‘The principal characters of The Phantom of the Opera continue their stories in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies.

Ten years after the mysterious disappearance of The Phantom from the Paris Opera House, Christine Daaé accepts an offer to come to America and perform at New York’s fabulous new playground of the world – Coney Island.

Arriving in New York with her husband Raoul and their son Gustave, Christine soon discovers the identity of the anonymous impresario who has lured her from France to sing.

This brand-new show is a roller coaster ride of obsession and intrigue…in which music and memory can play cruel tricks… and The Phantom sets out to prove that, indeed, Love Never Dies.’

For 23 years followers have debated whether a sequel should be produced and wished that the original ending saw the Phantom happy at last. I would have always chosen the Phantom, as I’m sure all female ‘phans’ would have. His desperate need to love and devotion to Christine held a melancholy that was so intense his pain played on your mind days after the show.

And so, expectations were high when I entered the Aldephi Theatre, with hopes that Christine would finally give in to the Phantom’s pleas. With a worldly fan base waiting with baited breath for the sequel and with favourites to compare to such as ‘All I Ask Of You’, Andrew Lloyd Webber had a heavy level of expectancy to live up to.

The play opens with a familiar nod to the beginning of the first Phantom, with a black and white setting and Coney Island ‘Phantasma’ shut down and deserted, much like how the auction begins. We are then plunged back to the time when Coney Island was at the height of its fame and we are suddenly presented with the most stunning visual affects to the ‘Coney Island Waltz’. The use of imagery and screen projection is immense, and it is clear that the production team have gone all out, resulting in effects I have never seen before in any stage performance. The imagery varied from being extraordinarily complicated including spinning Ferris wheels to beautifully simple, such as rolling smoke cast with shadows of galloping horses portraying the ghosts of the theme park. The combination of lights, dizzying displays of all sorts of amusements and stage performers swinging from the ceiling and throwing fire consumed the audience with wonderment. This early scene was likely to be one of the best parts of the musical, simply due to the strength of the effects and how it lured you into of a world of fantasy, distortion and excitement. The sense of Coney Island infiltrated the audience and suddenly we were back in 1907, New York.

Of course, it is the Phantom we were eagerly waiting to see, and I heard a few faint gasps when he finally made his long awaited return to us. Seemingly as taunted as ever, his pain of the last 10 years without Christine is conveyed to us in the haunting melody, ‘Til I Hear You Sing Again’, sung beautifully by Ramin Karimloo.  This is the most powerful performance of the show with the piece being reminiscent of the standards of the original songs such as ‘Music of the Night’ and with Ramin portraying the depth of the Phantom’s prolonged despair passionately.

On the return of Christine Daaé, played by Sierra Boggess and Raoul (Joseph Millson) I felt quite unsure on Raouls decline into a bitter, unhappy and uncaring husband, with an extensive gambling debt and apparent drinking problem. To make the production flow seamlessly, I suspect they had to show some cracks in the fairy tale portrayed in their relationship 10 years before to allow some room for a possible rekindling between the Phantom and Christine. But I found it hard to believe Raoul’s character would change so dramatically, when before he was the daring hero who would die for Christine’s life.

When we finally see the Phantom and Christine reunite with the song ‘Under A Moonless Sky’, the chemistry between them was as strong as ever, and the small distance between them and wanting to touch yet resisting brought back the sense of yearning and the twisted love affair that was before. But the circumstance of what they sung is slightly bewildering as it was clear from then on, the production is based upon an event that didn’t occur in the original, and we are enlightened to it during this performance. It was slightly difficult to get past the unfamiliarity of the news of what has occurred since we last saw them together, and this I feel is what throws you during the scene, but once we settle into the performance, the story line and how it interrelates with the original becomes apparent.

The musical continues with spectacular visual effects, from singing heads to walking legs with a skeletal torso, all taken from the Phantom’s talent for architecture and production (this is more evident if you have read the original novel by Gaston Leroux) and an extension from his trickery of rotating mirrors, singing walls and hidden passageways within the Paris opera house in the first production. What has been achieved in Love Never Dies in terms of the Phantom’s imagination and mechanisms is extraordinary, and left the audience completely baffled.

Performances such as ‘Love Never Dies’ by Sierra Boggess were truly outstanding and deserved a standing ovation purely for her vocals in this scene. Andrew Lloyd Webber made a fantastic choice in casting Sierra as the voice that has entranced the Phantom for so long.  However, there is a change to the musical style we are used to hearing from Andrew Lloyd Webber, such as ‘Bathing Beauty’. I understand that it represents the Phantom’s lack of passion for music since Christine’s departure and that he has lost his musical voice, but compared to ‘Point of No Return’ which the Phantom wrote for his Opera ‘Don Juan Triumphant’, it was an incredibly different type of song which I feel will surprise the audience, although still, a fantastically entertaining scene.

The characters have all developed quite substantially; Madame Giry has become bitter, whilst her daughter has become obsessed with the Phantom and of course you then have Raoul drinking in a bar contemplating his marital issues. Another character aspect that was evident was the Phantom’s sudden lack of mystery and sense of being a tortured individual. In contrast, he doesn’t seem to be shy from humanity, although this can be accounted for by being surrounded by his ‘circus freaks’ and he appears less volatile, yet his insecurities can still be seen on some occasions, for example when he unveils his mask . In the original, when the Phantom appeared, a sense of irresistible mystery took hold of the audience, yet even though he often appeared at doors and out of nowhere in Love Never Dies, the build up to his appearance and tense atmosphere wasn’t as present.

Nevertheless, I feel that the highly anticipated sequel will serve just as many years as the original and will have the ‘phans’ in love with the Phantom all over again. What is to be remembered is that we have been watching the same version over and over again, and have formed our own opinions of how the story should continue, and so it takes a little time to adjust to how characters and story lines have developed over the years from what we knew so well. The production itself was visually stunning, and it’s worth going purely for this let alone for the famous love affair and beautifully composed melodies like ‘Til I Hear You Sing’. The tragic ending was heartbreaking but stayed true to the twisted fate of the Phantom’s love affair with Christine. Despite a story line that I shall have to adjust to, Love Never Dies is the sequel which left me yearning to go back until I hear the Phantom sing again.