Love Never Dies from Andrew Lloyd Webber was showing at the Regent Theater in Melbourne. We decided to treat ourselves to a night at the theater.
The theatre is beautiful. The walls are carved and ornate having a regal air. Just beautiful. The painted ceilings and window boxes in the foyer with large sweeping curtains added to the rich vintage feeling of the Regent Theater. It was impressive.
Love Never Dies is the follow on story to the phenomenal Phantom of the Opera that opened in the West End in London 1986 and is the longest running musical on Broadway to date.
The story of the Phantom and Christine continues 10 years later at Coney Island where the phantom is now running the freak show. He has never lost his desire for Christine. Christine is a world renowned soprano. She accepts an invitation to come to New York to sing, not knowing that the Phantom is behind the invitation. She brings her family including her husband, Raul whom she had run away with at the end of the original story. He has not become the ravishing hero that he once was.
The show is visually stunning. Everything was big with lots of colors and interesting things to look at in every direction. It was impressive and mesmerizing to watch.
There were a couple of musical highlights, particularly some of the interplay of voices in one duet and one quartet. I did not feel that had the depth of music that most of Webber's other musicals have. I was not singing a song from the musical days later. All of the main performers in the show that we saw had beautiful voices and sang marvelously. It was great that no one person stood out. They all were strong.
The story, however, is...well...lacking and that's putting it very nicely. There are multiple story lines and not all of them make sense. It felt like they were trying to make a soup from everything in the fridge without paying attention to what was going in and they just hoped that it would taste good. But in the end, the flavors didn't blend at all. In my opinion, the story was not well thought out, the plot was weak, and it relied on the original story to carry the show. It seemed like this amazing artist just wanted some cash so he churned something out based on a previous success and did not care about the quality. I was disappointed. At one point, when one of the biggest twists was introduced, I lost the story as I searched in my own memory asking "What? WHAT?" "When did THAT happen in the original story?" It is not a good thing to have happen while watching a performance...to spend more time in my head than paying attention to what was happening onstage. Matthew and I exchanged notes at intermission and he was just as perplexed as I was. The second act tried to tie everything in a neat bow but they had already let too many things unravel.
Overall, it was a nice night out listening to beautiful voices and watching amazing sets in a beautiful theater...too bad about the story.
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| Regent Theatre Foyer |
Love Never Dies is the follow on story to the phenomenal Phantom of the Opera that opened in the West End in London 1986 and is the longest running musical on Broadway to date. The story of the Phantom and Christine continues 10 years later at Coney Island where the phantom is now running the freak show. He has never lost his desire for Christine. Christine is a world renowned soprano. She accepts an invitation to come to New York to sing, not knowing that the Phantom is behind the invitation. She brings her family including her husband, Raul whom she had run away with at the end of the original story. He has not become the ravishing hero that he once was.
 |
| Inside Picture of Pamphlet |
The show is visually stunning. Everything was big with lots of colors and interesting things to look at in every direction. It was impressive and mesmerizing to watch.
There were a couple of musical highlights, particularly some of the interplay of voices in one duet and one quartet. I did not feel that had the depth of music that most of Webber's other musicals have. I was not singing a song from the musical days later. All of the main performers in the show that we saw had beautiful voices and sang marvelously. It was great that no one person stood out. They all were strong.
The story, however, is...well...lacking and that's putting it very nicely. There are multiple story lines and not all of them make sense. It felt like they were trying to make a soup from everything in the fridge without paying attention to what was going in and they just hoped that it would taste good. But in the end, the flavors didn't blend at all. In my opinion, the story was not well thought out, the plot was weak, and it relied on the original story to carry the show. It seemed like this amazing artist just wanted some cash so he churned something out based on a previous success and did not care about the quality. I was disappointed. At one point, when one of the biggest twists was introduced, I lost the story as I searched in my own memory asking "What? WHAT?" "When did THAT happen in the original story?" It is not a good thing to have happen while watching a performance...to spend more time in my head than paying attention to what was happening onstage. Matthew and I exchanged notes at intermission and he was just as perplexed as I was. The second act tried to tie everything in a neat bow but they had already let too many things unravel.
Overall, it was a nice night out listening to beautiful voices and watching amazing sets in a beautiful theater...too bad about the story.
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