Part 8 of this track-by-track commentary of Love Never Dies deals with the start of Act 2, moving onto tracks 1-3 of the second disc of the the original cast recording.
1. “Entr’acte”
Act II starts off with an energetic entr’acte, beginning with a rendition of “Only For You” that sounds like the galop infernal from Orpheus in the Underworld, segues into a a lilting, more up-tempo version of “Look With Your Heart” than we heard in the show proper before moving into a string-filled arrangement of “Once Upon Another Time”. This is followed, first by an urgent (with a fanfare that sounds like a nod to the overtures of My Fair Lady and (even more so) Camelot), then unabashedly romantic excerpt from “‘Til I Hear You Sing” (bonus points for noticing the nod to “All I Ask of You” in the chorus of the song). A coda that returns us to the “Only For You” theme with some dissoance thrown in for fun brings the “Entr’acte” to a close.
The structure of the piece closely mirrors the “Entr’acte” of The Phantom of the Opera, which starts with an ebullient “Angel of Music” before shifting into a more lilting version of the same song, which then segues into a string-filled arrangement of “Music of the Night” and an unabashedly romantic excerpt from “All I Ask of You” before introducing some dissonance via the familiar descending chords from “The Phantom of the Opera”. Since the original’s “Entr’acte” closed with a piece that signified the villain of the piece, maybe we’re getting another clue here about Meg’s role in the bigger picture of the show itself.
2. “Why Does She Love Me?”
The title of this sequence makes me dread what the song might be like; we’re obviously being invited to attend a pity party here. As an instrumental reprise of “Beneath a Moonless Sky” ending with a cheap-sounding saxophone that sounds like it escaped from Miss Saigon, we arrive in a bar where Raoul is drinking himself into a stupor in a suit he must have borrowed from Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard. In the dialogue, Raoul becomes unwittingly meta-textual, asking “What to do with me? That’s the question, isn’t it? It’s always been the question, ever since the beginning.” Raoul always seems to be near the bottom of the list when it comes to serving up characterisation. The song doesn’t answer the question.
“Why Does She Love Me?” has a delicate melody; it’s very clearly a lament. Laments of regret were a staple of opera seria in the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods and were sometimes used in opera buffe as a contrast to the comic tone of the action in general. Reserved for the heroines of these operas, laments often become popular outside the context of the show because of their appeal to fundamental human emotions. Raoul’s lament seems, in some ways, to be a cousin of the Countess Rosina’s lament of her husband’s infidelity in The Marriage of Figaro, “Porgi, amor, qualche ristoro“, although here is seems to be drink, rather than love, from whom the comfort is sought.
The biggest problem with “Why Does She Love Me?” is that the lyrics generally wallow in the direst self-pity, making it seem as though Raoul has already given up in his ongoing battle with the Phantom for Christine’s affection. Once again, he’s depicted only as a fallen and flawed man, with very little to redeem himself in the eyes of his wife. As I mentioned in my blog about Raoul’s charaterisation when he first appears in Love Never Dies, Ben Elton, Glenn Slater and Andrew Lloyd Webber need to be making the choice more and more difficult for Christine as the show progresses toward the moment where she has to make it. This kind of song kills any chance of suspense in that moment of decision.
Lyrically, there is one somewhat interesting idea here, an attempt at depicting Raoul as a mask-wearer, that he is beautiful and together on the outside and full of “horror, shame (and) despair” on the inside. That’s a fine statement, one that sounds like it should be a defining characteristic of the character. However, in drama, character is action and we don’t see this proposal carried through in Raoul’s actions: there is no mask; the distortion of his inner mind and soul are clearly revealed in his actions. This is certainly true in regard to the behaviour we’ve seen from him earlier, which is a pity, as playing with a mask of this sort might have begun to establish Raoul as a character that offers something truly worthwhile to the play. We see the idea coming together marginally between now and the end of the play, but it’s really too little too late.
