I love his unmasked face and bald head! I just want to hug him! He looks fantastic! And what a hunk Ramin is in those leather pants! *roawr*

I see your point DD, and have been thinking about this myself.

What, in your opinion, is the problem with someone starting a large number of threads in a short time?

And then I'm not talking about duplicate threads, or spamming, but "legitimate" threads, in the sense that they raise a valid question, or contain a good topic of discussion?

I've got some ideas of my own around this, but would like some input from others, too.

The original review thread was intended for personal reviews, but has branched out into discussions also about reviews posted elsewhere. Which is great, since only a limited number of actual posters here so far had seen it.

But this has also meant that the direct discussions with people who have seen it and what they thought of their experience has got a little lost, when we review reviews from other sites and reviewers, too.

Now that the show has officially opened, and as time passes, we'll hopefully get more personal "I've seen it and this is what I thought" reviews, and we'll be able to have more direct discussions with people who have seen it, too.

I'd like the original thread to focus on personal reviews, and this thread to be the more "third-party" type discussions we've had in the other thread up until now.

Hopefully I've made myself clear over the intention of this thread, please don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions.

Thank you everyone who has posted links to "external" reviews in the other thread, it'd be great if you posted them here, too!

*****

ETA: I've just seen that the last two pages of the other thread is posts with links to reviews... That'll teach me not to sleep at night, I should've kept my eyes glued to the screen instead.

Would it be better to start a new thread for personal reviews of the show instead?? And let the original thread more of a mixed one?

All input welcome.

My main reason for trying to separate personal reviews from third-party reviews, is that I want to make it easier to discuss people's personal experiences...

D'oh! That's the last time I Iet my perverted brother use my computer!!!

Why are your teeth yellow?

THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE. It's a documentary about VOGUE magazine and is very much like a real-life DEVIL WEARS PRADA. Heck, Anna Wintour's (editor of VOGUE) assistant even resembles Anne Hathaway in some measure.

It was a fascinating insight into the magazine publishing world. Jeez, they waste a TON of money on photo shoots that wind up not being used at all.

Meg, most definately. She's strikes me as the fan-girl type. :D

Who is most likely to sdopt a litter of abandoned kittens?

I don't really like reviving threads such as this one, but I had an idea. I figured this would be the best place to post it, as I can easily turn it into a complaint.

Recently, I've noticed that some members (I won't mention specific names, although I can if I must) are starting a lot of threads in just one day. It's one thing to start a thread every day, but when you make two or three a day? That's just over-doing it a little, I think. I was thinking that a rule of some sort can be made about it; maybe you can only start a new thread once a week or something. I'm not sure as to what exactly the rule should be. I just think that there should be some regulations about new threads.

Just an idea...and I totally understand if it would just make things harder for the mods.

Quote:

Just my opinion, but I think Broadway is more cynical and a harder sell to investors. They get so many more shows than Australia.

I think this is a new review---negative.


THEATERMANIA


Reviewed By: Natasha Tripney · Mar 10, 2010  · London

Sequels are always potentially dangerous ground, and this has certainly proved to be the case with Love Never Dies, Andrew Lloyd Webber's follow-up to his most popular musical, The Phantom of the Opera, now at the Adelphi Theatre. The new show, directed by Jack O'Brien, turns out to be muddled and baffling, and full of moments of unintentional humor. It is also unlikely to satisfy existing Phantom fans nor attract new ones.

The story is set 10 years after the events of the original. The Phantom (Ramin Karimloo) has fled to America -- specifically to Coney Island, where surrounded by freaks and circus folk he has created his own Barnum-style attraction, Phantasma. Meg Giry (Summer Strallen) and Madame Giry (Liz Robertson) have accompanied him across the Atlantic and Meg is now topping the bill there nightly, desperately seeking his approval.

Without revealing his identity, the Phantom invites his former object of affection, the soprano Christine Daae (Sierra Boggess) to perform an aria he has written for her. Not surprisingly, she accepts, arriving with husband Raoul (Joseph Millson) and young son Gustave in tow. She needs the money, as Raoul is now a drunk with heavy gambling debts. Once more, she ends up caught between the two men, and the lack of suspense in who will win out is one of its most problematic elements: Christine's mind seems made up from the start.

