Broadway Rant: What the...?

I turned on the TV this evening, and, to my surprise, there was another musical on PBS that I had never seen before. It was called Love Never Dies, a sequel to Andrew Lloyd Webber's wildly successful The Phantom of the Opera. I feel like I have to share the weirdness I experienced with the world. This blog post contains spoilers, so if you do not want to have the suspense ruined for you, skip this post. Or just don't ever see this show.

I don't know how many musicals have spun off sequels, but I'm willing to bet not many. Particularly, if the original musical was based on a book by an author who has been dead since 1927. I have to pause to point out that I am a huge fan of The Phantom of the Opera. It ranks right up there with Newsies on the list of the most important musicals of my childhood. However, even as a child, I'm pretty sure I never thought, man, they need to write some more stories about the Phantom. And yet, Andrew Lloyd Webber did. 

The musical has, as yet, not made it to Broadway. It premiered in London in 2010, and ran for less than two years. Critics and audiences alike had very mixed feelings about it (some Phantom fans have a protest website called Love Should Die). Apparently, the show is very popular in Australia, which is where this show was filmed.

The story itself is set 10 years after the events of the original story. The original story took place in Paris, where the Phantom terrorized the Paris Opera House until he was stalked by an angry mob. His true love, Christine, whom he stalked, obsessed over, and built several creepy doll replicas of, married another man, and ran away. Ten years later, Christine and her husband, Raoul, have a child (who is really the Phantom's child because, sure), and the Phantom has emigrated to New York, where he runs a freak show on Coney Island. At the end of the show, Christine dies, and her son runs away with the Phantom.

So, here, in bullet point form, are the problems I had with the story, once I had accepted its existence:

• A megalomaniac like the Phantom is forced out of the Paris Opera House and is going to be content with an act on Coney Island? Okay, show.

• Meg Giry, in this show, is written to make the Phantom appear like a sane person. And there is not one but two women in love with the Phantom? What?

• Did anyone who saw the original musical conveniently forget that the Phantom murdered a bunch of people, or did everyone just think, sure, that guy should raise a child? They both like music, right?

• A few months ago, when I was prepping for my Family Violence class, I stumbled on a website that painstakingly dissected Bella and Edward's relationship in the Twilight books and pointed out all of the similarities between that relationship and a violent relationship. Even though I thought it was stupid, the author raised some good points (secrecy, stalking, isolation, etc.). That said, how are people not up in arms about the relationship between Christine and the Phantom? There was kidnapping, stalking, verbal abuse, murdering people, obsession, isolation...

• The show is trying to convince us that a relationship between Christine and the Phantom could work. But project into the future; if this were a real life relationship, it would probably end in murder-suicide. Just saying. Is this something we as theater-going public want to fantasize about?

• I have heard people compare Phantom to Andrew Lloyd Webber's relationship to ex-wife Sarah Brightman, who played Christine in the original London and Broadway productions. Lloyd Webber was a composer, Brightman was a singer. The true intent of this second musical seems to be to convince those of us who were happy that Christine married Raoul at the end of the first musical that, despite the fact that the Phantom was a horrible person, and Raoul was dashing, handsome, and rich, her heart was always with the Phantom. 

• And, some other stuff we didn't know: Raoul is an alcoholic and a gambler, which is the same as being a madman. So there. He deserves to play second fiddle.

• I'm slightly irritated by the two women from the local PBS station trying to convince me that this is good, and that I want to call my friends and tell them to turn on their TVs. I did text Lisa to tell her I was watching this, but I'm pretty sure what my text said was not what PBS had in mind.

The music itself was...okay. It reminds me of Dave Barry's critique of Paul McCartney's post-Beatle songs, pointing out the sharp dropoff in quality, which was more pronounced because of everything awesome that came before it. The music wasn't bad, but it wasn't moving in any way. It was particularly jarring because there were several callbacks to songs from the original.

As for the sets and costumes, they were incredible, possibly even better than the original. So that was something I liked. Of course, everything was vaguely creepy like I imagine sideshows always are, so the costumes and sets kind of enhanced that.

Needless to say, (but I'm going to say it anyway) I will not be knocking myself out to see this one if it ever makes it to Broadway (don't do it, Andrew). Even if it has Audra McDonald as Christine, Kristin Chenoweth as Meg, Adam Pascal as the Phantom, and Patrick Wilson reprising his role as Raoul.

Who am I kidding? Of course, I would go see that. I'm not made of stone.