Review: LOVE NEVER DIES IN CONCERT, Theatre Royal Drury Lane

Over a decade has passed since Love Never Dies, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sequel to The Phantom Of The Opera, was an undoubted flop during its first (and last) London run so this week’s revival in concert is a welcome retrospective. Was it a victim of its own hype, unable to live up to being the successor to arguably the greatest modern musical, or is it just a bad show?

That this 2010 musical never made it to Broadway - where Phantom still holds the record as the longest running show and has raked in over $1bn - no doubt still rankles with Webber given his grand plans for it including having it open in three continents on the same night.

These days, Love Never Dies is chiefly remembered for an infamous review but its production history suggests that its troubles began long before an audience ever saw it. The issues went from the laughable (Lloyd Webber's six-month-old kitten climbed onto his digital piano and managed to delete his entire score, forcing him to reconstruct it from scratch) to the serious: the composer later talked about having cancer just before the production. 

For the book, Lloyd Webber leant on the unlikely trio of spy author Frederick Forsyth, comedian Ben Elton (never a good sign) and then Glenn Slater who initially thought that the project “just sounded like a terrible idea”. Technical issues, problems with casting and rehearsing multiple sets of actors and the lead actress' last-minute illness caused the first preview night to be delayed.

Following on from criticism from an early blogger review which famously retitled the “gloomy” show as Paint Never Dries, Lloyd Webber made some changes. Even so, the opening night in April 2010 led to reviews which were, politely put, mixed. The Times’ Benedict Nightingale criticised the “dismally implausible plot”, New York Times' Ben Brantly felt sorry for “this poor sap of a show” and Quentin Letts lambasted “a death scene so long that it may only reignite the euthanasia debate”.

On the plus side, Charles Spencer of the Telegraph was more positive, calling it "Lloyd Webber's finest show since the original", which "will linger potently in the memory when frothier shows have been long forgotten". Adding insult to injury, painting the front of the Grade II-listed Adelphi black as a publicity stunt backfired when Lloyd Webber was threatened with a fine of up to £20,000. 

The critical panning led to Lloyd Webber calling in lyricist Charles Hart, choreographer Bill Deamer and producer Bill Kenwright to reshape the musical. Changes planned for a future run were brought into the Adelphi production and the critics were invited back to see the updated show in November 2010.

All this was to little avail: less than 18 months since the highly-anticipated production saw its first audience, it closed early making a loss and plans to open in Asia and Canada were later dropped. A Broadway run was delayed then cancelled. When it did open again, it was in 2011 in Melbourne with further alterations made by an Australian creative team. Despite this, the production closed prematurely there after seven months with a later run in Sydney lasting another three months, a Brisbane transfer cancelled and another overall loss was recorded. 

Looking back, it was less a case of “what went wrong with Love Never Dies?” as “what didn’t go wrong?”

Having been around the world, a show put on this week at Theatre Royal Drury Lane is somewhat different to how London audiences last saw it in 2011 and closer to the changes made down under. Gone is the dreary prologue and instead we open on the Phantom expositioning away like a demon: ten years have passed since he fled from the police across the Atlantic and took over a Coney Island amusement park called - wait for it - Phantasma. Most of his workers know him as the mysterious Mr Y (why Y? We never find out.) apart from Madame Giry and her daughter Meg who aided his escape and helped build his current vaudeville empire. 

The Phantom lures his old love Christine to his new haunt under false pretences and she arrives with young son Gustave and her now-husband Raoul in town. She soon finds herself on the horn of a particularly cruel dilemma, being forced to choose between a masked murderer obsessively in love with her and an aristocratic spouse who is happy  to drink and gamble away all the money his wife earns from her lucrative singing gigs. Tough one.

Celinde Schoenmaker - taking time out from appearing in Nicholas Hytner’s Guys & Dolls as Sergeant Sarah Brown - is an elegant Christine who lights up the stage in a series of dazzling dresses and superb vocal performances. Across from her, Norm Lewis (who played the Phantom on the Great White Way in 2014) is a solid, unshowy performer, his powerful baritone vocals giving plenty of dramatic ballast to the disfigured genius still tortured by his feelings for the vocalist he fell for in Paris. The pair show some chemistry but never really sell the central dynamic at the heart of the story of once-parted lovers colliding again with Hadron-like force.

The book is still a risible affair with some roles competing to be the most underwritten. More than a few of the songs are timewasters, coasting along on greeting card sentimentality and only there to heavily foreshadow or underscore at painful length. For a musical which leans heavily into its gothic romance origins, it is a shadow of its deliciously dark predecessor that filled millions of seats around the world.

Having said that, it isn’t without its high points. Whether it is cats, trains or humans, Lloyd Webber is a past master in giving innate desires and pain musical flesh. Big love ballad “‘Til I Hear You Sing” was cleverly moved in Australia from midway through Act One to being the opening number and Lewis eats this up, his deep voice creating an emotional resonance which sets the bar (too) high for what is to come. “The Beauty Underneath” - a poignant duet between Lewis and Cian Eagle-Service’s excellent Gustave - is the most moving song of the night while the chest-beating “Devil Take The Hindmost” which sees The Phantom bait and bet his romantic opponent Raoul (Matthew Seadon-Young, carrying off with aplomb a largely thankless role) is a storming battle throughout.

As this is a concert affair, the staging is minimal: gone are the scene-setting projections and in place we have a few carousel horses placed around the London Musical Theatre Orchestra, superbly led by Freddie Tapner and the London Musical Theatre Chorus. Expertly rolling out Lloyd Webber's score with verve and vivacity, they give welcome life to even the most dull of songs.

Despite its well-documented travails, Love Never Dies has some solid tunes and soaring melodies and, in no small part thanks to these musicians, it is these that linger as we head out into the night.

Love Never Dies continues at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane tonight.

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