DETROIT–Andrew Lloyd Webber is taking the long route to Broadway this time with his Phantom of the Opera sequel, Love Never Dies. It has played in London, Australia, Baltimore and even upstate New York before landing in the Motor City as the writer/producer tweaks and refines the production.

This is an “If at first you don’t succeed….” production. It began in 2010, and received pretty wretched reviews from critics and audiences, leading to calls for renaming the show “Paint Never Dries.” Ouch.

With the original Phantom setting box office records since the ’80s playing on Broadway, London and in touring shows, it’s a wonder why producers and theaters wouldn’t immediately get behind this sequel, as well why Weber has had so much trouble with it. It should be like the Rocky franchise. But it shows that no franchise is safe if you don’t get good writing. As anyone will tell you, Rocky II stinks.

The characters are familiar: The Phantom (Bronson Norris Murphy), Christine (Meghan Picerno), Madame Giri (Karen Mason), Meg (Mary Michael Patterson—a graduate of University of Michigan voice and theatre program). In this story, the Phantom was spirited away on trains and boats from the burning Paris Opera House that closes the original Phantom of The Opera, and taken to New York City where for ten years he has been building up a carnival troupe in Coney Island. He has been cared for and doted upon by Madame Giri and her daughter Meg who smuggled him out of Paris. But his aim has been to lure the love of his tortured life, Christine, to New York. And he does this by faking a letter of invitation from Oscar Hammerstein to perform a new composition at a new theatre.

Christine takes the bait and her husband/manager Raoul arrive with her husband and son, but the Phantom quickly reveals himself and the fakery, and Christine—poor girl—gets all stirred up anew by the high-strung man in the mask with the disfigured face. Between the cold, wretched Raoul and The Phantom, there is a trend of sopranos in opera choosing the wrong men.

The set piece and staging evokes the dark seediness of turn of the century Coney Island—a cross between a carnival and Mardi Gras floats in New Orleans. The sideshow characters are dark and menacing, but often were the most interesting people on stage. The atmosphere of the show is macabre, starting with an enormous spooky set piece set stage-right, which kept being dragged on and off the stage—a giant rendering of the Phantom’s mask that looked, frankly, a bit like a huge dinosaur bone.

To call Love Never Dies melodrama is to understate the obvious. At times, the story feels like it reaches all the way to the pinnacle of Spanish tele-novella for storytelling and dialogue. But this is Webber. His style is to blend aspects of opera and musical theatre so that it gets hard to label what you are watching, Of course, it muddles things a bit when Christine is, in fact, an opera singer. The Phantom is such a fixture in our minds at this point that it is difficult for Murphy to rise much above being a cardboard cut-out of the character (though he is making a career out of playing The Phantom). Seriously, if the Phantom reached his arm and hand out into nothing hoping who-I-don’t-know would grab it….Yikes. The acting by the leads often turns to what we call “shmacting” in the business pretty often, but that is also a characteristic of Webber musicals. His Disney-esque productions practically demand arm-on-forehead over-acting. It is so fantastically over-the-top that it invites the more creative patrons seeing it to conjure up parody ideas before Intermission.

But, make no mistake, audiences will love this, even of critics are middling. It is The Phantom. It is larger than life. It is escapism theatre. And it is the type of show, as with the original, that will draw people to see it four and five times, and it will bring people who go to the theater but once or twice a year. Phantom of the Opera is a better story than Love Never Dies and has stood the test of time. Why not? It was written by Gaston Leroux and inspired by real events. And it was done several times before Webber got his hands on it in the 1980s–initially by the great Lon Chaney, whose acid-washed face was the Phantom icon for a half century before Webber’s mask came along. Webber created a crowd pleasing musical off that work, but has struggled to continue the story in a coherent, entertaining way for seven years.

He probably has solved the puzzle now, not unlike when Applebee’s fixes a dish that wasn’t quite right when it first hit the test menu.

The title song is an ear-worm. And there are some other good pieces in the show–”Beneath a Moonless Sky,” “Devil Take The Hindmost.” Picerno is a star, and delivers on Christine’s character and songs from start to finish. Patterson, too, has a lovely voice and is convincing as the jilted Meg. There are two actors rotating as Christine’s ten-year-old son Gustave, Casey J. Lyons and Jake Heston Miller. Miller played for my performance. His vocals are advanced and he is very believable as the clingy child who nevertheless seems so very comfortable amongst the ghouls in the carnival.

Media night was not until the second week of production in Detroit as Lloyd Webber has been in town tweaking and observing the production and audience reaction.

The elderly lady sitting next to me was weeping for the final ten minutes of the show as it reached its tragic climax. I was eating M&Ms wondering how many more times the Phantom was going to reach his arm out into space as his signature gesture. It’s quite a show, but as with just about all of Webber’s big-money over-wrought spectacles, it feels in the end about as stimulating and engaging as a trip to Disney or a plate of nachos from Applebees–both of which are enjoyed by millions of people a year. It will surely please the show-going masses.

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