SURPRISE!PHANTOM, or, Love Never Dies
Sep. 7th, 2011 12:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizbeeAS PROMISED!
Now, as I said the other day, this was my first experience seeing a professional musical theatre performance. I've seen a whole bunch of amateur performances, but somehow I never felt the need to pay a large sum of money to see an actual professional-type production.
The fact that I chose to pay to see Love Never Dies, and that I was inspired by these posts, does not actually reflect that well on me.
Anyway, when I was a kid I was obsessed with Phantom. My parents had a lot of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals on vinyl, and the central album art for Phantom was Christine in the boat with the Phantom behind her. And it probably says a lot about the sort of child that I was that I was mostly intrigued by the pretty lady in the dress surrounded by candles. Oh, and there's music. And some kind of love story. BUT A PRETTY LADY IN A DRESS SURROUNDED BY CANDLES.
Phantom was a brief obsession for me when I was 13 -- I wore out the soundtrack (we had now advanced to cassettes!), read the libretto, read the novel, and then watched every adaptation I could get my hands on. Alas, my family had no money, so even if it had been playing, actually seeing Phantom on stage was out of the question. And by the time I was an adult with disposable income, I was kind of embarrassed about my adolescent obsession with a camp 1980s rock opera. I did see the movie, but the only bit that sticks in my memory was Gerard Butler's snot.
So that was the context in which we saw Love Never Dies.selvage was visiting from Brisbane, and she enjoyed the cracktastical review posts as much as I did, so we peer-pressured piecesofalice into coming with us. Because we are good friends. We put on our nice outfits, took ourselves into the city and presented ourselves at the Regent Theatre.
Firstly, a problem that Andrew Lloyd Webber is not responsible for: toilet accessibility at the Regent kind of failed. My ankle, remember, is still sprained. The toilets are down a long, steep flight of stairs, and then there are more stairs to actually get to the stalls. Eventually (in the intermission) I found the disabled toilets, but got kicked out of line by an old lady in a wheelchair (I was wearing heavy black tights that concealed my bandage, so I didn't bother arguing), and also noticed theatre staff standing guard over the accessible toilets to ensure they weren't being used by the ostensibly able-bodied. So that was awkward.
Then, having paid $6 for a bottle of mineral water, we went in.
The first thing to note is that the set design and costumes for this show are AMAZING. The catwalks become rollercoasters, part of the stage rotates, becoming a carousel with the Phantom's lair on top -- wait, no, that's stupid. BUT IT LOOKED GOOD.
The only bit of the set design that doesn't work is an archway that frames the stage, made to look like the Phantom's half-mask. That part is okay. The bit where, on the left-hand side, there is a GLOWING RED EYE? And the GLOWING RED EYE is significantly smaller, not really eye-shaped much lower than the eye-hole on the mask side is ... distracting.
Also, it is GLOWING RED.
"Well, the Phantom's face probably isn't that symmetrical," pointed outselvage generously. But it was a GLOWING RED EYE, and it was annoying.
The second thing to note is that this production has been significantly altered from the London version. In fact, Andrew Lloyd Webber claimed it was a better match for his vision than the original staging. Which confused us, because, asselvage pointed out, he is something of a big deal in musical theatre, and presumably in a position to communicate his vision in between illegally painting the Adelphi Theatre black and swimming in his money.
Anyway, changes have been made! A list:
- all of the spoken dialogue has been removed. This meant the narrative did not make a whole lot of sense. On the other hand, it didn't make much sense anyway, and at least removes the weirdness of Mme Giry freaking out because the Phantom is going to leave his extensive collection of sideshow freaks in obelisks to his son instead of the Girys, when the dialogue tells us she owns everything anyway.
- Meg has clothes! Except when she's performing, or just before/after a performance, she's wearing actual clothes. THIS IS A BIG STEP FOR HER!
- the Phantom's lair no longer contains a lifesized animatronic Christine. We feel that's for the best.
- instead of keeping his lair in a giant purple bedazzled skull, the Phantom seems to be hanging out on top of a carousel. Or maybe it's in the cellar. It moves! But the point is, he's not living in a skull, and I think we can all agree that's a healthy choice.
- according to reviewers, a lot of the cadences of the lyrics have changed to make them more natural/less awful. I have to say, that alone makes me scared to imagine the UK version.
- instead of movement and travel being depicted by a red line on a photoscreen, we get --
Okay. This is howskygiants describes the opening of the London production:
The show begins with a bang, showing a black-and-white photo of an opera house on a screen over the stage . . . which then CATCHES FIRE. Then: newspaper clippings! Moving photos! A red line that zooms from Paris to Manhattan! I should say that I actually thought the old-film-reel effect was pretty cool, just in terms of staging. The only problem with the red moving transit line is that every time it shows up it just makes me wish we are actually watching an Indiana Jones musical, instead of what we have so foolishly signed up for.
