as a whole. The characters are a nightmare of hackery.
Details critical to the construct of the characters have been swept
under the carpet if not forgotten altogether. The whole thing is
neither convincing or convinced. Worse: it’s just not interesting!
It brings to mind the cardinal rule of sequels. If you don’t have a
good story to tell, you don’t need to tell it. Love
Never Dies opens at the Regent Theatre in
Melbourne in May 2011 and if this is my review of the cast
recording, just imagine my review of the show! The devil exists,
Andrew Lloyd Webber, and thine name is Diva! Should a re-write that
makes the Sunset Boulevard overhaul of 1993
look like a spell-check not take place – well, come the Broadway
debut (presuming it gets that far), a disaster beyond your
imagination will occur. Diva Knows Best Xoxox

Filed under Broadway, Divalicious, Rants