Good musical but less good sequel

When last in London, I saw the musical "Love Never Dies" and was surprised at just how enjoyable it was. The score was tuneful - the title number was a bit like a damp firework, true, but there were plenty of other cracking numbers, and the incidental music worked well, too, though I thought I could detect a strain of melody or two borrowed from "The Woman in White". The performances were first class. The set was impressive, though I wouldn't have minded a little less projections and a little more hands-on Coney Island props - come on, a real roundabout and ferris wheel would have killed you? I've seen the lyrics criticised, but I didn't think them that bad, really: compared with the ones in "The Woman in White", they're razor-sharp. The pace is good: forget the quip "paint never dries", the action never flags (maybe because of a reworking of the musical some months back). As for the story, it works as a melodrama in its own right.

Yep, there's a "but" coming on. Here it is. BUT what "Love Never Dies" doesn't manage is to work as a credible sequel to "The Phantom of the Opera". There are too many things that just don't fit, and this is presumably what's enraged "phans" the world over and made them hate the show, great tunes notwithstanding. This is a bit hard on Lloyd Webber, as "Phantom" was his baby, and you'd have thought if anyone had deserved to come up with a sequel to it without being punished by fans of the original show it would be him. However, always bearing in mind that there are probably those that would have hated any sequel to "Phantom", however brilliant, Lloyd Webber does commit a few howlers story-wise which even non-phanatics have a hard time to accept.

Rule number one when creating a sequel is, surely, to respect the original. It doesn't mean that the characters must be preserved as if in pickle jars and not develop the slightest little bit in the sequel: I've seen some gruesome examples of "character congealitis" in for instance Pride and Prejudice sequels, where Mrs Bennet is relentlessly silly, Mr Bennet relentlessly sarcastic, Mary always bookish, Kitty always skittish etc. until you're heartily tired of all of them. On the basis of avoiding scenarios like these, I suppose it's defendable to imagine the sweet, sensible, non-envious Meg Giry as having turned into a hard-bitten, slightly unbalanced showgirl who is rather less keen to cede the limelight to Christine than she used to be. After all, it's been ten years! But respect for the original does mean getting the events and the relationships on which the sequel is based right. Where a sequel goes is its own affair (almost - I'll come back to that), but it shouldn't cheat when it comes to the starting point of the story.

This is what "Love Never Dies" manages to do. The problem starts with the obviously mendacious title (I'm a romantic, but really - it's hardly unheard of for love to die, and with a vengeance too). What "love" are we talking about here? Apparently the love between the singer Christine and the Phantom. We're meant to take on board not only that Christine's marriage to the dashing viscount Raoul has failed, but that she has been pining for the Phantom all along, and that she actually spent a night of passion with him - the day before her wedding, no less. Now, ten years later, she has a son, Gustave, who she is convinced is the Phantom's. (How can she know, though? Night before her wedding, remember? So the kid is musical and likes weird things - well, he is the son of a singer, and he's a ten-year-old boy!) It hasn't stopped her from passing Gustave off as the viscount's son and heir, naturally. And so, we are supposed to wait in suspense and hope that Christine will be reunited with her "real" love and Gustave with his "real" father.

Hang on, though. This is how I remember Christine's and the Phantom's story from the original. He comes into her life as her mentor and tutor, passing himself off as "the angel of music" whom her dying father promised would always be with her. This relationship is not romantic, not in Christine's eyes at least. Then Raoul appears and the Phantom gets increasingly possessive and nasty - hence the chandelier incident, by which time Christine has twigged that her tutor's not very angelic at all. The drama winds up with the Phantom taking Raoul hostage and threatening to string him up (he's already casually murdered an opera employee this way) if Christine doesn't agree to spend her life with him. Christine agrees and kisses him. I can't quite recall what happens next, whether the Phantom gives up Christine voluntarily or is forced to, but I believe the former. Anyway he vanishes and Christine is free to marry Raoul.

Very handsome I'm sure to decide not to blackmail a girl into becoming your singing puppet for the rest of her life after all. Still, it's hardly Romeo and Juliet. What the Phantom feels for Christine is an unhealthy obsession, specifically concentrated on her voice. What Christine feels for the Phantom is a mixture of pity, fascination and blank terror. Yet in "Love Never Dies", the premise is that all that kept them apart in the first place was his disfigurement. Well, no, it wasn't quite that easy, was it?

The second thing a sequel should avoid is to mess up a happy ending. This doesn't mean being so slavish towards the original that the sequel becomes nothing more than a drawn-out extension of the happy ending we've already been served. (Again, many P&P sequels are guilty as charged.) There have to be new crises and new dramas, but they should be resolved in a way that is in keeping with the original's intent. Obviously Christine and Raoul were well suited and were heading for a happily ever after - that's what the sugary duet "All I Ask of You" was all about. Why ruin it?

Still, if you don't care that much about "Love Never Dies" making sense as a sequel, I'd recommend you to see it if you're in London before it closes at the end of August. But be warned, there is hardly a character in it at the end that wasn't better off at the end of "Phantom" - and that includes the Phantom himself.