The Melbourne production opens with CRASHING DRAMATIC CHORDS and we go straight into the Phantom's lair, where he sings about how he hasn't seen Christine for a decade, and that really bums him out. There's a lot of CLUTCHING, for that is how Ben Lewis portrays emotion, CLUTCHING at his head and chest and the air. In the background is a portrait of Christine, which occasionally responds to the serenade by moving. It's a bit Harry Potter, which makes me wish for a Harry Potter musical, although in a few scenes I will be having very uncharitable thoughts about children in musical theatre, and also how could a mere stage convey the BAMFitude that is NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM?
Anyway. The Phantom's lair goes up into the wings, and he surveys his domain (and CLUTCHES a little, and maybe checks Twitter because he's up there for quite a while) while the carnies come down and sing about how this is Coney Island, and it's a bit weird and debauched, and they're in a show called PHANTASMA, which my inner 13 year old thought was REALLY CLEVER AND COOL. It's a really energetic, well-choreographed number, and the song itself has been described as a stand-out of the show, but unfortunately the lyrics were all kind of garbled and incomprehensible. The character of Fleck is a dwarf in the Australian production, so she gets tossed around a lot.
Then Meg, "the Ooh-La-La Girl", sings a saucy number about all the pleasures you can enjoy, and we get a glimpse into a much better musical about a carnival dancer who has been exploited all her life but wants to find something better without sacrificing her love for performing.
Unfortunately, Meg is not in that musical, so then she and her mother sing about how much they love the Phantom and hate Christine, because what kind of bitch would abandon her stalker for a stable relationship? AN UNGRATEFUL BITCH, THAT'S WHAT. And they love the Phantom and will do anything for him, and does he appreciate their sacrifices? HE DOES NOT. Also, Christine is on her way to sing in New York, and that's going to lead to all kinds of awkwardness, and if you cut off her hair she would look like a British man, and WHY DOESN'T THE PHANTOM LOVE THEM?
It's a bit awkward, really.
So Christine disembarks in a fabulous purple number that proclaims her diva-ness. Unfortunately, she spends the rest of the show in virginal white dresses until the BLUE DRESS OF SORROW at the end. And with her are her worthless, fortune-gambling-away drunk of a husband and her annoyingly precocious son. There are some very bad American accents as the ensemble plays reporters, and Raoul goes around saying, "Her name isn't Christine Daae, she is the Vicomtess de Chagny, and I am an epic douchebag such as you see in those fics where Aang stands in the way of Katara's love for Zuko!"
Meanwhile, the annoyingly precocious son, Gustave, is afflicted with a serious condition: he cannot speak, he can only sing. This is especially unfortunate because his singing voice is not that good. I understand there are five Gustaves in the Melbourne production, and I hope the other four can carry a tune. As for this Gustave, I'm sure he's a lovely boy and I wish him all the best, but he'd better study hard in school and get himself a day job. Anyway, Gustave is excited to see the mixture of beauty and ugliness inherent in the modern urban environment, which is to say he's a ten year old hipster and must be killed.
The Daae-De Chagny family have come to New York so that Christine can give one last public performance (her first in years). They need the money because Raoul has pissed his fortune away in Monte Carlo, but fortunately a myserious Mr Hammerstein has offered a vast sum for Christine to perform. Is Mr Hammerstein actually the Phantom? As far as I could tell, the show changes its mind on that point halfway through. Which is awkward.
Anyway, Hammerstein never appears, but luckly the Phantom has sent a steampunk horseless carriage to pick them up. The family gets on board (Raoul is put out, not because he's weirded out that his transportation is being provided by three carnies, but because it is ~beneath his dignity~ and an ~insult to his family~) and the lights on the carriage instantly TURN RED. For it is an EVIL CARRIAGE.
Then we have a sequence where a guy in a bear costume pushes a miniature version of the EVIL CARRIAGE over the catwalks.
A bear.
Pushing the EVIL CARRIAGE.
It's really amazing, and by "amazing" I mean "we weren't expecting Edwardian LSD trips in this show!"
So the family arrives at their hotel, which has a VERY LARGE MIRRORED SET OF DOORS that you should probably pay attention to. One of the carnies has given Gustave a creepy monkey music box, and Raoul is a deadbeat dad who shouts at his son for plinking out a couple of notes on the piano. He takes off for a fake appointment with Mr Hammerstein in the bar, leaving Christine to sing to Gustave about how you look at love with the heart, not the eyes, so even if your dad ignores you or your mentor is a creepy stalker, it's okay, because they love you deep down, and you just keep telling yourself that, and tell all your friends you just walked into a door, and one day he'll realise how good you are for him and love you properly.
Yyyyeah.
Then Gustave goes off to bed and Christine plays with the creepy music box. She's disquieted by it, possibly because all logic tells us it should be playing a familiar tune from the first musical. Then there are CRASHING DRAMATIC CHORDS, and we all kind of peered at the stage before realising the Phantom had turned up. Through the mirrored doors. Of course.
