Sadly, Despite Its Title, This Musical Contains No Zombies

Yes, as promised, a review of the musical sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, Love Never Dies, which sees former star soprano Christine Daae travelling with her husband and child to Coney Island, NYC, to stage a comeback at a mysterious sideshow called Phantasma. (gasp! Could it be….?)

But, first, remember what I said a few weeks ago about the very best artists’ work being so effortless that you’re convinced you could tackle their performance yourself? Well, this show was evidently that good, because I’ve decided: I could write a sequel to West End hits, too! In fact, I could write sequels to all of them. And so I have, interspersed between the paragraphs of this review. The sequel titles are within the summaries, in italics. *ahem*

sequel to CATS: When Grizabella is turned into a baby again and sent back to Earth from the Heaviside Layer, she finds herself shunned by the other cats for a second time — all but one, that is. Macavity takes an interest in the spunky grey kitten. But can the Hidden Paw discover his… Hidden Heart?

All right, all right. Some serious stuff as well. Because of course even making these silly jokes makes me think about writing sequels and what makes a sequel feel like a great continuation or even an improvement rather than a rip-off. This issue is especially pertinent to me as I try to follow up a novella that I love but whose atmosphere I just can’t seem to re-capture, even though I’m sure there are lots more stories with these characters that I desperately want to tell.

Correct me here, theatre buffs, but contemporary plays rarely have sequels. Sure, classical Greek tragedies were written in trilogies, but Shakespeare didn’t produce King Lear: Kent Strikes Back*. Racking my brains, the only theatrical follow-ups I can think of are the Wingfield series — and that’s a one-man show, a guy telling the story of his life on a farm. More like Vinyl Cafe than The Pillowman or A School For Scandal.

So I defend my interest in Love Never Dies partly in the name of academic curiosity: what on earth could one mean by a sequel to the original? What could that possibly be?

Because, honestly, if I have to turn to the actual content of the show, I have no excuse for wanting to see it.

sequel to LES MISERABLES: It turns out that Jean Valjean just fainted after the wedding, and Javert was rescued from the Seine and given CPR by a peasant bargeman. When Marius and Cosette’s young son Pierre is kidnapped by a notorious highwayman who served on the chain gang with Valjean, the two men are forced to team up to save the boy. Along the way, the former enemies discover that once you stop looking down at each other, things can start…. Looking Up.

Perhaps the simplest thing we expect in a sequel is consistency of character: we signed up to get back on board with pretend people we already know and love, and we expect that they’ll act in ways that don’t contradict what we’ve learned about their personalities from their actions in the original.

…

Particularly when one of the things we learned from the original is that they were intelligent adults. Mme Giry and her daughter Meg get the bluntest end of the rewrite stick. Remember how they had respect for the Phantom but were terrified of crossing him? Remember how they both took the first chance to explain to Raoul how to safely enter his lair? (“Your hand at the level of your eyes!”) Apparently, that whole time, they were secretly his BFF, who now aren’t afraid of spying on him or rebelling against him.

Also, remember how they used to be, um, not incredibly stupid? Apparently that trait too has been lost, because part of the plot revolves around how they feel betrayed because they’ve sacrificed lots for the Phantom, and he doesn’t care about them. Uh, hello? In the previous musical, this guy killed people for telling stories about his face or just for having the part he wanted to play in his own opera. The way he showed his feelings to the person he loved most in the world was by kidnapping her and threatening to kill her boyfriend. WHY ARE YOU SO SURPRISED THAT HE DOESN’T SEND THANK-YOU NOTES???

But I guess I can’t blame the Girys that much, because the creators of this musical also seem to have forgotten that main trait of the Phantom’s: he kills people. He is a homicidal maniac. Dangerous. Scary. Frightening. Yeah, he has a woobie angsty side, but what makes him an interesting character is that this side is in constant conflict with the side of him that’s a volatile murderer.

If the wimpy Phantom from Love Never Dies were transplanted into the previous musical, instead of receiving threats and demands through Mme Giry and party-crashing giant red skeletons, the managers of the Opera would’ve found a bunch of passive-aggressive notes taped up around the theatre. (“Looks like we have a misunderstanding, because I was under the impression that this box (5) was my box. Hopefully this clears it up for next time. Thanks for reading! :) “)

His aggression seems to have been transplanted into Raoul. Admittedly, the guy had a bit of a temper in the original, but it seems like this new version has been crammed with just about all the possible clichéd shorthand for “cad” that you can think of. Gambles away the family finances. Drinks excessively. Refers to his son as “the child” or “the boy” and never addresses him directly. For goodness’ sake, at one point, he responds to the kid’s requests for dad to play with him by kicking his toy and storming out with a drink in his hand.

And Christine? Where do I begin? Remember when she had, like, an actual personality? Remember when she yelled at the Phantom for abusing her trust and generally being a dick (“The tears I might have shed for your dark fate/Grow cold, and turn to tears of HATE!” Yes, I did quote that from memory. Why do you ask?) Remember when she ran away from Raoul because he was trying to convince her to help catch the Phantom by putting herself in danger? Hold onto those memories tight, if you want to save them from blank slate doormat Christine as she is here. Speaking of which…

sequel to RENT: When Mimi inexplicably becomes an alcoholic abusive b*tch, Roger finds himself on the street, alone, addicted to crack again and forgotten by all his friends… except one. But can Mark face his feelings for his former roommate, or will he hide once again behind his video camera? Although they still can’t pay the rent, together, the two will take out a new… Lease on Life.

So. Much. Fail.

