This cannot be considered a true review because I haven’t seen the production in its entirety, however… what I have seen (which is more than plenty) is enough for me to warrant putting my thoughts down on a post and continue on my merry way.
I’ll be brutally honest… first… if I were to do the last year all over again, I would participate in this show once and that is it. Once is more than I am able to stomach and there has to be a damn good reason as to why I would want to participate in the production a second time and in all honesty it wasn’t worthwhile. So by extension I have been adverse to actually since any kind of production of JCS on stage… unless it is for a damn good reason.
Well is Melanie Chisholm and Tim Minchin good enough reasons? After the following live performance with Mel C as Mary, Tim Minchin as Judas, and Ben Forster as Jesus… For me hell yeah!
After watching Love Never Dies with a friend of mine months ago… I realized that I never got around to watching the 25th Anniversary Concert / Production of Phantom of the Opera. So I borrowed her DVD completely forgetting two things: 1: her version was a non-U.S. DVD region 2: I already purchased my own DVD in the U.S. region
So since I had already watched Love Never Dies with the Australian cast… I had a bad habit of comparing the Australian cast to their Phantom of the Opera 25th Anniversary counterpart roles. Interesting thing to note is that three of the roles in the 25th Anniversary Production of Phantom of the Opera were portrayed by the same actors that were in the original West End production of Love Never Dies when it opened:
CHARACTER
ACTOR / ACTRESS
The Phantom
Ramin Karimloo
Christine Daaé
Sierra Boggess
Madame Giry
Liz Robertson
There is no denying it, Ramin and Sierra are absolutely amazing vocally and character-wise in their respective roles. Sierra’s voice is absolutely exquisite as Christine, she gives that innocent iridescence to the role and provides the growth necessary as she makes a choice between the two men that she had come to realized that she has loved in her young life.
Here is Sierra as Christine as she slowly acclimates herself as the lead soprano in the aria “Think of Me”
And again when she runs to her father’s family tomb to “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again”
Ramin is strong and powerful and is able to give that sense of vulnerability when the one thing he has ever wanted he realizes that he would never have and let’s Christine go in the end. There is something about Ramin that is just absolutely mesmerizing and there is no denying it. Continue reading →
If The Phantom of the Opera was considered a project of the composer’s love to his muse at the time, then Love Never Dies could be the composer’s desire to return to those glory days knowing full well it could never happen.
For over two decades, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber (he was knighted in 1992 and became a life peer in 1997 with the title of Baron Lloyd-Webber, of Sydmonton in the County of Hampshire and sits in the House of Lords) had mentioned the possibility of creating a sequel for the beloved musical Phantom of the Opera that he created in 1986. He started working on the sequel as early as 1990 but did not start composing until over a decade and half later, but lost the score in an announced cat-astrophe, convenient and suspect to be sure.
Three years later the production, Love Never Dies, opened in the West End in London to mixed/negative reviews. During the previews the production was tooled and retooled and retooled again in hopes to garner positive reviews from critics and/or audiences but closed in 2011 after a mere eighteen month run.
The production team, taking what they learned from the West End, redesigned the musical and opened in Melbourne, Australia in May 2011. This time the musical garnered much more positive reviews, it was at Melbourne that they taped the show for DVD and eventually the production moved to Sydney for a limited engagement.
Over the course of the past couple of years there was much hype leading into the opening production with Katherine Jenkins singing her rendition of the title track:
Ramin Karimloo also created a music video of the Phantom’s opening solo of the production featuring the original Christine of Love Never Dies Sierra Boggess:
The original intent of opening Love Never Dies simultaneously at the West End, New York, Shanghai never really materialized with the production in New York to be delayed indefinitely and the Shanghai development ending in favor of opening an Australian production. However, some of us Phantom Phanatics wanted to see the production: Love Never Dies, and were granted a reprieve when a DVD version of the show was to be aired on PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) just a day or two after the DVD officially released in the U.S.
A week or two ago I finally found the time to sit down and watch this DVD… after having heard the soundtrack within months after the initial released I was curious enough to see what the production entailed. Curious to see why it worked in some places and not in others. Continue reading →
Politics, the art of the possible… So says the military in the now revived show of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita (starring Ricky Martin, Elena Rogers and Michael Cervaris), but this post isn’t about Evita, or anything remotely Broadway related… but because I had the song stuck in my head and I feel like starting this post on a musical note:
Anyway! So I was at my grandparents for dinner and on the television was a programme talking about what has been happening around the world. Two months ago an artist/musician was arrested by the secret police and there is a movement in Washington DC to force the US hand in releasing the political prisoner. In fact, the movement take it a step further and is calling upon the U.S. government and others to investigate the human rights abuses and oppression in a country that the U.S. had a hand in many years ago.
In the first week of May, the touring production of Cats the Musical opened for its week long stint in Chicago. For a little bit of history, Cats the Musical is based off a collection of poems from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot, the musical itself was composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber with Lyrics by Trevor Nunn. On the Great White Way, Cats is currently the second longest running musical, surpassed only by Phantom of the Opera (another Andrew Lloyd Webber musical).
When Cats was on Broadway, I never got a chance to see it live, and I don’t believe I ever saw it live on stage. When the video of a stage production came out in 1998, I was more than content with that version that I could watch on my leisure, that is until I realized that there was a scene/song cut from the original production that was not in the film production. If you are a huge fan of Cats then you would know that I am referring to: Growltiger’s Last Stand, incorporating either ‘The Ballad Of Billy M’Caw’ or the Italian aria ‘In Una Tepida Notte’.
My understanding is that Cats is such a long show that most groups that even attempt to put this production together are likely to cut and carve and snip away to make it easier for either their cast, or the audience wouldn’t think that this was such a long show to bear through. This is such an intensive dancing and singing production that it requires a very strong cast that can do both efficiently and brilliantly. This touring production did just that.