Christine faints, but the Phantom brings her around, and then they sing a duet about that time they totally had sex and it was excellent. "And then I touched you!" / "And then I felt you!" So they've mastered one of the five senses, and there's a lot of guff about a moonless night (...but the Phantom was in a BASEMENT) and they did it again and again and again, and have we mentioned we had sex? And the Phantom sings about how he was "no longer shy", because obviously his crippling social anxiety was his biggest problem, and not the bit where he KILLED LOTS OF PEOPLE. Anyway, yes, they had sex. But then the Phantom got weirded out and fled, leaving Christine alone, and he spent the next ten years moaning because she doesn't love him EVEN THOUGH HE WAS THE ONE WHO LEFT HER.
Also, they had sex. It's pretty subtle, but if you pay close attention
Then there's another song about that time they had sex.
Gustave wakes up, ostensibly from a nightmare about a strange masked man, but probably because his mother has been singing very loudly on the balcony. He and the Phantom are instant BFFs and the Phantom promises him a personal tour of the carnival, because he knows the best way to manipulate a woman is through her children. Then the Phantom shoos him off to bed, and, knowing the best way to manipulate a woman is through her children, is all, "Nice kid. If you don't sing for me, he will suffer a HORRIBLE FATE AT MY HANDS."
Then there's a bit about how he has no choice but to be the child-threatening stalker guy, because "a man as hideous as I would do anything". Which is like the worst excuse ever, and for the record, the Ugly Defence never stands up in court.
Next day Christine and family turns up at the carnival, where Meg is rehearsing. Turns out that Christine's performance was meant to be Meg's big break, which is weird, because I thought she was a ballerina not a singer. On the other hand, I also thought she was a character with hidden depths and strength. Anyway, Meg is totally into Christine, and a lot of trouble could have been saved if they had run away together to start a music and dance school for young lesbians, but alas, this is not that musical. The song about meeting up with old friends you kind of secretly hate but have to be nice to is actually really great, and also lolawkward, and this was seriously lacking in social comedy so well done everyone.
Meanwhile, the carnies have brought Gustave to the Phantom's lair, where he realises (a) the boy is allegedly musical; (b) he is kind of into the ~beauty of darkness~; and (c) he is ten years old.
The other shoe drops.
This is just like in Superman Returns where he realises that Lois Lane's kid with Cyclops is actually his! Only kind of weird, because then he's all, "MY SON! LET ME SHOW YOU MY CARNIVAL!"
And then there are Aerosmith power chords and we have an epic '80s-esque number about the beauty underneath. There is smoke, and creepy dances, and spinning glass obelisks that contain animatronic freaks. It's really amazing, and I am totally going to buy the song and make many, many inappropriate but hilarious vids with it. It was the absolute highlight of the night for me, being as cracktastic and OTT as the original musical, but with more tentacle people, and also a walking dinosaur skeleton. The only weaknesses were Gustave's singing voice and ... well, seduction through song is a bit weird when it's a young girl you're mentoring. When it's your ten year old son ...
Yeah.
Yeah.
Unfortunately Erik has totally misjudged Gustave -- he thought he had a baby-Goth, when actually Gustave is a hipster douchebag who wants to hang with the carnies right up until he rips off the Phantom's mask and realises his new BFF is, like, totes ugly. Gustave runs away screaming, presumably off to update his Tumblr, and the Phantom angsts a bit about how he's going to leave everything to Gustave. And then we have THAT AWKWARD MOMENT where you're planning to leave your sideshow to your secret illegitimate child while your employee (who may actually own everything you've just given away) has been eavesdropping from an obelisk. I don't know about you guys, but that happens to me all the time.
Anyway, the first act ends with Mme Giry declaring that she's going to destroy Christine, Gustave and all the rest, and she won't let any previous characterisation stand in her way!
...INTERMISSION! In which I spent $12.50 on a cocktail called a Coney Island Kiss, which was basically a premixed Cosmopolitan in a plastic cup. BUT I NEEDED IT. I'm glad I stopped at one, though, because the lady sitting in front of us had drunk quite a lot of wine and was heard to tell her friend that she thought Love Never Dies was even better than Phantom of the Opera.
ACT TWO! It opens in ... a bar. Where Raoul is drowning his sorrows and singing about how he doesn't deserve Christine, and she's so great, and he's just scum who doesn't even like music.
...I imagine the writing process went something like this:
ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER: Hey, Ben Elton, how's that script coming?
BEN ELTON, WHO ALLEGEDLY DID HAVE SOME PART IN WRITING THIS: ...great? *surreptitiously tabs out of FF.net*
Then Meg turns up, and she sings about how New York is a dirty, dirty town, full of dirty, dirty people who make her do dirty, dirty things, and every morning she swims to clean herself. Oh, and if Raoul has any common sense, he'll get his family the hell out of Dodge.
Raoul is all, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but MY MANPAIN," so Meg goes on her way and he orders another drunk. And there's dramatic music, and the bartender turns around --
AND THEY WERE ALL WEARING EYEPATCHES.
I mean, HE WAS THE PHANTOM ALL ALONG.
Words cannot express the amazement and hilarity of this moment. An upcoming performance is going to be filmed for DVD release, and I am going to BUY THAT DVD and MAKE A GIF. Until then, here is the nearest comparison:
AMAZING.