Despite the contributions of four different people to the book -- Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton, as well as the lyricist Glenn Slater and the novelist Frederick Forsyth -- the dialogue is peppered with clunky exposition. As a stream of Vanderbilts and Astors spill off an ocean liner, a well-informed crowd member points out Christine and remarks that though she is still pitch-perfect, it's like "the flame has gone out or something." Later, much is made of the significance of little Gustave being 10 years old in case the slower members of the audience have failed to make the connection.
Musically, it's a mixed affair in every sense. There are rock numbers and music hall pastiches as well as the obligatory ballads. "Devil Take The Hindmost," the Phantom's showdown with Raoul, is suitably peppy, and the Phantom's first duet with Christine, "Beneath a Moonless Sky," is fairly powerful, although more for the strength of their joint vocals then for the song itself. Christine's big emotive number, "Love Never Dies" (which is partly recycled from an earlier Lloyd Webber/Elton collaboration, The Beautiful Game), is rather limp in comparison. Worst of all, hardly any of the music digs its way under your skin.

Karimloo has an impressive voice and a measure of stage presence, yet he comes across as more eccentric than menacing. Boggess has a lovely voice, as well, but her Christine never seems particularly conflicted or troubled by the situation she finds herself in. She seems most comfortable in her scenes with Gustave (the role is split between seven young actors; at the performance I saw he was played, with a strong sense of timing and considerable vocal skill, by Harry Child). Saddled with a sliver of a role as Raoul, Millson has little to do but look cross and slink off.

Bob Crowley's projection-heavy design veers from the effective and elegant, in the moon-lit prologue and a later bar scene, to the ridiculous. The Phantom's tower-top aerie is truly a sight to behold; it's a cross between a Bond villain's lair and the Addams Family's attic.

I have never seen it.

I predict the next person has a good explenation for their display name.

Oh, thank goodness... he does look older, more age makeup, and a "better" receding hairline. Well, that's good. Huh, perhaps the show really was nicely polished last night.

Still, dreadful book, and mind-numbing lyrics... but I have to say, as long as Mr. Y is showing his age a bit, I'm actually much happier about the whole thing. Wonder why they didn't have all that makeup for the "promo" shots, it just seemed to put a lot of people off...?

P.S. Still so disappointed with the bland costumes... *shrugs*

EDIT: Here's some select "Ramin Pics" from the above album, from his Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid ... id=395568&id=172180285290

Law Abiding Citizen and I love it. He is so me. Forget for a second that I'm the worlds hugest GB fan (that he played phantom was just a bonus) but he is me... only I've never been locked up for longer than seventy eight hours at a time and if I ever killed anyone I wouldn't admit it. Also as much as the pigs would like I aint dead, much less by my own hand.

I farted and it was a good one!!!

Why does your computer say you have porn inflicted viruses?

Save some for me,!!! My kids are the only people I know who like them and they like them just to spite me and thwart my plans. I order pizza on my way out the door for work and leave money for it and order one with anchovies and hot peppers just to make sure there is pizza left for me when I get home and when I get home my pizza is gone and I have four generations (my grammy rest her soul, my mother in law, my wife and her sisters, and my kids) of women who swear it's the best thing they've ever eaten and now I can't order a pizza unless it has anchovies on it and a lack of hot peppers starts more female bitching and moaning than I care to hear.

Sardines... at least these are still safe to eat peacefully unless my boy sees it or just smells the oil from the other room.

I wish but sadly I don't travel well... if I enjoyed myself fifty people would be complaining so why bother.

I predict the next fan has seen Law Abiding Citizen and loved it right up until GB got killed.

Granted but all your students fail and blame it on their teacher.

I wish I could squeeze a hundred and five dollars extra out of my budget right now or in the near future. A small town firefighter from a little town in Illinois invented a "drag strap" for the possibility of downed firefighters and I got to watch him demonstrate it tonight. It has lots of other useful applications but his lawyer has advised him not to acknowledge or endorse these and to only market it for what he invented it for. He's got them priced at 35 apiece which just about covers materials and labor. I'd like to have one in my gear, one in my POV, and one just hanging around with all the other bullshit I buy to have in case I need to replace stuff... total one hundred five dollars. I'd also like to have one on each of my rigs (I got two), one in my water rescue bag, and one in my vessel ff bag... but each of those would require approval and purchase by a bunch of tight asses who aint gonna do it.

There was an article about it opening on the news earlier this morning. They interviewed some of the fans coming out of the show and the reaction did seem very positive in most of them. However, they did say that there was a lot of divide over fans that’d seen it previously, judging from the negativity reviews from many people who'd seen the previews, but the overall love for it that seemed to be coming from those who had seen it last night. It seems like this is going to be a ‘Marmite show’: love it or hate it.

Granted, but thanks to Climate Change all you get is rain.

