Love Never Dies

Love Never Dies is a romantic musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Glenn Slater, and a book by Lloyd Webber, Ben Elton, Frederick Forsyth, and Slater. It is a sequel to the long-running 1986 musical The Phantom of the Opera and was loosely adapted from Forsyth's 1999 novel The Phantom of Manhattan. The plot is not based on the storyline in the original 1910 novel by Gaston Leroux. Lloyd Webber stated, "I don't regard this as a sequel—it's a stand-alone piece." He later clarified, "Clearly, it is a sequel, but I really do not believe that you have to have seen Phantom of the Opera to understand Love Never Dies." Glenn Slater subsequently explained that Lloyd Webber "didn’t view it as a sequel as much as 'a second story with these characters'". The musical is set in 1907, which Lloyd Webber states is "ten years roughly after the end of the original Phantom", although the events of the original actually took place in 1881. In the show, Christine Daaé is invited by Oscar Hammerstein I for her American debut, until an anonymous impresario contracts her to perform at Phantasma, a new attraction on Coney Island. With her husband Raoul and son Gustave in tow, she journeys to Brooklyn, unaware that it is actually the Phantom who has arranged her appearance in the popular beach resort. Although Lloyd Webber began working on Love Never Dies in 1990, it was not until 2007 that he began writing the music. The show opened at the Adelphi Theatre in London's West End on 9 March 2010, with previews from 22 February 2010. It was originally directed by Jack O'Brien and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell, starring Ramin Karimloo and Sierra Boggess. However, the show closed for four days in November 2010 for substantial re-writes, which were overseen by Lloyd Webber, and it re-opened with new direction from Bill Kenwright. Set and costume designs were by Bob Crowley. The original London production received mostly negative reviews. A subsequent Australian production starring Ben Lewis and Anna O'Byrne, featuring an entirely new design team and heavy revisions was generally better received, although the show finally closed with heavy discounting to tickets. A planned Broadway production, which was to have opened simultaneously with the West End run, was cancelled, the amount of negative press having deterred potential backers.