THEATRE TALK: Love Never Dies Suffers From Ill Health

Love Starts To Splutter

It's not been the best of weeks for Love Never Dies. Lead actor Ramin Karimloo was rushed to hospital after experiencing flu-like symptoms which turned out to be something a little more serious. He told fans on his Facebook page: "Hi all it's Ramin. Quick message then More sleep. It's not flu as first was suspected. Blood tests showed a problem and I was rushed for Key Hole surgery last night. Did not see that coming at all. All is and will be fine and I'm determined to be back asap. Just hope I don't start losing the weight I finally started... to slowly put back on. Lol. Much love and many blessings."

Thankfully, Karimloo, who has been playing the role of Mr Y in Andrew Lloyd-Webber's controversial new show since early this year, seems to be on the mend, thanking Twitter followers for their well wishes and telling them he was on the road to recovery, albeit with three more scars. Karimloo will stay off until he is fully recovered, giving understudy Tam Muto the opportunity to have a proper crack at the role, which Karimloo has called a rather "big sing".

Meanwhile, the Broadway run of Love Never Dies has been postponed after Andrew Lloyd-Webber admitted to post-operative problems from his recent prostate cancer operation. His current project, a stage adaptation of The Wizard Of Oz, is being brought forward, while Love Never Dies will now not hit Broadway until 2011. A statement to the New York Times noted: "Lloyd Webber's doctors have requested that he does not take any further long-haul flights for the time being and until the problem has been investigated. This prevents him attending auditions and being part of the pre-production process in New York on the original schedule."

Yeah to Hair

I went to see Hair last week. It was seriously good stuff. I'm not sure what I was expecting to experience, having seen it before and been relatively underwhelmed, but somewhere between the relative intimacy of the Gielgud, along with a warm welcome from the Brit-American mixed audience, and the obvious excitement of the cast, I fell in love with this thinly-plotted but lovely show. Although I'm not one for audience interaction, I loved receiving flowers and propaganda posters and ended up running up onto the stage just like half of the stalls to dance with the cast at the end. The show is full of powerful voices and emotive acting. Gavin Creel manages to make you ache for his choices, while Sasha Allen's gorgeous voice washes over you in opening number 'Aquarius'. But my favourite was far and away Andrew Kober, whose fourth-wall breaking portrayal of the excruciatingly silly role of Margaret Mead cracked me up when I saw it on Broadway - and here. A Broadway legend in the making.

Reports as to how Hair's doing sales-wise seem consistently muddled, with some saying it has a strong advance and is selling well on word-of-mouth and walk-ins, while others say it's already comping and discounting to a worrying extent. Since the West End doesn't release grosses, it's hard to know who's telling the truth, but one thing that you can be certain of is that Hair is a relatively hard sell. It's an American musical that the majority of 'young' people won't really know too much about, and tickets prices are high, high, high thanks to the cost of bringing over an entire Broadway cast and training up their replacements as per Equity rules. Whatever the case, it would be a pity if it closed sooner rather than later - this is one of the season's must-see shows.

Nothing to see here...

Last week I wrote about Wicked's attempt to crack down on those recording illegal audio and video. This has been reported by everyone from the Guardian to the New York Times, generating a great deal of discussion of the issue, which affects many Broadway and West End shows. However, Wicked have now deleted the message off both their Facebook and Twitter in an attempt to stem this - just a little too late, methinks...

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