Then there's a song about how obviously the best way for Raoul and Erik to deal with this is to make a bet: if Christine sings the Phantom's song, Raoul goes back to Europe alone. If she refuses to sing, Raoul can keep her.
I guess, "Well, this is rough, and we both kind of fail in our different ways, but maybe we should all sit down and talk about this, maybe see a relationships counsellor, maybe even ask Christine what she wants" doesn't translate very well into song.
Even worse, the song is called "Devil Take the Hindmost", but they kept singing "Devil take her hindmost", so it sounded more like they were arguing over Christine's ... anyway, nothing about it was okay.
Obviously telling Christine about their zany bet was out of the question, so she meanwhile is getting ready to perform, on account of how it's her job, and also there are hints that she has missed her musical career, although obviously spending time on that facet of her personality would have taken valuable singing minutes away from duets about that time she and the Phantom had sex. And Meg is on stage, doing a saucy striptease number, and seriously, why didn't we get the musical full of light entertainment and Vaudeville pastiches? IT WOULD HAVE BEEN REALLY GOOD.
Sadly for Meg, the Phantom didn't even watch her performance, preferring instead to hang around Christine's dressing room like a creeper. So she FLEES INTO THE NIGHT.
At last we come to Christine's performance, the title song, the showstopper.
In fairness, it did stop the show. Or so it seemed, because it just went on, and on, and on. On a stage decorated with peacock feathers, in a costume heavy on the sapphires, because when you're performing for a masked psychopath, I guess plain old superstition seems a bit unnecessary. Or maybe it was FORESHADOWING.
Anyway, it was a long song about how love never dies. Or changes. Or lets go, or grows, because the Phantom has all the emotional maturity of an adolescent, and the idea that love is a constantly evolving concept that can involve great sacrifice or loss is beyond him.
Christine directs the song at both Raoul and the Phantom, but Raoul takes it as meaning she's chosen the Phantom and sets off back to Europe, leaving behind a passive-aggressive note. Christine is like, "...Oh well!" and makes out with the Phantom a bit, before belatedly realising that no one has seen Gustave in ages.
Has his father taken him back to Europe?
NO! Meg has stolen him! WOMEN! SO CRAZY!
There is an awkard hostage scene on a pier, where Meg is all, "I HAD TO SLEEP WITH LOTS OF MEN FOR YOU, PHANTOM, AND IT'S IMPLIED THAT I SLEPT WITH YOU AS WELL, AND LET'S JUST ASSUME THAT IT WAS AWKWARD AND I WOKE UP AND FOUND YOU'D DYED AND CURLED ALL MY HAIR BECAUSE THAT'S THE SORT OF CREEPY THING YOU'D DO. AND ALSO I USED TO BE A PRETTY GOOD CHARACTER, AND THIS WHOLE SHOW HAS JUST RUINED ME, AND CHRISTINE IS KIND OF THE BELLA SWANN OF MUSICAL HEROINES, AND SERIOUSLY I DON'T EVEN GET WHY THIS IS HAPPENING, BUT I HAVE THE KID AND I HAVE A GUN THAT HAS JUST APPEARED OUT OF NOWHERE WITH NO FORESHADOWING."
For some reason, everyone seems to have agreed that it's a really good idea for the masked murdering psychopath to do the hostage negotiations. Which is going really well, right up until he says, "Well, tough shit, Meg, you're a nice girl but you're no Christine."
She is unsurprisingly displeased by this pronouncement. They struggle, the gun goes off (very loudly, making the audience jump), and OOOOPS Christine gets shot!
She also breaks part of the scenery as she collapses.
I was, as you can tell, very into the moment.
Meg and Mme Giry flee to a better life in a better musical, and Gustave goes searching for Raoul while Christine is dying in the Phantom's arms. There is some sad singing about how now the Phantom has to be Gustave's father, because Raoul is chopped liver. Then Gustave returns with Raoul, and the two and a half men sort of cluster around Christine as she dies. Erik turns away to throw himself off the pier, but Gustave saves him through his sweet innocent childishness, taking off Erik's mask and cupping his deformed face just in case we didn't get the message.
And so we end, with Raoul and Erik silently negotiating a coparenting arrangement while the theme of Two and a Half Men plays in the background.
So that's awkward.
Now, as I said the other day, this was my first experience seeing a professional musical theatre performance. I've seen a whole bunch of amateur performances, but somehow I never felt the need to pay a large sum of money to see an actual professional-type production.
The fact that I chose to pay to see Love Never Dies, and that I was inspired by these posts, does not actually reflect that well on me.
Anyway, when I was a kid I was obsessed with Phantom. My parents had a lot of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals on vinyl, and the central album art for Phantom was Christine in the boat with the Phantom behind her. And it probably says a lot about the sort of child that I was that I was mostly intrigued by the pretty lady in the dress surrounded by candles. Oh, and there's music. And some kind of love story. BUT A PRETTY LADY IN A DRESS SURROUNDED BY CANDLES.
