the big Phantom of the Opera post, part 2 - Love Never Dies!
Well, here goes my attempt to sort out my thoughts on Love Never Dies into a somewhat neat and intelligible review! (Haha- we'll see if that actually happens!)
So, firstly, having sat with it for a couple of weeks, my overall feelings toward LND are somewhat different than they were upon my initial listening. Since then I've been re-playing my favorite songs almost non-stop, and I can actually say that it's a truly beautiful score that I honestly love. The initial shock of the more preposterous plot points and out-of-character characters made me rather resistant to loving any part of it, but I think I'm finally at that point where I can be whole-hearted in my embrace of it's good parts, even if I still hate other parts of it. Having seen the Australian production helps a little too, since some of the tweaks softened it's fail to less epic proportions!
On the London recording, I thought the score was uneven, and the pacing and the uneveness of the story added to the up-and-down feeling. (Listening to the entr'acte, which contained all the best melodies, I thought "This could be the overture to a great old masterpiece of the Golden Age of Broadway, why can't we just have this without all the extra junk?") Mercifully, the Australian production, though saddled with the same fundamentally unworkable story flaws, fixed a lot of the uneveness. Once the focus was brought more exclusively on the Phantom and Christine, that concentrated the good stuff to the point where you feel like, 'hell yes, this is the amazing score that was fighting to get out!'
"Heaven By the Sea", though not a bad song, was unneccesary, since the story is not actually about Coney Island, and it just felt irrelevant and out of step with the overall tone; dispensing with it in the Australian production helped a lot. But the most important musical fix in the Aussie show was re-doing "Bathing Beauty". On the London album, it's the most annoying, grating, awful piece of garbage you can imagine, and I would never listen to it again if you paid me. A prime example of how actually writing a bad song is not a good way to satirize bad songs! They made it a tad more melodious in Melbourne, and while I still wouldn't call it great, at least it doesn't make me want to literally throw up anymore! So that helped! I don't know if dispensing with the prologue actually made a difference dramatically, maybe it moves along more snappily without it, but not hearing the strange screechings of the London album's Sally Dexter as Madame Giry is a plus. Apparently the score was recorded before the production premiered, and Sally Dexter was replaced with Liz Robertson for the stage, and I'm not surprised. Sally Dexter's Madame Giry is just awful; the fake French accent is SO over the top bad, and some of the sounds she produces are akin to what you'd imagine a dying howler monkey to sound like. Really not good! (The Aussie Giry is creditable, even if the role is still poorly written.)
But that's where the differences end as far as the score goes, and if you're looking for the best performances of the good material, stick with the London cast. Ramin Karimloo & Sierra Boggess are truly superior as the Phantom & Christine. Their voices are angelically pure and beautiful, and their acting is more genuine and deeply felt. They have crackling, electric chemistry between them, too. I still think they're too young for the roles on stage (and in Ramin's case, too beautiful; I've seen photos of the production, and they didn't even put make-up on him! They just sent him out there with his unmasked half totally unaltered! Except for maybe some Maybelline to make his eyes look MORE dreamy...WTF, you know?), but the Melbourne production didn't do much better in that respect, and Ben Lewis & Anna O'Byrne didn't really deliver anything extra to make up for it. Ben Lewis at least sounds slightly older, which is a plus, and while still a handsome, strapping, leading man type, isn't so ridiculously gorgeous as to make him an implausible Phantom. Anna O'Byrne, however, looks even younger than Sierra Boggess, which adds a strange creepiness to her relationship with the Phantom. (Also she looks REALLY Irish. I suppose there never has been a Christine that actually looked Swedish, but her specific Irishness kind of shatters the illusion a little.) But the most unfortunate thing was that Lewis & O'Byrne had absolutely no chemistry whatsoever, and I've rarely seen a more passionless kiss in any production, stage or screen, which really hurts the show. The only thing that makes LND worthwhile is letting yourself get swept away in the beautiful songs full of romance and longing. The score may still be beautiful, but it needs the real emotion behind it to make it special. Lewis & O'Byrne have nice voices, but their performances are somewhat lukewarm and superficial. Karimloo & Boggess, on the other hand, won me over with their sincerity and made me fall in love with their songs even as the show around them appalled me. Let me just go into a little bit of rhapsodizing here:
"Till I Hear You Sing" - on the London cast recording, as sung by Ramin Karimloo, is possibly one of the most perfectly beautiful things I've ever heard in my life. I'm not kidding. I'm a sucker for a sweeping romantic ballad anyway, but his performance takes it to another level. His voice- what can you say? There just aren't enough superlatives to describe what a revelation it is. I've only ever heard him in Les Mis and PotO, and nothing in either of those productions, fine as his performances there were, gave any indication that this voice was in him. Ranging from delicate and tender to impassioned and soaring, this track sends chills up my spine. And while the mannerisms he has to adopt in order to be Phantom-y are a bit distracting when you listen to this song by itself on continual repeat (and believe me, I do!) his perfect romantic leading man voice still shines through in all it's glory, and always makes me want to weep from joy. Angel of music, indeed!
