If
Love Never Dies
(Decca Broadway) were simply a new musical without an antecedent, listeners might herald its impressive score. Andrew Lloyd Webber has written a show that begins with an evocative orchestral number "Coney Island Waltz," which brings to mind Richard Rodgers' "Carousel Waltz" and then follows with a diverse array of songs that include "Heaven by the Sea," a jaunty number that sounds as if it comes from the Golden Age of musical theater; "Only for Him," a tune which brings to mind classic French can-cans and more intricate, operatic sequences.
But the musical does follow the iconic The Phantom of the Opera, and while listening to Love Never Dies, comparisons between the two shows are inevitable -- and this new work simply pales in comparison to its predecessor. Nowhere in this musical is there a number with the staying power of the former show's hits "Music of the Night" or its title song (though the electric guitar riffs and pulsing rhythms of "The Beauty Underneath" presumably are meant to replicate that latter song's intensity).
More problematic are Glenn Slater's often banal lyrics and the show's often unpleasant storyline, which comes across all too clearly even on disc. Ten years after Phantom ends, Christine and Raoul's marriage is on the rocks because of his drinking and gambling. Further, two secondary characters from Phantom -- the opera's dance mistress Madame Giry (a coarsely Gaelic Sally Dexter) and her daughter Meg (an occasionally winning Summer Strallen) -- have come to the fore and both are trying to make Meg a star in her own right. There's no doubt the stakes are high for the characters as one listens to the show, but finding a character for whom one can cheer for is a difficult thing at best.
The challenge is made more difficult by the fact that both Ramin Karimloo's Phantom and Joseph Millson's Raoul often sound curiously similar vocally, and their characters seem so equally self-obsessed that Sierra Boggess' sweetly sung Christine really is stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place with the men in her life. The performance that shines most brightly on disc belongs to Charlie Manton, who plays Christine's son Gustave and uses his clarion voice richly filled with emotion to wonderful effect throughout.
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