Phantom was a brief obsession for me when I was 13 -- I wore out the soundtrack (we had now advanced to cassettes!), read the libretto, read the novel, and then watched every adaptation I could get my hands on. Alas, my family had no money, so even if it had been playing, actually seeing Phantom on stage was out of the question. And by the time I was an adult with disposable income, I was kind of embarrassed about my adolescent obsession with a camp 1980s rock opera. I did see the movie, but the only bit that sticks in my memory was Gerard Butler's snot.
So that was the context in which we saw Love Never Dies.
selvage was visiting from Brisbane, and she enjoyed the cracktastical review posts as much as I did, so we peer-pressured piecesofalice into coming with us. Because we are good friends. We put on our nice outfits, took ourselves into the city and presented ourselves at the Regent Theatre.Firstly, a problem that Andrew Lloyd Webber is not responsible for: toilet accessibility at the Regent kind of failed. My ankle, remember, is still sprained. The toilets are down a long, steep flight of stairs, and then there are more stairs to actually get to the stalls. Eventually (in the intermission) I found the disabled toilets, but got kicked out of line by an old lady in a wheelchair (I was wearing heavy black tights that concealed my bandage, so I didn't bother arguing), and also noticed theatre staff standing guard over the accessible toilets to ensure they weren't being used by the ostensibly able-bodied. So that was awkward.
Then, having paid $6 for a bottle of mineral water, we went in.
The first thing to note is that the set design and costumes for this show are AMAZING. The catwalks become rollercoasters, part of the stage rotates, becoming a carousel with the Phantom's lair on top -- wait, no, that's stupid. BUT IT LOOKED GOOD.
The only bit of the set design that doesn't work is an archway that frames the stage, made to look like the Phantom's half-mask. That part is okay. The bit where, on the left-hand side, there is a GLOWING RED EYE? And the GLOWING RED EYE is significantly smaller, not really eye-shaped much lower than the eye-hole on the mask side is ... distracting.
Also, it is GLOWING RED.
"Well, the Phantom's face probably isn't that symmetrical," pointed out
selvage generously. But it was a GLOWING RED EYE, and it was annoying.The second thing to note is that this production has been significantly altered from the London version. In fact, Andrew Lloyd Webber claimed it was a better match for his vision than the original staging. Which confused us, because, as
selvage pointed out, he is something of a big deal in musical theatre, and presumably in a position to communicate his vision in between illegally painting the Adelphi Theatre black and swimming in his money.Anyway, changes have been made! A list:
- all of the spoken dialogue has been removed. This meant the narrative did not make a whole lot of sense. On the other hand, it didn't make much sense anyway, and at least removes the weirdness of Mme Giry freaking out because the Phantom is going to leave his extensive collection of sideshow freaks in obelisks to his son instead of the Girys, when the dialogue tells us she owns everything anyway.
- Meg has clothes! Except when she's performing, or just before/after a performance, she's wearing actual clothes. THIS IS A BIG STEP FOR HER!
- the Phantom's lair no longer contains a lifesized animatronic Christine. We feel that's for the best.
- instead of keeping his lair in a giant purple bedazzled skull, the Phantom seems to be hanging out on top of a carousel. Or maybe it's in the cellar. It moves! But the point is, he's not living in a skull, and I think we can all agree that's a healthy choice.
- according to reviewers, a lot of the cadences of the lyrics have changed to make them more natural/less awful. I have to say, that alone makes me scared to imagine the UK version.
- instead of movement and travel being depicted by a red line on a photoscreen, we get --
Okay. This is how
skygiants describes the opening of the London production: The show begins with a bang, showing a black-and-white photo of an opera house on a screen over the stage . . . which then CATCHES FIRE. Then: newspaper clippings! Moving photos! A red line that zooms from Paris to Manhattan! I should say that I actually thought the old-film-reel effect was pretty cool, just in terms of staging. The only problem with the red moving transit line is that every time it shows up it just makes me wish we are actually watching an Indiana Jones musical, instead of what we have so foolishly signed up for.
The Melbourne production opens with CRASHING DRAMATIC CHORDS and we go straight into the Phantom's lair, where he sings about how he hasn't seen Christine for a decade, and that really bums him out. There's a lot of CLUTCHING, for that is how Ben Lewis portrays emotion, CLUTCHING at his head and chest and the air. In the background is a portrait of Christine, which occasionally responds to the serenade by moving. It's a bit Harry Potter, which makes me wish for a Harry Potter musical, although in a few scenes I will be having very uncharitable thoughts about children in musical theatre, and also how could a mere stage convey the BAMFitude that is NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM?
Anyway. The Phantom's lair goes up into the wings, and he surveys his domain (and CLUTCHES a little, and maybe checks Twitter because he's up there for quite a while) while the carnies come down and sing about how this is Coney Island, and it's a bit weird and debauched, and they're in a show called PHANTASMA, which my inner 13 year old thought was REALLY CLEVER AND COOL. It's a really energetic, well-choreographed number, and the song itself has been described as a stand-out of the show, but unfortunately the lyrics were all kind of garbled and incomprehensible. The character of Fleck is a dwarf in the Australian production, so she gets tossed around a lot.