"Look With Your Heart" - A lilting, waltzing lullaby that showcases Sierra Boggess beautifully. As young as she is, I find I actually prefer her as the sadder-but-wiser, more mature Christine in LND. Her voice is better showcased here, there's a simplicity and a leisurely pace to Christine's songs here that lets her sweetness shine through, whereas in PotO her songs are all pretty big and dramatic and don't as well suit her voice's more crystaline delicacy. (Vocally, Lisa Vroman is my ideal Christine. That woman can SING! She could have easily played Christine even in the days before microphones and never have had any problem being heard and sounding perfect!) But anyway, lovely song, lovely Sierra's voice, I wish I sounded like her!
"Once Upon Another Time" - This has got to be the most exquisite, romantic, majestic, yearning, bittersweet, heart-string-tugging, lost-love-ballad there ever was! I can't really describe how ravishingly lovely Ramin and Sierra's voices are when combined with this music. You just have to listen and be amazed. And if you're not moved by them, then you have a heart of stone, and that's all there is to it!
Those three (and those performances of them) are definitely my favorites. I also quite like "The Coney Island Waltz" with it's dizzy, eerie splendor. As for the rest, my feelings are more mixed...
...To be contined in the next post! Yes, I have VERY mixed feelings and a VERY complex love/hate relationship with this show, and I'm gonna need another day and some more time to get it all out coherently!
So, firstly, having sat with it for a couple of weeks, my overall feelings toward LND are somewhat different than they were upon my initial listening. Since then I've been re-playing my favorite songs almost non-stop, and I can actually say that it's a truly beautiful score that I honestly love. The initial shock of the more preposterous plot points and out-of-character characters made me rather resistant to loving any part of it, but I think I'm finally at that point where I can be whole-hearted in my embrace of it's good parts, even if I still hate other parts of it. Having seen the Australian production helps a little too, since some of the tweaks softened it's fail to less epic proportions!
On the London recording, I thought the score was uneven, and the pacing and the uneveness of the story added to the up-and-down feeling. (Listening to the entr'acte, which contained all the best melodies, I thought "This could be the overture to a great old masterpiece of the Golden Age of Broadway, why can't we just have this without all the extra junk?") Mercifully, the Australian production, though saddled with the same fundamentally unworkable story flaws, fixed a lot of the uneveness. Once the focus was brought more exclusively on the Phantom and Christine, that concentrated the good stuff to the point where you feel like, 'hell yes, this is the amazing score that was fighting to get out!'
"Heaven By the Sea", though not a bad song, was unneccesary, since the story is not actually about Coney Island, and it just felt irrelevant and out of step with the overall tone; dispensing with it in the Australian production helped a lot. But the most important musical fix in the Aussie show was re-doing "Bathing Beauty". On the London album, it's the most annoying, grating, awful piece of garbage you can imagine, and I would never listen to it again if you paid me. A prime example of how actually writing a bad song is not a good way to satirize bad songs! They made it a tad more melodious in Melbourne, and while I still wouldn't call it great, at least it doesn't make me want to literally throw up anymore! So that helped! I don't know if dispensing with the prologue actually made a difference dramatically, maybe it moves along more snappily without it, but not hearing the strange screechings of the London album's Sally Dexter as Madame Giry is a plus. Apparently the score was recorded before the production premiered, and Sally Dexter was replaced with Liz Robertson for the stage, and I'm not surprised. Sally Dexter's Madame Giry is just awful; the fake French accent is SO over the top bad, and some of the sounds she produces are akin to what you'd imagine a dying howler monkey to sound like. Really not good! (The Aussie Giry is creditable, even if the role is still poorly written.)
