Love Never Dies - Melbourne Premiere - A few thoughts

(I didn't record this)

I watched the Melbourne premiere of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies. He calls it a "stand-alone piece" on the official youtube channel, although it is a sequel in probably everyone's mind. I thoroughly enjoyed it - the musical plays on some very interesting themes and motifs. I love the musical - no doubt about that - but I'll start on what I found a little... droll.

Themes

Wealth, dominance, sexual possession - if these sound like very masculine themes then you're spot on. Because that's what plays out between Raoul and the Phantom. It is very well-executed no doubt, but the themes are obvious and plays on men's fears. The song "Beneath a Moonless Night" recounts the illicit tryst between Christine and the Phantom before her wedding night before he 'lost' her to Raoul - sexual possession. Guess what? Gustave - supposedly the son of Raoul and Christine - turns out to be the Phantom's. Again the theme of sexual possession crops up. Jealousy a "green-eyed monster doth mock the meat it feeds on" (Iago, in Shakespeare's Othello). It is a subtle theme in the play but one that must be necessarily apprehended if the audience is to understand the nature of the tension between the two men. BUT - you only get the full extent of this tension if you've watched the original musical/movie beforehand.

Feminists and misogynists will find something to say about the musical as well. Feminists will scoff at the way Christine is almost like barter, an instrumental commodity, between the two men. The Phantom wants her voice as a musical instrument, Raoul for its financial value to repay his gambling debts. This is a secondary aspect that gets subsumed under explications of love - those who are trained in social science or literary arts should find it obvious by the intermission.

On the other hand, misogynists will find that Christine Daae is the same character from the prequel: she CANNOT make up her mind and her indecisiveness results in the clash of two very protective/possessive men. Perhaps she's too easily coaxed, unable to assert her own will against a Byronic hero of a Phantom and a wealthy attractive Raoul on the other. In the original, we learn that she is engaged to Raoul. In Love Never Dies, we learn that she slept with the Phantom before her wedding night and became pregnant with Raoul. Well done. I can hear Giuseppe Verdi's La Donna e Mobile on Youtube.

Motifs

I love Webber's knack for smoothly blending several motifs in every scene. The motif of a staged performance, a mask, false appearances and deceit are found in both Phantom episodes. It conveys a sense of underlying tension amidst an agreeable performance. It's analogous to the sociological theory of 'Dramaturgy' by Erving Goffman. Simply put, social behaviour can be broadly classed into two categories: the public front stage and the more private back stage. On the public front stage, social actors/agents seek to successfully assume particular identities but, once they recede into the more private back stage with confidantes, agents engage in less of a 'performance'.

The dramaturgical perspective is best represented by the motif of the Phantom's mask. In the Paris opera house, it is a symbol of superstition and terror, to be feared, the mark of a murderer. That is the Phantom's front stage persona and the one he assumes very convincingly as far as everyone except Christine and Mdm Giry are concerned. But with Christine, back stage in his lair, the mask is "my first unfeeling scrap of clothing". It becomes a symbol of inner pain and torment, an icon of his maligned past hidden beneath his malicious behaviour to everyone else.

The overt-covert idea is reiterated when Mdm Giry and Raoul meet and sing a lovely multi-part "Dear Old Friend" song while trading not-so-subtle words of contempt sotto voce. This blends in well with the setting - it is after all 'Phantasma', where a theme park full of gaiety masks a self-conscious and lovelorn phantom. At this stage one must marvel at his knack for masking almost everything in one way or another, whether when taunting Raoul or habitually popping up behind mirrors of various sorts. The theme of the mask is omnipresent whichever way you look at it, and this remarkable coherence of motifs really, truly impresses me.

Should You?

Yes, you should watch it. But I would recommend watching the original musical first or, failing that, the movie. You'll find that Webber made it a 'stand alone' piece by giving some characters a 180-degree personality change, but other than that it's an apt and short extension of the prequel. The aren't as many memorable music pieces and I won't be surprised if only two in the sequel will actually be remembered, but for a two and a half hour performance it's still worth every penny. Suspend your critical eye for just one night and you'll find that this is a thoroughly enjoyable musical that doesn't require some highbrow background knowledge to appreciate.