Thursday 2 December 2010

Will Love Never Dies Survive Surgery?

You'd never get away with all this in a play,
But if it's loudly sung and in a foreign tongue ...

So went the lyrics to Prima Donna, a song in the original musical The Phantom of the Opera, now almost in its 25th year in London's West End. Andrew Lloyd Webber seems to have taken this bit of advice literally for his sequel, Love Never Dies, which has just undergone some major revisions, less than nine months after its opening.

The story of Love Never Dies, much to the chagrin of several die-hard "Phans," is far-fetched and out-of-sync with ... [

Love Never Dies: The Changes

After being open less than nine months, Love Never Dies, the stage sequel to the hit musical The Phantom of the Opera, has been given a revamp. The production opened in London's West End in March 2010 to mixed reviews and a barrage of complaints from die-hard "Phans" of the original show. Criticisms ranged from the banality of Glenn Slater's lyrics to the improbable plot turns and character twists of Ben Elton's story and book.

To rescue the show, impresario and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber shut down performances for three weeks in November so the cast could rehearse a new version ... [Read more at Hub Pages: Love Never Dies: The Changes]