Then Meg, "the Ooh-La-La Girl", sings a saucy number about all the pleasures you can enjoy, and we get a glimpse into a much better musical about a carnival dancer who has been exploited all her life but wants to find something better without sacrificing her love for performing.
Unfortunately, Meg is not in that musical, so then she and her mother sing about how much they love the Phantom and hate Christine, because what kind of bitch would abandon her stalker for a stable relationship? AN UNGRATEFUL BITCH, THAT'S WHAT. And they love the Phantom and will do anything for him, and does he appreciate their sacrifices? HE DOES NOT. Also, Christine is on her way to sing in New York, and that's going to lead to all kinds of awkwardness, and if you cut off her hair she would look like a British man, and WHY DOESN'T THE PHANTOM LOVE THEM?
It's a bit awkward, really.
So Christine disembarks in a fabulous purple number that proclaims her diva-ness. Unfortunately, she spends the rest of the show in virginal white dresses until the BLUE DRESS OF SORROW at the end. And with her are her worthless, fortune-gambling-away drunk of a husband and her annoyingly precocious son. There are some very bad American accents as the ensemble plays reporters, and Raoul goes around saying, "Her name isn't Christine Daae, she is the Vicomtess de Chagny, and I am an epic douchebag such as you see in those fics where Aang stands in the way of Katara's love for Zuko!"
Meanwhile, the annoyingly precocious son, Gustave, is afflicted with a serious condition: he cannot speak, he can only sing. This is especially unfortunate because his singing voice is not that good. I understand there are five Gustaves in the Melbourne production, and I hope the other four can carry a tune. As for this Gustave, I'm sure he's a lovely boy and I wish him all the best, but he'd better study hard in school and get himself a day job. Anyway, Gustave is excited to see the mixture of beauty and ugliness inherent in the modern urban environment, which is to say he's a ten year old hipster and must be killed.
The Daae-De Chagny family have come to New York so that Christine can give one last public performance (her first in years). They need the money because Raoul has pissed his fortune away in Monte Carlo, but fortunately a myserious Mr Hammerstein has offered a vast sum for Christine to perform. Is Mr Hammerstein actually the Phantom? As far as I could tell, the show changes its mind on that point halfway through. Which is awkward.
Anyway, Hammerstein never appears, but luckly the Phantom has sent a steampunk horseless carriage to pick them up. The family gets on board (Raoul is put out, not because he's weirded out that his transportation is being provided by three carnies, but because it is ~beneath his dignity~ and an ~insult to his family~) and the lights on the carriage instantly TURN RED. For it is an EVIL CARRIAGE.
Then we have a sequence where a guy in a bear costume pushes a miniature version of the EVIL CARRIAGE over the catwalks.
A bear.
Pushing the EVIL CARRIAGE.
It's really amazing, and by "amazing" I mean "we weren't expecting Edwardian LSD trips in this show!"
So the family arrives at their hotel, which has a VERY LARGE MIRRORED SET OF DOORS that you should probably pay attention to. One of the carnies has given Gustave a creepy monkey music box, and Raoul is a deadbeat dad who shouts at his son for plinking out a couple of notes on the piano. He takes off for a fake appointment with Mr Hammerstein in the bar, leaving Christine to sing to Gustave about how you look at love with the heart, not the eyes, so even if your dad ignores you or your mentor is a creepy stalker, it's okay, because they love you deep down, and you just keep telling yourself that, and tell all your friends you just walked into a door, and one day he'll realise how good you are for him and love you properly.
Yyyyeah.
Then Gustave goes off to bed and Christine plays with the creepy music box. She's disquieted by it, possibly because all logic tells us it should be playing a familiar tune from the first musical. Then there are CRASHING DRAMATIC CHORDS, and we all kind of peered at the stage before realising the Phantom had turned up. Through the mirrored doors. Of course.
Christine faints, but the Phantom brings her around, and then they sing a duet about that time they totally had sex and it was excellent. "And then I touched you!" / "And then I felt you!" So they've mastered one of the five senses, and there's a lot of guff about a moonless night (...but the Phantom was in a BASEMENT) and they did it again and again and again, and have we mentioned we had sex? And the Phantom sings about how he was "no longer shy", because obviously his crippling social anxiety was his biggest problem, and not the bit where he KILLED LOTS OF PEOPLE. Anyway, yes, they had sex. But then the Phantom got weirded out and fled, leaving Christine alone, and he spent the next ten years moaning because she doesn't love him EVEN THOUGH HE WAS THE ONE WHO LEFT HER.
Also, they had sex. It's pretty subtle, but if you pay close attention
Then there's another song about that time they had sex.
Gustave wakes up, ostensibly from a nightmare about a strange masked man, but probably because his mother has been singing very loudly on the balcony. He and the Phantom are instant BFFs and the Phantom promises him a personal tour of the carnival, because he knows the best way to manipulate a woman is through her children. Then the Phantom shoos him off to bed, and, knowing the best way to manipulate a woman is through her children, is all, "Nice kid. If you don't sing for me, he will suffer a HORRIBLE FATE AT MY HANDS."