Into this scene storms Meg, breaking the mood with the opening melodic phrase of “Old Friends”. She’s there to advise Raoul to leave America with Christine and Gustave – on her mother’s orders. How much more interesting this would be if the impetus came from Meg herself! It would be better for the show too. During this interaction, comes the information that this bar is called Suicide Hall, because desperate people come here to get drunk and disappear by jumping off the nearly pier. Meg comes here to swim, to cleanse her conscience of what Coney Island has caused her to lose. There’s a duality in the register of the lyrics, one meaning giving us – at last – some attempt at a motivation for Meg’s obsession with the Phantom, putting in place a foundation for the “big reveal” we’ll get later in the show and the other, which cleverly distracts us from gleaning too much information from the first almost sounds like she’s manipulating Raoul towards his own suicide before she changes her tune and tries to persuade him to leave, which is her primary tactic for achieving her objective at this point, to get Christine out of the way. It might be interesting to see the manipulator in Meg developed a little more. Would it work to see her try and follow through more in her attempt to convince Raoul to commit suicide? Or would that free Christine up even further in terms of her eligibility as the Phantom’s bride? Or would it perhaps place Gustave in greater need of the Phantom’s care, which Meg desires for herself? Maybe it would, but we also know that Christine has promised to leave after singing the aria because of all the pain the has caused the Phantom during their association. Does Meg know this via Madame Giry who overheard the discussion in question? We don’t know for sure, but it’s possible that she doesn’t. After all, why would she try to get Raoul to take Christine and leave if she knew that Christine had already promised to leave forever after the performance anyway? Does she know at this point that Gustave is the Phantom’s son? Either the creators have assumed that these facts are as clear to us as they are to them, or they don’t know themselves, or they haven’t fully thought through the ramifications of all these scenarios. That’s why some really good proposals in this scene don’t translate into drama that is as effective as it could be.
3. “Devil Take the Hindmost”
Can you imagine how this song got its title? I must admit that, rather cynically, I have an image of Glenn Slater looking at all the entries under the word “devil” in a dictionary of idioms and picking out anything that could even vaguely work. Fortunately, the result here works incredibly well for the situation, as the expression “devil take the hindmost” means “each man for himself” and offers up a chance for some interesting rhymes. Slater is on the thin edge of a wedge here; the rhymes could so easily become self-conscious and contrived, but he seems to quit himself fairly well on that account. What’s even more fun is that he manages to let Raoul’s counterpoint lyrics to be expressed in gambling terms, although the counterpoint itself seems not to leave a question regarding the dramatic sensibilities of inclusion. (What exactly is happening when the counterpoint occurs? They can’t be talking over one another at each other; the score is far too deliberate to signify that kind of Caryl Churchill inspired interaction and the music tells us we’re into the mode of dual soliloquies as it’s already established earlier in this song how interruptions occur in this conversation.)
To get to the song, we have to endure Raoul shouting a little more, this time about how he previously bested the Phantom and therefore has no need to run now. The Phantom appears as if he was summoned by Raoul’s arrogance and they make a deal: if Christine sings, then the Phantom has won and Raoul must leave alone and if she doesn’t, then Raoul has won and leaves with his family and his debts all paid. And in the competition for the prize – you guessed it – devil take the hindmost. It’s definitely a piece in which the gauntlet is thrown down and taken up – the terms are repeated at the end of the song, just in case we missed them, and the Phantom plants a seed of doubt in Raoul’s mind about who Gustave’s father really is – and I think it largely works, except for the moment of counterpoint mentioned above.
So how can that be solved? Easily – by remembering that these two men are not the only players in this game and ultimately both are at the mercy of a far more manipulative villain. How intriguing this would be if Meg was privy to all of this manly gauntlet throwing and took on the same “devil take the hindmost” viewpoint as she eavesdropped. Then we could have all of the counterpoint in the world without sacrificing the dramatic credibility of the scene or trying to justify it with the very poor excuse of poetic license. And once again, we’d be creating a play that deals with its characters instead of trying to hide what’s going on prior to an anti-climactic reveal.
