Andrew Lloyd Webber Never Dies

The theater world was abuzz this past week as Love Never Dies, the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, unveiled its premiere dates and excerpts from the score. You may not have known that The Phantom of the Opera would receive a lavish musical sequel, opening March 2010 in London. You may not have realized that musicals have sequels. Oh, but look at the pantheon:

1. Let Them Eat Cake (1933). Same cast, same writers as Pulitzer-Prize winner Of Thee I Sing. But you can't have your cake and eat it too. 90 performances.

2. Bring Back Birdie (1981). Chita Rivera reprised her role from Bye Bye Birdie; Donald O'Connor stepped in for Dick van Dyke. The two track down Conrad Birdie, teen superstar, vanished for 18 years, to make a comeback. 4 performances.

3. Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge (1989). Played at the Kennedy Center in December but never made it to Broadway. Worse than receiving socks for Christmas.

4. Annie Warbucks (1993). Pretended the other Annie sequel never happened. Daddy Warbucks must marry within 60 days or else Annie will still be an orphan! Leaping lizards! 200 performances off-Broadway.

5. The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public (1994). The Times described the Vegas locale as "an international airport lounge on uppers." 16 performances.

The history of Love Never Dies:
1986 The Phantom of the Opera opens in London, launching Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman's careers, and redeeming ALW for Cats.

1999 Frederick Forsyth publishes The Phantom of Manhattan, set in the early 1900s, in which Christine learns she has fathered the Phantom's son. This same year, Kiri Te Kanawa presents ALW's "The Heart is Slow to Learn," intended for the Phantom sequel.

2001 ALW recycles the above melody for "Our Kind of Love" in The Beautiful Game.

2007 The Daily Mail reports that ALW has worked on the sequel's score... and that his cat Otto deleted it in one fell swoop from his digital piano.

2008 First named Once Upon Another Time, then retitled, the show goes on. A simultaneous New York-London-Shanghai opening is announced, then revoked.

2009 On October 8, ALW held a press event in which the orchestra played the "Coney Island Waltz," reminiscent of Carousel, and Ramin Karimloo sang "Till I Hear You Sing":



The show takes place ten years after the chandelier fell in Paris. Why quibble with the casting of Karimloo, age 31? Or worry about how Charles Strouse (with Annie and Birdie) singlehandedly cursed the musical sequel? Or Ben Elton's lyrics, from which I quote:

And leaves come, and leaves go,
Time runs dry,
And still I ache down to the core.
My broken soul can't be alive and whole
Till I hear you sing once more.

Update: New York magazine was completely inspired by my timeline and decided to create one of their own, which reminded me that Joel Schumacher directed the Phantom film because of the passion he lent tortured, trapped artistic genius Colin Farrell in Phone Booth.