But that's where the differences end as far as the score goes, and if you're looking for the best performances of the good material, stick with the London cast. Ramin Karimloo & Sierra Boggess are truly superior as the Phantom & Christine. Their voices are angelically pure and beautiful, and their acting is more genuine and deeply felt. They have crackling, electric chemistry between them, too. I still think they're too young for the roles on stage (and in Ramin's case, too beautiful; I've seen photos of the production, and they didn't even put make-up on him! They just sent him out there with his unmasked half totally unaltered! Except for maybe some Maybelline to make his eyes look MORE dreamy...WTF, you know?), but the Melbourne production didn't do much better in that respect, and Ben Lewis & Anna O'Byrne didn't really deliver anything extra to make up for it. Ben Lewis at least sounds slightly older, which is a plus, and while still a handsome, strapping, leading man type, isn't so ridiculously gorgeous as to make him an implausible Phantom. Anna O'Byrne, however, looks even younger than Sierra Boggess, which adds a strange creepiness to her relationship with the Phantom. (Also she looks REALLY Irish. I suppose there never has been a Christine that actually looked Swedish, but her specific Irishness kind of shatters the illusion a little.) But the most unfortunate thing was that Lewis & O'Byrne had absolutely no chemistry whatsoever, and I've rarely seen a more passionless kiss in any production, stage or screen, which really hurts the show. The only thing that makes LND worthwhile is letting yourself get swept away in the beautiful songs full of romance and longing. The score may still be beautiful, but it needs the real emotion behind it to make it special. Lewis & O'Byrne have nice voices, but their performances are somewhat lukewarm and superficial. Karimloo & Boggess, on the other hand, won me over with their sincerity and made me fall in love with their songs even as the show around them appalled me. Let me just go into a little bit of rhapsodizing here:
"Till I Hear You Sing" - on the London cast recording, as sung by Ramin Karimloo, is possibly one of the most perfectly beautiful things I've ever heard in my life. I'm not kidding. I'm a sucker for a sweeping romantic ballad anyway, but his performance takes it to another level. His voice- what can you say? There just aren't enough superlatives to describe what a revelation it is. I've only ever heard him in Les Mis and PotO, and nothing in either of those productions, fine as his performances there were, gave any indication that this voice was in him. Ranging from delicate and tender to impassioned and soaring, this track sends chills up my spine. And while the mannerisms he has to adopt in order to be Phantom-y are a bit distracting when you listen to this song by itself on continual repeat (and believe me, I do!) his perfect romantic leading man voice still shines through in all it's glory, and always makes me want to weep from joy. Angel of music, indeed!
"Look With Your Heart" - A lilting, waltzing lullaby that showcases Sierra Boggess beautifully. As young as she is, I find I actually prefer her as the sadder-but-wiser, more mature Christine in LND. Her voice is better showcased here, there's a simplicity and a leisurely pace to Christine's songs here that lets her sweetness shine through, whereas in PotO her songs are all pretty big and dramatic and don't as well suit her voice's more crystaline delicacy. (Vocally, Lisa Vroman is my ideal Christine. That woman can SING! She could have easily played Christine even in the days before microphones and never have had any problem being heard and sounding perfect!) But anyway, lovely song, lovely Sierra's voice, I wish I sounded like her!
"Once Upon Another Time" - This has got to be the most exquisite, romantic, majestic, yearning, bittersweet, heart-string-tugging, lost-love-ballad there ever was! I can't really describe how ravishingly lovely Ramin and Sierra's voices are when combined with this music. You just have to listen and be amazed. And if you're not moved by them, then you have a heart of stone, and that's all there is to it!
Those three (and those performances of them) are definitely my favorites. I also quite like "The Coney Island Waltz" with it's dizzy, eerie splendor. As for the rest, my feelings are more mixed...
...To be contined in the next post! Yes, I have VERY mixed feelings and a VERY complex love/hate relationship with this show, and I'm gonna need another day and some more time to get it all out coherently!