Final verdict: This sequence starts off weak and ends up a lot stronger. The spectacular opening of Act II of “The Phantom of the Opera” has been avoided here (maybe the moment it is being saved for “Bathing Beauty”?) in favour of starting off very low and slow. I’m not sure that this works entirely well and I don’t think the intimacy of the opening interactions between the barman, Raoul and eventually Meg are strong enough dramatically to stand on their own. Perhaps their needs to be some shifting around in Act II so that the act begins with a celebration of the final day of the season (which we eventually get to with a reprise of “Heaven by the Sea” anyway), thereby allowing the scene with Raoul to at least offer some contrast to the situation, even if it might not be any more dramatically effective if left as it stands. Contrast is, after all, along with conflict, one of the essential features of drama. I think that element of personal drama within the public context is what’s missing here; it was so effective in “Masquerade” and it would be nice to see the formula used and manipulated here, as it would have to be – remember, the personal drama in “Masquerade” was also one of celebration and here it would have to sit in contrast to that. In The Phantom of the Opera, “Masquerade” is followed by the Phantom’s entrance as he lays down his challenge to the managers in “Why so Silent”, which segued into a more complex “Notes” sequence. Here these two elements are combined into “Devil Take the Hindmost”, but it would be nice to see it made complex in a way that really works for the dramatic build of the play as a whole, as I’ve proposed in the above commentary.
NEXT UP: Back to the Beach!
Purchases from Amazon.com
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT:
1. Love Never Dies Concept Album Cast Recording.
2. Love Never Dies Concept Album Cast Recording – Deluxe Edition.
Word from The New York Times is that Love Never Dies, which recently opened to decidedly mixed reviews in its debut run the West End, will definitely open on Broadway as planned despite any rumours to the contrary. In fact, Andrew Lloyd Webber has said he’s fully committed to bringing the show to the Great White Way. However, there will be some changes to the show following feedback from critics in regard to the production. Not particularly surprising news, perhaps, but one does wonder what will be changed, in terms of both broad strokes and finer details. Certainly, I’ve voiced my own opinions on the matter in my track-by-track commentary of the original cast album, which can be read on this blog starting here. Guess we’ll have to wait and see…
The eleventh and final part of this track-by-track commentary of Love Never Dies works through Christine’s climactic performance of the title song and its immediate aftermath: tracks 10-11 of the second disc of the original cast recording.
The fifth part of my track-by-track Love Never Dies commentary gets us back on track with the the idea of a displaced formula, which was displaced in the previous sequence of scenes by further exposition. In tracks 13-15 on the original cast recording, we see Christine and the Phantom reunited and the introduction of Christine’s son, Gustave, to the Phantom.
Musical Cyberspace 
LOVE NEVER DIES: Track by Track – Part 12
The final part of this track-by-track Love Never Dies commentary covers the ending of the show, dealing with tracks 12-13 on the second disc of the original cast recording.
12. “Gustave, Gustave”
The title of this track made me chuckle. Why is it that in the Phantom universe, names must always be repeated – and often to a melody? This particular outburst comes from Christine, who has noticed that Gustave is missing. The Phantom immediately thinks that Raoul must have taken the child when he left and he bemoans this using the melody of “The Beauty Underneath”, which works perfectly well here – without the rock beat and throbbing bassline. Squelch is summoned and replies that Raoul was definitely alone when he left, singing is words to a melodic line taken from “The Coney Island Waltz” that seems to be popular choice for recitative in this show. Then Phantom turns his attention to Madame Giry, who says she could never have even considered harming the child knowing that he was the Phantom’s son, a statement that sits more than a little oddly considering how vengeful she seemed towards the boy at the end of the first act. As she continues with her speech, which is sung to the melody used for all such outbursts by this character, Giry also says she understands ‘how it hurts to see one’s own child brought to harm’, which I suppose is meant to prepare us for Meg’s upcoming revelation. Next, Fleck arrives with the news that Meg’s dressing room was smashed and that she saw Meg taking the child, looking incredibly suspicious as she did so. No one seems bothered enough to ask Fleck why she didn’t do anything about it at the time.
Head spinning yet? I hope not, for there is even more desperate plotting to come. Having spent much energy trying to hide any real development towards a conclusion such as this one, the creative team has to work even harder to try and make all of this even vaguely believable.
Giry intrejects, fearing she has snapped but insists that Meg could never hurt the boy. The Phantom seems to know better and miraculously also seems to know where they have gone. This lease to a chase, like there was at the end of The Phantom of the Opera: this time we’re trying to track down a potential murder by running through the streets of Coney Island to the pier. This makes for several cases of mistaken identity as the characters push through the crowd in their attempts to reach their destination. Mark my words, if this was a film it would be a chase by hot air balloon, the one used earlier to bring the crowds to this performance at Phantasma.
