love never dies phantom of the opera book

Suddenly, her portrait appears, like a vision of the Virgin Mary.Īs we're reminded incessantly, 10 years have passed since the Phantom was consigned to his lonely fate. The two-hour, 20-minute show opens with dissonant chords, musical quotations from Phantom, and a tortured Phantom (Bronson Norris Murphy, who embraces the role with gothic exuberance) pining by the piano over Christine, his musical protégée and lost love.

It's not clear whether he has blackouts, but he does suffer periodic bouts of regret over his vileness toward Christine (the opera soprano Meghan Picerno) and their musically precocious son, Gustave (Jake Heston Miller, who will alternate with Christian Harmston). In a character reversal akin to Atticus Finch's flirtation with racism, Raoul (Philadelphia native Sean Thompson, in excellent voice), the Prince Charming of Phantom, has become a dissolute gambler and violent drunk. Overall, the show is ridiculous - but in a mesmerizing, no-expense-spared, car-crash sort of way. A handful of Lloyd Webber's songs (lyrics by Glenn Slater, with an assist from Charles Hart) are knockouts. Director Simon Phillips is not one for subtlety.īut the cast is vocally outstanding, the costuming (by Gabriela Tylesova, who also did the inventive set design) is gorgeous, and lighting designer Nick Schlieper's vision of Coney Island by night is breathtaking. The book by Ben Elton, loosely based on Frederick Forsyth's novel The Phantom of Manhattan, makes even less sense than the original Phantom. It depends on your delight in spectacle and tolerance of narrative incoherence.

premiere of the sequel that transports the Phantom, Christine, and her now-husband Raoul to Coney Island? Should you rush to the Academy of Music to see the new (retooled) touring production of Love Never Dies, the U.S.

Let's say you're a fan of The Phantom of the Opera, an admirer of Andrew Lloyd Webber's lush romantic melodies, that psychosexual darkness, those operatic settings, the crashing chandelier.

Love never dies phantom of the opera book