Then there's a bit about how he has no choice but to be the child-threatening stalker guy, because "a man as hideous as I would do anything". Which is like the worst excuse ever, and for the record, the Ugly Defence never stands up in court.
Next day Christine and family turns up at the carnival, where Meg is rehearsing. Turns out that Christine's performance was meant to be Meg's big break, which is weird, because I thought she was a ballerina not a singer. On the other hand, I also thought she was a character with hidden depths and strength. Anyway, Meg is totally into Christine, and a lot of trouble could have been saved if they had run away together to start a music and dance school for young lesbians, but alas, this is not that musical. The song about meeting up with old friends you kind of secretly hate but have to be nice to is actually really great, and also lolawkward, and this was seriously lacking in social comedy so well done everyone.
Meanwhile, the carnies have brought Gustave to the Phantom's lair, where he realises (a) the boy is allegedly musical; (b) he is kind of into the ~beauty of darkness~; and (c) he is ten years old.
The other shoe drops.
This is just like in Superman Returns where he realises that Lois Lane's kid with Cyclops is actually his! Only kind of weird, because then he's all, "MY SON! LET ME SHOW YOU MY CARNIVAL!"
And then there are Aerosmith power chords and we have an epic '80s-esque number about the beauty underneath. There is smoke, and creepy dances, and spinning glass obelisks that contain animatronic freaks. It's really amazing, and I am totally going to buy the song and make many, many inappropriate but hilarious vids with it. It was the absolute highlight of the night for me, being as cracktastic and OTT as the original musical, but with more tentacle people, and also a walking dinosaur skeleton. The only weaknesses were Gustave's singing voice and ... well, seduction through song is a bit weird when it's a young girl you're mentoring. When it's your ten year old son ...
Yeah.
Yeah.
Unfortunately Erik has totally misjudged Gustave -- he thought he had a baby-Goth, when actually Gustave is a hipster douchebag who wants to hang with the carnies right up until he rips off the Phantom's mask and realises his new BFF is, like, totes ugly. Gustave runs away screaming, presumably off to update his Tumblr, and the Phantom angsts a bit about how he's going to leave everything to Gustave. And then we have THAT AWKWARD MOMENT where you're planning to leave your sideshow to your secret illegitimate child while your employee (who may actually own everything you've just given away) has been eavesdropping from an obelisk. I don't know about you guys, but that happens to me all the time.
Anyway, the first act ends with Mme Giry declaring that she's going to destroy Christine, Gustave and all the rest, and she won't let any previous characterisation stand in her way!
...INTERMISSION! In which I spent $12.50 on a cocktail called a Coney Island Kiss, which was basically a premixed Cosmopolitan in a plastic cup. BUT I NEEDED IT. I'm glad I stopped at one, though, because the lady sitting in front of us had drunk quite a lot of wine and was heard to tell her friend that she thought Love Never Dies was even better than Phantom of the Opera.
ACT TWO! It opens in ... a bar. Where Raoul is drowning his sorrows and singing about how he doesn't deserve Christine, and she's so great, and he's just scum who doesn't even like music.
...I imagine the writing process went something like this:
ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER: Hey, Ben Elton, how's that script coming?
BEN ELTON, WHO ALLEGEDLY DID HAVE SOME PART IN WRITING THIS: ...great? *surreptitiously tabs out of FF.net*
Then Meg turns up, and she sings about how New York is a dirty, dirty town, full of dirty, dirty people who make her do dirty, dirty things, and every morning she swims to clean herself. Oh, and if Raoul has any common sense, he'll get his family the hell out of Dodge.
Raoul is all, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but MY MANPAIN," so Meg goes on her way and he orders another drunk. And there's dramatic music, and the bartender turns around --
AND THEY WERE ALL WEARING EYEPATCHES.
I mean, HE WAS THE PHANTOM ALL ALONG.
Words cannot express the amazement and hilarity of this moment. An upcoming performance is going to be filmed for DVD release, and I am going to BUY THAT DVD and MAKE A GIF. Until then, here is the nearest comparison:
AMAZING.
Then there's a song about how obviously the best way for Raoul and Erik to deal with this is to make a bet: if Christine sings the Phantom's song, Raoul goes back to Europe alone. If she refuses to sing, Raoul can keep her.
I guess, "Well, this is rough, and we both kind of fail in our different ways, but maybe we should all sit down and talk about this, maybe see a relationships counsellor, maybe even ask Christine what she wants" doesn't translate very well into song.
Even worse, the song is called "Devil Take the Hindmost", but they kept singing "Devil take her hindmost", so it sounded more like they were arguing over Christine's ... anyway, nothing about it was okay.
Obviously telling Christine about their zany bet was out of the question, so she meanwhile is getting ready to perform, on account of how it's her job, and also there are hints that she has missed her musical career, although obviously spending time on that facet of her personality would have taken valuable singing minutes away from duets about that time she and the Phantom had sex. And Meg is on stage, doing a saucy striptease number, and seriously, why didn't we get the musical full of light entertainment and Vaudeville pastiches? IT WOULD HAVE BEEN REALLY GOOD.
