The second coming of "Phantom of the Opera" will be set in . . . Coney
Island?
Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber announced today that a
long-awaited sequel to his massively successful "Phantom" will haunt the
Brooklyn amusement park not far from where I went to high school.
Cool.
The Associated Press said that Lloyd Webber didn't want to call it a sequel, though. "It's a standalone piece," he said.
"There's unfinished business," he told journalists assembled
for a teaser -- a new song featuring the Phantom, played by Iranian-born
Canadian Ramin Karimloo, and his love interest, Christine, played by American
actress Sierra Boggess.
The new musical will be called "Love Never Dies." It is due to
open in London in March and then staged in New York beginning in November
2010.
The musical picks up a decade after the original's conclusion,
and has the Phantom trading his customary hideout beneath the Paris opera house
for Coney Island.
It kind of makes me laugh because Woody Allen also used Coney
Island as a setting -- in "Annie Hall," his family lived under the monster
roller coaster called the Cyclone. And the submerged Wonder Wheel signalled the end of the world in Steven Spielberg's "A.I."
Lloyd Weber said he wanted to set the piece at Coney Island because, at
its turn-of-the-century heyday, it was "the eighth wonder of the world."
"Think of Vegas and then triple it," he said.
Here's what else AP had to say:
Lloyd Webber said he wanted to produce another musical because the
original's ending, which sees Christine leave the brooding Phantom for his
rival, Raoul, was unsatisfactory.
He sketched out an outline of the plot, saying the
Phantom made his way to Coney Island after losing Christine. The Phantom rises
from one of the attractions at a freak show to control the entire complex,
without ever losing his love for Christine.
Other characters from the original also reprise their
roles.
The original hit musical, a longtime fixture on the London and
New York stages, featured elaborate staging and songs such as "The Music of the
Night," and "All I Ask of You."
"Love Never Dies" had a difficult birth. Lloyd Webber abandoned
a previous attempt at a sequel more than decade ago, saying the story wasn't
right. Frederick Forsyth, who Lloyd Webber said helped him with the idea,
eventually published a novel, "The Phantom of Manhattan," in 1999.
Director Jack O'Brien acknowledged that tampering with such a
wildly popular music and theater franchise was dangerous.
"No one's going to thank us for doing this," he said. "We're
playing around with people's memories."
But he defended the sequel, saying the years of back-and-forth
made it a more solid work.
Arts critic Norman LaBrecht said Lloyd Webber was taking a risk
by putting on such a massive show in the middle of a recession.
"This is a very difficult time to go putting something on in
the West End," he said.
A success would be another coup for the musical megastar, whose
hits include "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Evita." Lloyd Webber's entertainment
empire has made him one of Britain's richest men, with an estimated wealth of
750 million pounds ($1.2 billion), according to The Sunday Times of London Rich
List.
So could there ever be a sequel to the sequel?
Karimloo, who plays the Phantom, said he wasn't against the
idea.
"Maybe somewhere warm," he said, joking that the Phantom "seems
like an L.A. kind of guy."
Lloyd Webber was less enthusiastic.
"There isn't going to a sequel set in Tahiti," he said. "I
don't see how the story could possibly continue."
Posted
Oct 08 2009, 05:31 PM
by
PG Admin19