Look, despite my ideals, a cursory examination of the stories I love will show that it actually takes a lot of sexism to make me feel uncomfortable or exasperated or bored** enough to hate a book, movie, TV episode, play, etc. But I was rolling my eyes throughout this damn show, hoping against all hope that we’d have a redeeming moment by the end.

Here is the plot: The Phantom loves Christine. Raoul loves Christine (even though until after intermission he’s too borderline abusive to show it). Obviously, what must happen is they must make a bet as to who “gets” Christine, a duet where each insists she’s “my Christine.” The loser has to walk away and never interact with her or her son again, and the winner gets to have her stay with him. A typical rom-com contrivance, maybe, but then they both proceed NOT to tell any of this to Christine while still agreeing the outcome of the bet is based on an essentially trivial action of hers.

But the super-creepiest part is how the musical retcons the Phantom’s abusive – completely abusive and unhealthy and obsessive – you know, kidnapping, imprisoning, manipulating, lying, threatening, killing – previous treatment of Christine from something that rightly terrified her into something she recalls with regret, writing off her fear as her childish inability to recognize True Love when it came a-knocking. And… well, to avoid spoilers, I’ll just say: remember how Christine is supposed to be an innocent-hearted youngster and the Phantom about 50-60 in the original story? Yeah, try not to while you watch this show.

The one thing that could have saved this musical for me is if, against all hope, Christine’s climactic which-guy-do-I-choose aria had turned out to be called “F*** Both You Controlling A**holes, I Am Not Anyone’s Possession.” To be fair, I guess that’s not as catchy a title as Love Never Dies.

sequel to WICKED: It’s 1935, and the Nazi party is gaining power just across the Oz border. Glinda the Good feels pressure to preserve the peace, whatever the cost. But when she learns Elphaba, Fiyero, and their seven singing children have been captured by the new regime, Glinda must make a choice: stay popular, or spend one short day doing her… Emerald Duty.

Something that would’ve gone a long way to make me forgive the faults of this show is if it had had as many memorable tunes as the original. But here again, I was disappointed. Nothing stayed in my head; nothing had that same earworm quality or blood-pounding excitement as the ominous chords of the Phantom’s original theme. I liked “Bathing Beauty,” a song we’re evidently supposed to think is corny, based on how it fits into the plot, but I can’t even recall the tune of the titular number. And there were one or two songs that just made me cringe – including an awkward, awkward duet where two characters describe their sexual encounter.

The design was, um, interesting. I can’t really say that before now, I pictured the Phantom of the Opera living in what appeared to be a glow-in-the-dark mini-putt designed by the Addams Family. From the beginning, when the show started with the projection of a bunch of newspaper headlines on the screen (“Boy Trapped In Refrigerator Eats Own Foot”…anyone?), it felt like the production was meant to be a live movie rather than theatre. A map on which the characters’ progress is traced by a moving line seems like it should be on a screen, not a stage. The sepia photographs with one or two moving parts were cool but felt out of place.

(Not that projection and video are inherently untheatrical – I’ve seen them used in very exciting ways. But those ways questioned the conventions they borrowed, asked how the liveness of a stage show changes what’s going on and opens up new ways to use both media. And this was definitely not happening in Love Never Dies. This was more like borrowing your sister’s clothes because they look good on her without realizing that you’re different people, and you need to wear something that looks good on you.)

I appreciated the attempts to incorporate the conventions of the sideshow into the performance the same way the original Phantom incorporated the conventions of the Opera. Again, the Bathing Beauty number really stood out for me here, with its quick-change routine, something you rarely see nowadays. And there were lots of circus tricks that were really cool, even if the stage did seem a little too bare to suggest the throng of “freaks,” acrobats, and dancers the songs seem to want. Although, to be fair, it did remind me of the one time I went to Coney Island and saw a circus with my cousins: I had that same stomach-turning sensation of feeling bad for the people onstage for having to go through this.

Arg, you guys, I’m feeling super mean now, especially with that last sentence, which I meant sympathetically and sincerely. But I really did not find anything to like in this show. I guess the mature thing to do would have been not to mention it, but this snarky blog entry just called to me and called to me until I wrote it.

Well, you can take my judgment with a grain of salt: you all know perfectly well that I’ve never written, composed, designed, or performed in a Broadway mega-hit. And I thought all the actual performers were great, particularly the gifted boy playing Gustave, Christine’s son. It’s just… this was a super bad idea from the start. And no amount of post-bad-decision talent can change that.

I actually don’t know what, if anything, there is for me to take from this and apply to my own sequel attempts. Don’t completely change all the characters and make the plot as sexist as possible? I guess maybe the lesson to be learned is that I have to be careful: just because I originated characters doesn’t mean I can write them without thinking hard about what they’re like and what they’d do. And I have to mull over what makes them them, what makes this story unique, mah nishtanah, and make sure I don’t lose that while I’m dancing around with my latest idea-crush.

Or maybe I’ll just write one of these fake musical sequels instead, because the more I look at them, the more they grow on me.

* Well, unless you count The Merry Wives of Windsor as a sequel to Henry V, which isn’t really what we usually mean by the term, despite the former having been written to revive a character from the latter. I suppose you might argue that the history plays are sequels, seeing as how they happen, you know, sequentially, but somehow that seems a different category from the seven Harry Potter books or six Star Wars films.

** Yeah, bored. Because sometimes sexism just makes me go… all of these female characters are Charles Dickens’s idea of a babe, all these dudes are turdbags, who am I supposed to care about again? Bo-ring!