Sadly for Meg, the Phantom didn't even watch her performance, preferring instead to hang around Christine's dressing room like a creeper. So she FLEES INTO THE NIGHT.
At last we come to Christine's performance, the title song, the showstopper.
In fairness, it did stop the show. Or so it seemed, because it just went on, and on, and on. On a stage decorated with peacock feathers, in a costume heavy on the sapphires, because when you're performing for a masked psychopath, I guess plain old superstition seems a bit unnecessary. Or maybe it was FORESHADOWING.
Anyway, it was a long song about how love never dies. Or changes. Or lets go, or grows, because the Phantom has all the emotional maturity of an adolescent, and the idea that love is a constantly evolving concept that can involve great sacrifice or loss is beyond him.
Christine directs the song at both Raoul and the Phantom, but Raoul takes it as meaning she's chosen the Phantom and sets off back to Europe, leaving behind a passive-aggressive note. Christine is like, "...Oh well!" and makes out with the Phantom a bit, before belatedly realising that no one has seen Gustave in ages.
Has his father taken him back to Europe?
NO! Meg has stolen him! WOMEN! SO CRAZY!
There is an awkard hostage scene on a pier, where Meg is all, "I HAD TO SLEEP WITH LOTS OF MEN FOR YOU, PHANTOM, AND IT'S IMPLIED THAT I SLEPT WITH YOU AS WELL, AND LET'S JUST ASSUME THAT IT WAS AWKWARD AND I WOKE UP AND FOUND YOU'D DYED AND CURLED ALL MY HAIR BECAUSE THAT'S THE SORT OF CREEPY THING YOU'D DO. AND ALSO I USED TO BE A PRETTY GOOD CHARACTER, AND THIS WHOLE SHOW HAS JUST RUINED ME, AND CHRISTINE IS KIND OF THE BELLA SWANN OF MUSICAL HEROINES, AND SERIOUSLY I DON'T EVEN GET WHY THIS IS HAPPENING, BUT I HAVE THE KID AND I HAVE A GUN THAT HAS JUST APPEARED OUT OF NOWHERE WITH NO FORESHADOWING."
For some reason, everyone seems to have agreed that it's a really good idea for the masked murdering psychopath to do the hostage negotiations. Which is going really well, right up until he says, "Well, tough shit, Meg, you're a nice girl but you're no Christine."
She is unsurprisingly displeased by this pronouncement. They struggle, the gun goes off (very loudly, making the audience jump), and OOOOPS Christine gets shot!
She also breaks part of the scenery as she collapses.
I was, as you can tell, very into the moment.
Meg and Mme Giry flee to a better life in a better musical, and Gustave goes searching for Raoul while Christine is dying in the Phantom's arms. There is some sad singing about how now the Phantom has to be Gustave's father, because Raoul is chopped liver. Then Gustave returns with Raoul, and the two and a half men sort of cluster around Christine as she dies. Erik turns away to throw himself off the pier, but Gustave saves him through his sweet innocent childishness, taking off Erik's mask and cupping his deformed face just in case we didn't get the message.
And so we end, with Raoul and Erik silently negotiating a coparenting arrangement while the theme of Two and a Half Men plays in the background.
So that's awkward.
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Date: 2011-09-07 02:20 am (UTC)I feel like I need a drink just from having read this synopsis.
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Date: 2011-09-07 02:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-07 02:38 am (UTC)Also, the entire point of the show is that the Phantom dies at the end. Which I note that he conspicuously fails to do at the end of Love Never Dies. *facepalm*
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Date: 2011-09-07 07:45 am (UTC)But no. He was just ... CLUTCHING.
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Date: 2011-09-07 02:57 am (UTC)Your review is awesome. You have done us all a great service. *salutes*
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Date: 2011-09-07 04:30 am (UTC)AND I FEEL SURE THEY WILL BE THE BEST THING TO COME OUT OF THIS MUSICAL. (Also: I am sorry you had to live through this! But glad
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Date: 2011-09-07 07:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-07 11:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-07 08:44 am (UTC)She also breaks part of the scenery as she collapses.
I feel so very very sorry for the stage manager. I think that's the kind of show where you end up doing a Maria from sLings & Arrows every night, although possibly more directed at the writers than the actors...
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Date: 2011-09-07 08:58 am (UTC)NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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Date: 2011-09-07 01:07 pm (UTC)Yeah, not much of a stage musicals kind of gal.
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Date: 2011-09-07 01:15 pm (UTC)I'm amazed you made it through this with only one drink, but maybe it's for the best you were sober enough to recall all the details, because this is one amazing writeup.
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Date: 2011-09-07 03:09 pm (UTC)I'm now wondering if this would've been a better or worse time for me than when I saw "Passion" (which I did not like and, even worse, saw it with M who doesn't like musicals).
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Date: 2011-09-07 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-07 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-07 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 01:41 am (UTC)Wipes perfect tear. Sniff.
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Date: 2011-09-08 11:53 am (UTC)