It's over now, the music of the night. Except - not quite.

WARNING: MAJOR PLOT POINTS REVEALED BELOW.

To begin with, I have two facts to confess:1. I don't much care for Andrew Lloyd-Webber or his musicals.
2. I am irrationally obsessed with The Phantom of the Opera.

These two facts may seem incongruous, bit there has always been something incongruous about the appearance of The Phantom of the Opera in Lloyd-Webber's catalogue of mass-produced hits.  Opening in 1986, it is the second longest running show in the West End and is by far and away Lloyd-Webber's most successful musical, having grossed over $5.6 billion dollars worldwide, making it, in fact, the most successful musical ever made.

I first saw Phantom when I was fourteen, having listened repeatedly to the Original Soundtrack (on tape, recorded from a CD borrowed from the library).  I walked out of the theatre in a daze.  There was something about the show that drew me in and overwhelmed me.  It's not without its critics, who find it overblown and ridiculous, but my teenage self was seduced, by a disfigured genius with the voice of an angel.  Perhaps I saw something of myself in the Phantom - an odd child, struggling to fit in - or maybe I'm just a sucker for a man who can sing.  Because boy can the Phantom sing.  Which was one of the reasons why Gerard Butler was such a disastrous fit for the 2004 Joel Schumacher film adaptation.

The Phantom enters virtually every scene voice first - it is the means by which he seduces and controls Christine, the young chorus girl who he falls in love with.  Back then, I couldn't understand why Christine would choose Raoul over the Phantom; a man whose love for her was so powerful that he was willing to kidnap her.  As the years passed I came to understand why Christine had opted for Raoul - a somewhat wiser choice than a manipulative, possessive murderer.  But my heart still aches for the Phantom in that final scene, realising that forcing Christine to stay with him won't make her love him.  It's over now, the music of the night, he heartbreakingly sings, before vanishing without a trace.  A fitting end to a tragic tale.

Or not.

When I first heard that Andrew Lloyd-Webber was planning a sequel to Phantom, I had my doubts.  To continue the story would seem to make a mockery of the ending of the original show.  Christine had chosen Raoul, the man she loved.  The Phantom had accepted her decision and disappeared, leaving them in peace at last.  So how could the story possibly continue?

These concerns, added to the poor reviews that Love Never Dies received when it opened in 2010 meant that, despite being a Phantom devotee, I didn't bother to fork out the cash to go and see it during its truncated West End run.  However, I recently became aware of a DVD recording of the Australian production, which opened in 2011 in Melbourne.  It had undergone substantial revisions from the original London show and received more favourable reviews, so I decided to give it a go.

The production itself looks good.  There are fireworks and smoke and lavish sets.  Ben Lewis as the Phantom has a strong, if unexceptional voice, but hams it up a little, which is impressive in a show as hammy as this.  The makeup department seem to have skimped on the prosthetics - like Butler's Phantom, Lewis' 'horrific deformity' seems to be little more than a slight skin complaint on one side of his face.  Anna O'Byrne as Christine has a fine voice too, but her Christine is a little insipid.  One plus is Jack Lyall as Christine's son Gustave - adorable and with a fantastic voice.

Musically, Love Never Dies is very weak, even by Lloyd-Webber standards.  The title track, sung as an 'aria' by Christine (like Phantom, Love Never Dies also features 'shows within the show') is a pretty enough tune, but not strong enough to carry the show the way "The Phantom of the Opera" carried its predecessor.  "'Til I Hear You Sing" is a poor relation of "The Music of the Night"; the burlesque numbers are atmospheric but uninspiring; the song that young Gustave composes, which is supposed to reveal his genius, is, quite frankly, terrible; and the recitative sections grate on the ear, with the snippets of themes from The Phantom of the Opera only serving to highlight the superiority of its score.  The only song that holds its own is "The Beauty Underneath", an electric, synth-pounding mesmeric set piece, following the Phantom and Gustave on a dizzying trip through the Phantom's 'Phantasma' Freak Show.

Plot-wise, the libretto reads like a piece of fanfiction I might have written after leaving the theatre that first time.  The idea of Christine having a night of passion with the Phantom before her wedding stretches credulity.  Even more preposterous is the notion that he would leave her after such a liaison.

The second suspension of disbelief is the character assassination of poor Raoul.  He is a little dull and dimwitted in Phantom but he is essentially a kind man who cares deeply for Christine.  In Love Never Dies he is a drunk and a gambler with debts, who is rude to his wife and ignores his son.  Of course, this all makes it easier for the audience to stomach Christine's infidelity, but he is completely unrecognisable as the Raoul from The Phantom of the Opera.

The Phantom here is more accessible than in The Phantom of the Opera.  As with the cemetery sword fight in the film version, this removes much of his mystery and, therefore, his ability to terrify.  In Love Never Dies he comes across as a bit of a wife-stealing sleaze, who hangs out in bars and is no more powerful - or interesting - than any other man.  Daddy issues aside, it's a little perplexing that, having spent three-and-a-half minutes declaring that he appreciates the beauty underneath of the characters in the Phantom's Coney Island freakshow, Gustave should scream in terror and sob that it was "horrible" when confronted by the Phantom's frankly rather minor deformation.

Meg's obsession with the Phantom comes a bit out of leftfield, as does her sudden revelation at the end that she has been working as a prostitute to pay the bills.  It all seems a rather contrived way of killing of Christine to give the Phantom an angsty lover-dying-in-the-arms moment, and leave poor Gustave with an unenviable choice between two emotionally unstable fathers.

Andrew Lloyd-Webber has stated that although Love Never Dies is a sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, it can also be viewed as a standalone musical.  As a standalone show it is nothing more than an unexciting, cliched melodrama with an underwhelming score.  As a sequel, it is a terrible betrayal of the the characters and plot of the original story.  For me, the story of the Phantom will forever end with an empty chair and an abandoned mask.

This production of Love Never Dies comes bundled with a recording The Phantom of the Opera 25th Anniversary performance at the Royal Albert Hall.  If you can't afford to see a theatre production (and even if you can) this is well worth a watch.  It's a bit more static than the original due to staging constraints, but it is a fully acted, well-produced version.  He's not everyone's cup of tea, but I think that Ramin Karimloo's performance as the Phantom is my favourite (he played Raoul when I first saw Phantom).  Dramatically he certainly does and I think perhaps vocally as well he may even eclipse Michael Crawford, who for many years was my definitive Phantom (though admittedly I was too young to ever see him on stage).

Watch The Phantom of the Opera and be blown away by a powerful story of warped love and obsession and the true meaning of beauty.  But don't bother with Love Never Dies, unless you want all that shattered.