Spinning on that dizzy edge

I was a HUGE fan of the musical "The Phantom of the Opera" when I was in high school, along with a bunch of my friends. We would get together for study dates and blast the music, sing and swoon along with it, the whole nine yards. I even got to see a production of it in Chicago. My angsty teenage heart always beat faster for the Phantom, and I could never understand why Christine went with the boring Raoul. (In my defense, Michael Crawford's voice was magnificent.)

Of course, looking back now I have to laugh, because in the clash of the trope titans of "Rich Boy Who's Always Loved You" versus "Psycho Stalker/Murderer", I would hope to pick the one less likely to slaughter me in my sleep. (I also have since learned that "subtlety" and "Andrew Lloyd Webber" do not belong in the same sentence.)

I was reminded of this today when I got my weekly email update from a local movie multiplex; it listed a few limited broadcast offerings, including one called "Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies". I was intrigued, so I went looking for information on the show and came across that wiki article. Go ahead and read it, if you dare.

It turns out to be his attempt at a sequel to "Phantom" that went through a disastrous series of openings, closings, rewrites, and recastings, along with odd accidents like "The Daily Mail announced in May 2007 that the sequel would be delayed, because Lloyd Webber's six-month-old kitten Otto, a rare-breed Turkish Van, climbed onto Lloyd Webber's Clavinova digital piano and managed to delete the entire score." It's the technological equivalent of "The dog at my homework!"

Judging from the description, if this musical were a fanfic, it would be the most over-the-top, cracky H/C deathfic ever, and people would be seal clapping at the unbridled id on display. Holy CRAP, ALW, if you were that sulky about the jock character winning over your self-insert, the success of "Miss Saigon", and whatever else you plundered to write that, you should have just posted it anonymously or released it as a vanity cast recording and been done with it, rather than putting it on display for all to see.

I am almost tempted to see it, but I don't think the theater would let me bring enough booze to make it worthwhile.