At least a hundred people are milling around outside Her Majesty's Theatre in London's West End, peering through the doors. A few try to cajole their way past the sentries armed with clipboard shields. Inside, the theatre is full, and backstage one young Canadian convinces himself that he's not nervous, not at all.
So why would all these people fight their way into crowded, downtown London when they almost certainly have jobs and children that need attention, or at least toenails that need clipping? As the lights dim in the theatre and a screen descends, the answer appears: Our business here relates to "the most successful single piece of entertainment of all time."
What, bigger than Gone With the Wind ? More orc-tacular than The Lord of the Rings ? The statistics continue to roll on screen .... More than 40 million albums sold. A stage run of 15 years in Germany, 16 years in Japan (it's nice that a taste for musical theatre brought these old allies together rather than, say, a renewed interest in world domination). In the pit, the orchestra is playing a maddeningly familiar tune.
A handsome young man walks out on stage, carrying something small and white in his hand, which looks, from a distance, like an evening purse - but it is in fact a small white mask, of the sort that would cover a terrible facial deformity, if you happened to be a crazed, lovesick, artfully deformed composer trapped in the Paris Opera. This is the launch of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies , the sequel (as the screen is now reminding us) to the most successful musical ever, The Phantom of the Opera .
On stage, the young man walks through a bank of dry ice and begins to sing a soaring ballad, the strings swelling around him:
" 10 long years living a fade of life
In my mind I hear melodies pure and unearthly
But I can't give them a voice
Without you, my Christine!
My Christine! Lost and gone! Lost and gone!"
Now, either you're weeping at this point, or you've put the paper down and gone to get yourself a Pop Tart. If you're a weeper, you're probably a woman, one of the legions who loved Phantom of the Opera from the moment it opened in 1986; you own one of those 40 million albums; and you are already planning to buy tickets to Love Never Dies when it debuts in London in March, 2010, and New York the following November.
The young man has reached the eye-popping crescendo of his big number, Till I Hear You Sing , and while he's not greeted with a crashing chandelier, he does get some thunderous applause. It's a big voice and it belongs to Ramin Karimloo, 31, who grew up in Peterborough and Richmond Hill, Ont. Karimloo, who has no formal musical training and learned his chops singing on cruise ships and in a Tragically Hip cover band, has landed the biggest plum in musical theatre: He was hand-picked by Lloyd Webber to star as the Phantom in Love Never Dies . He's already playing the title role in Phantom of the Opera in London, but to go on to win the sequel - to coin a phrase from Spinal Tap , that's one louder.
After the performances, Karimloo says, "It's been a pretty phenomenal trip so far." His deep well of politeness extends to addressing women as "ma'am." Iran may be the country of his birth, but he's Canadian through and through; his dream is to one day have a beer and watch a hockey game with the Hip's Gord Downie. He lives in London with his wife and two sons, but pines for home, and he may soon get a chance to visit: His high school in Richmond Hill wants him to return to teach a drama class. He smiles, a bit sheepishly: "I'd love to go, but I'm not actually sure I graduated."
Love Never Dies is set 10 years after Phantom , and the action has moved to Coney Island, where our murderous hero is just one freak among many. He is yearning for his love, Christine, last seen with that drip Raoul. And perhaps there's something more to the masked misfit: Karimloo writes a little back story for every character he plays, and he's decided that the Phantom has Asperger's syndrome, which explains both his social awkwardness and his genius. "I needed a way to understand the Phantom," Karimloo says. "And that worked - it explained his gestures, his coldness, his brilliance."
He's still having trouble believing that Lloyd Webber chose him for the role. One day, before he went on stage as the Phantom, he was called in to the composer's office and asked to audition for the sequel; since he doesn't read music, he had someone play it for him, then sang as if - well, as if he were singing for the boss. And the boss, who usually depends on a TV show to find his stars these days, hired him on the spot.
At this week's launch, Lloyd Webber said that he'd been working on the sequel for almost 20 years, because he'd always been unhappy with the original musical's ending. No, there would be no tunes carried over from Phantom ; yes, some characters, such as Christine and Raoul, would return. Why set it in Coney Island? "It was the Las Vegas of the time," Lloyd Webber said, adding that Sigmund Freud thought that Coney Island "was the only reason to visit America." What is the budget for Love Never Dies ? "I have no idea," he said, with Marie Antoinette-ish flair.
Lloyd Webber claims not to be daunted by the prospect of a sequel - which are notoriously difficult in musical theatre - but he was given pause on the morning of the launch when he overheard two stagehands backstage at the theatre: "He's got to be mad, trying to top Phantom ," one said, and the other agreed. "What's he going to call it? Ugly Bastard II?"