And just when you think the nightmare is almost over a mere 20 years in (and that’s just in New York), the next round of Lloyd Webber sponsored cultural rape is announced with reports that Andrew Lloyd Webber is planning on opening up Phantom of the Opera 2 – a musical sequel set in Coney Island to open in 2009/2010. It'll be based on the book "The Phantom of Manhattan" by Frederick Forsythe. Cool! Because most of the time sequels totally work when it comes to film and TV so a stage musical version should be just GREAT. Particularly if it’s just the same basic story except set in Coney Island and with more up to date stage craft.
Phantom of the Opera seemed ok in the beginning when it came out and I have to admit that when I was like 14 I was a total Lloyd Webber fanatic. I collected everything he wrote and some of it is actually pretty good. Phantom of the Opera really isn’t included in the list of top quality musicals that have come out of the head of Lloyd Webber and that’s not just because it’s the kind of show the blue rinse set now take a day trip on a bus to the big smoke to see.
Actually, yes it is. It’s sucky because it’s the McDonalds of musicals. At this point it’s a churned out, factory-made kind of show for which actors can easily phone in performances night after night after night and it enables ticket buying people to wallow around at the bottom of the cultural barrel when they decide to spend 200 dollars on tickets for the theatre.
Plus, I’m pretty much convinced that there’s an entire contingent of people from all over the world who think that Phantom of the Opera is an actual opera. It’s for that reason that I really am glad that Andrew Lloyd Webber has deemed it possible for those people’s delusion to continue.
What would the end product be anyway? Requiem for a Dream meets Amadeus on the big stage? Ok, sure, sign me the hell up. I sure hope there are lasers. [source]
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