I wish these papers would just mark themselves.

how would it manage to make it to australia and not broadway? I would think other way around. it Will make it to US and not aussie territory.

and EDIT: it just got another positive review..wow

I put together a list of the main professional reviews with a quote from each for a mailing list I belong to. I'll put it here too without the links, most of which are already here.

My general feeling is that this show is not a trainwreck but although a number of reviewers (and audience members) have found much to like about it, it won't come close to the Phantom of the Opera in the devotion or number of its fans, in its financial success, or in its longevity. It might not transfer to Broadway, but I'm guessing that it will go to Australia.


I think the main reviews have been posted. There might be more, but the biggies are up.

The reviews are mixed. The show has gotten everything from 1 to 5 stars on a scale of 5.

Charles Spencer's in the Telegraph is a rave.

"What I have no doubt about whatever is that this is Lloyd Webber’s finest show since the original Phantom, with a score blessed with superbly haunting melodies and a yearning romanticism that sent shivers racing down my spine."

Paul Taylor of the Independent also likes the show a lot although he concludes with this:

"There's one issue on which on which I might side with the "phans". The ending (which I won't give away) feels phoney in the unconvincing completeness of its resolution. It makes what has preceded it abruptly feel a good deal less than the sum of its parts and cries out for more ambiguity. In short, it should be "phixed"

Michael Billington of the Guardian thought there was much to enjoy but comments

"What the show lacks, in a nutshell, is narrative tension. For Christine, having discovered her employer's true identity, the big question is "to sing or not to sing?". The result is a foregone conclusion."

Both of the two most influential critics, Ben Brantley of the New York Times and Benedict Nightingale of the London Times do not like the show.

Brantley:

"...And its plot is so elaborate and implausible it makes the libretto of “Il Trovatore” read like a first-grade primer. If you don’t know the first “Phantom,” you will be very confused; if you do know the first “Phantom,” you will also be very confused."

Nightingale:

"...But then this Phantom is not the phantom we knew. The “poisoned gargoyle who burns in hell” has clearly taken an anger management course in New York. True, he fills his eyrie with oddities, like the skeleton who pushes a cocktail trolley, but he’s very much the considerate gentleman, eager impresario and, soon, doting father. Would he whimsically hang the backstage crew or send a chandelier crashing into a crowd? Not any more."
AND
" Where’s the menace, the horror, the psychological darkness? For that I recommend a trip to Her Majesty’s, not the Adelphi."


Matthew Hemley of The Stage:

I suspect Love Never Dies will undergo several changes over the next few months and it will probably make these before it opens on Broadway later this year, where the show’s American setting will undoubtedly boost its appeal. But until then, Love Never Dies, unlike The Phantom of the Opera itself, will remain a once is enough show, though not the car crash some had been forecasting.

Michael Billington of the Guardian:

"Ramin Karimloo's Phantom may not have the tragic quality of Michael Crawford's prototype but that is hardly his fault: the character is now more a mildly disabled Kane (of the Wellesian variety) than a social pariah.

"Although Lloyd Webber's score is full of gems, in the end a musical is only as good as its book. With a libretto to match the melodies, this might have been a stunner rather than simply a good night out."

Quote:

Perfect, what can I say? That's exactly how I am feeling. Beside the cliches, the characters are all twisted to fit the plot. Nobody seems the same and not for the best.

I agree with everything you said, although sometimes I like sequels. But Phantom definitely didn't need one. And such a bad one!

Nope.

I predict the next person is going on a trip!

Ramin actually looks completely different and definitely older in these pics. The Phantom is not as pretty as he appeared in the preview shots. I think he looks appropriate here, and am I the only one who thinks Sierra looks similar to a more mature Emmy Rossum?

Thank you!!

I'm so conflicted in regards to this thing. On the one hand, I think the plot is ridiculous and contrived, and the characters are distorted beyond recognition.......but the MUSIC is gorgeous.

*head desk*

Some of the costumes are very reminiscent of Ragtime...which shouldn't be surprising...both are set in early 1900's America.

But...wth at the projection of Christine while Ramin is singing "Till I hear you sing"??? Thats just..............LAME! Why is she shimmering?

1) Daily Star
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/latestnews ... ation-for-Phantom-sequel/

2) Short Article: www.skynews.com.au/showbiz/article.aspx?id=438336

3) http://hearts-blood.livejournal.com/177213.html

4) http://fierceandnerdy.com/?p=14122

Here's a link to photos from opening night of "Love Never Dies", with the stars of LND, plus Gerard Butler, ALW, and many other celebs:

http://wooller.com/?page=11280&offset=72