Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom 2: Love never Dies

[samurainoir]

Just caught a broadcast of the Australian production at me local Cinema.

Terrific costumes, sets, and music was good. Like many monster movie sequels though it suffers from sequelitis from a story perspective. The only reason it exists is as a cash grab for the musical theatre crowd, who obviously enjoyed it from the positive reactions around me. It was an impossible task to top the original, but the Phantom was really toothless this time round.

My one thought is how all pervasive the Tim Burton aesthetic has become. They set it in the Coney Island carnival. Kind of ridiculous and nonsensical if you think about it too hard.

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[ctc]

>They set it in the Coney Island carnival.

....and then KISS showed up!

Don C.

[samurainoir]

Even funnier... in the waning days of Toronto's legendary run on the original Phantom, the producers attempted to squeeze the last dregs out of it by stunt casting Paul Stanley (who unfortunately was critically panned, although I doubt the Kiss fans and Out of Towners that bought tickets really cared).

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[mego73]

Ha, I saw Paul Stanley in the Phantom live and thought he did really good. I was bummed though when I figured out through the internet that either a couple days before or after Gene Simmons came to see the show. I felt like Maxwell Smart (missed it by that much).

[samurainoir]

The Toronto critics rather cruelly (and unfairly) referred to Stanley as the "lisping Phantom" at the time. Although to put it into context, Toronto's production originated with a long long standing run by one of the all time greatest Phantoms, Colm Wilkinson (the original Valjean in Les Miz), who's range, vocally and emotionally blows Stanley out of the water when it came to crafting a very sympathetic Phantom who still callously murders people to music while singing. That is not to say that Stanley can't do a credible job outside of that comparative framework, or that he wouldn't likely outshine the classically trained Wilkinson in the context of a stadium rock concert.

Stanley's Phantom...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qivdw...feature=relmfu

a comparison of 5 phantoms. (I even prefer Wilkinson's to Crawford's).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC5lM...eature=related

[samurainoir]

I'm probably alone amongst a theatre crowd, in my desire for them to license the Universal Monsters Phantom of the Opera for a mashup production using the music and lyrics of Webber's Phantom, and the likeness and costume of Chaney's.