13. “Please, Miss Giry, I Want to Go Back”
This is where Ben Elton, Glenn Slater and Andrew Lloyd Webber need to decide what story they are telling. If Christine is the protagonist and the crisis is represented in a choice between Raoul and the Phantom, then this climactic sequence has no place here. The protagonist’s choice is meant to precipitate the climax; thus, either one of the alternative endings I suggested in part 11 of this commentary would bring that story to a close.
If the Phantom is the protagonist (a fact that the creative team seem fond of dropping into press statements, but don’t seem too bother about dropping into the play itself), then the crisis needs to be represented in a choice between Meg and Christine. Meg has not been presented as even vaguely being a viable alternative to Christine in the plot of this show. He simply hasn’t been shown to place any value whatsoever on Meg’s presence in his life. I said above that there is no trigger for Meg’s actions, no pattern of cause and effect: this is because the Phantom arrived on stage with his choice already made. At least if there was a scene in which Meg confronted the Phantom and he dismissed her, kicking her out of Phantasma (his home) and and throwing some money at her (for services rendered) this scene would have some motivation. But as it stands, it does not – and we still have quite a bit of it to endure.
The Phantom asks Meg for the gun, trying to convince her that he sees her at last. He says that he looks at her and sees ‘the beauty underneath’: how ironic, we as the audience are meant to think, we see her beauty is on the outside and that she is twisted and broken inside. Meg seems to buy it until the Phantom makes a mistake by mentioning Christine’s name, at which point Meg shoots her. Giry runs to get help, never to return, and Christine’s long death scene begins.
First, she tells Gustave, who is asking for his father that the Phantom is his real father. ‘Look with your heart,’ she tells him before she dies – or so it would appear. Gustave screams as a big dramatic musical reprise of “Once Upon Another Time” takes over, followed by the Phantom singing a reprise of the same song, lamenting the loss of Christine and wondering what to do with Gustave. Christine – who hasn’t actually died yet – manages to summon up enough energy and breath to sing some really high notes, telling the Phantom to ‘love and live and give what (he) can give and take the love that (he) deserve(s)’. Even after this, she’s doesn’t die. We still have a reprise of “‘Til I Hear You Sing”, during which she asks the Phantom for a last kiss before dying (at last) in his arms.
Following this, the show’s opening flute melody of “Beneath a Moonless Sky” plays, segueing into the Phantom’s “darkness made light” theme, which appeared when he named Gustave as his ‘saving grace’ at the end of Act I. With this, the Phantom turns to comfort Gustave, who unmasks him with out any horror as the curtain falls.
Final verdict: This ending as it currently appears doesn’t work. Firstly, it’s unmotivated by the action of the play. Secondly, it is overly plotty, trying to fit in all manner of narrative detail that has been glossed over earlier in the play and which has caused the scene to appear so unmotivated in the first place. Thirdly, the dénouement pushes the suspension of the audience’s belief to the absolute maximum. It takes too long for Christine to die and she sings far too much when she should be too weak to even sustain normal breath. Maybe the creative team should go and have a look at the end of Carmen to see how to make a death scene truly effective.
The final, final verdict: Is there a good show in Love Never Dies? Potentially, yes. But it is not one that can be realised by making a few cosmetic changes made to the show as it stands. The writing team needs to get the details of the narrative straight, taking into account which storytelling traditions they are manipulating here: melodrama, operetta and the conventions of the sequel. They then need to distill that clarity into the book, the lyrics and the music. Slater, in particular, needs to up his game at this point. And then those revisions can make their way into production, transformed from drama into theatre. Only then will Love Never Dies achieve its full potential.
And that, my friends, brings this track-by-track commentary of Love Never Dies to an end. If you want to read more about the show, click here to see all the blogs about it that are available at Musical Cyberspace.
Purchases from Amazon.com
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT:
1. Love Never Dies Concept Album Cast Recording.
2. Love Never Dies Concept Album Cast Recording – Deluxe Edition.