Review Roundup: LOVE NEVER DIES- Revised

After Love Never Dies' hiatus last month and its subsequent reopening, the theatre critics  returned to the Adelphi this week to give their official verdict on the changes to the show.

The principal characters of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA continue their stories in Andrew Lloyd Webber's LOVE NEVER DIES. 10 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. Christine arrives in New York with her husband Raoul and their son Gustave. She soon discovers the identity of the anonymous impresario who has lured her from France to sing.

David Lister, The Independent: Kenwright's tweaks have given both added focus and added dramatic tension to the show. Gone is the distracting opening with a sub-plot seeming to dominate proceedings, and we are thrown straight in to the coming together of the two principals, the Phantom and his beloved Christine.

Charles Spencer, The Telegraph:The changes clarify the narrative, and, instead of a slow-burn opening burdened with great chunks of back-story, the piece now starts with the Phantom, the chap we have after all come to see, delivering one of the show's finest songs, 'Til I Hear You Sing, in which the tortured hero longs to be reunited with his muse, Christine, with whom, the show reveals, he once shared a night of passion.

Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard: The positive news is that this rather lachrymose companion to The Phantom of the Opera is now more fluid and coherent, as well as more emotionally satisfying. But it is still repetitious, lacks real suspense and suffers from the fact that several key characters feel one-dimensional.

Patrick Marmion, Daily Mail: Lloyd Webber's music fares better, but broods and toils with violins sighing and straining as it yearns to give the story a shove. Instead it merely heaves away, experimenting briefly with prog-rock. And all the stringy melodramatic romanticism merely proves it to be a musical out of time.

Michael Coveney, The Stage: Some new dialogue helps point the need for money on Christine's part. But a reorganisation of Summer Strallen's delightfully brittle Bathing Beauty number is smudged a bit with lumpen male dancers with false tashes. Otherwise, Strallen is superb - a forlorn siren playing her last card.

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