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LONDON - It got an opening-night standing ovation but Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest musical extravaganza has received a mixed reception from London critics.
Some said Wednesday that "Love Never Dies" - a sequel to "Phantom of the Opera" set in a Coney Island fun fair - was a thrilling ride, but others felt it lacked Phantom's menace - and its magic.
The Guardian newspaper's Michael Billington said the show has a seductive score but an underwhelming story line. "What the show lacks, in a nutshell, is narrative tension," he wrote.
The Times agreed the plot was "dismally implausible" and Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail bemoaned its slow pace and "a death scene so long that it may only re-ignite the euthanasia debate."
But The Independent gave "Love Never Dies" a five-star review and The Daily Telegraph's Charles Spencer called it Lloyd Webber's finest show since the original "Phantom," with "a score blessed with superbly haunting melodies."
"Phantom of the Opera" is a tale of gothic romance set in the Paris Opera that has been seen by 100 million people around the world since it opened in 1986.
"Love Never Dies" picks up the story 10 years on from the end of "Phantom," with the disfigured musical genius relocated to the bright lights of New York's Coney Island and still besotted with beautiful soprano Christine Daae.
The Daily Mail's Letts said Sierra Bogess - her voice "a soprano of porcelain precision" - was the show's saving grace as Christine, and Spencer said she and Ramin Karimloo as the Phantom "sing superbly . . . with a real spark between them."
While critics said there was nothing in the design to match the crashing chandelier and subterranean gondola ride created by the late Maria Bjornson for "Phantom," Spencer said Bob Crowley's designs, with their use of video projections, were "constantly inventive." Billington agreed that Crowley's design and Jack O'Brien's direction "have a beautiful kaleidoscopic fluidity."
But for many the chills and thrills of the earlier show were gone. Nightingale missed the creepy Phantom who haunted the Parisian opera house. Since moving to New York, he said, he has "clearly taken an anger management course."
He said the show lacked "the menace, the horror, the psychological darkness" that made "Phantom" so spine-tingling.
"Love Never Dies" is scheduled to open on Broadway in November, and in Australia next year.
Lloyd Webber can take comfort from the fact that "Phantom" didn't exactly get glowing reviews when it opened more than 20 years ago. Reviewing the Broadway premiere in 1988, The Guardian said it was "not a musical in which mere storytelling is taken very seriously." London's Times said the musical had "no great romance, no real horror."
Theatregoers thought otherwise. "Phantom" is still playing - the longest-running show in Broadway history.
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On the Net: www.loveneverdies.com
