The Phantom is Christine's Baby-Daddy?

Oh my! Since I'm on a musicals kick, I thought I'd dive into All That Chat. I found out more about the rumored follow-up to Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera.

(From a Playbill article on a proposed Phantom of the Opera sequel)

In the sequel, the title character travels to Coney Island around 1900 and is reunited with soprano Christine. The show is not based on source material. One of the reported titles of the new project was Phantom in Manhattan.....

The Daily Mail previously described the sequel plot this way: "The Phantom has slipped away to New York and has set up a fairground world on Coney Island, along with Madame Giry and her daughter, Meg. He organizes a concert in Manhattan for Christine, the object of his desire. Christine travels to the U.S. with her husband Raoul and their teenage son, who happens to be a musical genius...just like the Phantom."
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/allthatchat/d.php?id=1555824

Oh dear, oh dear. I just threw up and I'm shivering in a corner over here.

ADDENDUM:
It just gets weirder! Andrew Lloyd Webber apparently has a very sagacious cat--it deleted ALW's entire score, presumably in hopes of saving his owner from extreme embarrassment.

Lloyd Webber, 59, was working on the score at his computerised grand piano when his six-month-old kitten Otto clambered into its frame and managed to delete everything he had written so far."
From: Why Andrew is in need of a copycat.

Cry-Baby on Broadway

I'm feeling very uninspired to write something about this musical, but I'll eke out a few words in hopes of deterring others from seeing the Broadway adaptation of John Waters' Cry-Baby. The good: the dancing. The bad: everything else.

That's not entirely fair. The music was catchy enough, particularly at the Polio fair in the beginning, but none of it stayed in my head after the show. The set design with the skewed perspective was clever. But something overall didn't hang together in this story of a rock-and-roll boy from the wrong side of the tracks who tries to woo an uptight school-girl who's ready to let her hair down.

However, I did like the tuxedo-striped men's jeans. Those were cool. But that didn't stop my mind from drifting in and out. Funny how our brains leap directly to sex when bored for two hours and trapped in a seat with precious little leg room. (To my credit, I also contemplated other shows I've seen in comparison, and decided that I *must* see Patti LuPone in Gypsy to make up for this experience. My theatre-going companions agreed and we now have Gypsy tix for May 30. Hooray!)

All of the artistic choices were disjointed. There's a hackneyed rule of the theatre that says if there's a gun on stage, it must be fired. Props are meant to be used. However, there were costumes and props that didn't add much to the show. Sure, someone dressed as a box of Lucky Strike cigarettes and someone else as an apple pie represent "Americana," but having them dance around in the background was pointless.

Late in the show, the dancing apple pie with legs pulls out a champagne bottle like a gun and aims it at the Little Richard-esque character, and he says, "This is strange." My thoughts exactly! I like a good non-sequitur as much as the next girl, but this was one too many in show already muddled in direction. And there were precious few references to the Elvis movies this show is supposed to spoof. The first act is not terribly solid, and Cry-Baby unravels in the second. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. Instead, spend that amount on powerhouse Patti and have yourself a theatrical experience of a lifetime.

Spend Your Sunday in the Park with George

"Oh, that's supposed to be the painting." -- Comment made by the theater-goer to my right who didn't realize until the beginning of the second act that the show is about Georges Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte."

Make it a priority to get tickets to one of the most innovative productions in years: Sunday In the Park with George at Studio 54. I don't want to give too much away, particularly about the staging. In short, the show covers the following themes:

• What do we do with romantic relationships where at least one person cannot emotionally connect?
  
• Is art (or our fixations) worth more than love?
  
• What is our life's legacy? Art? Children?
  
• What does it mean to lose our parents?
  
• How can we let go of the ideas that constrain us?
  
• How can we live our lives inspired by the possibilities of a blank canvas?
  
• Oh, and parasols
  

Sondheim's music, the staging, animations and projections are beautiful and a puzzle. How did they do what they did? Sunday in the Park sincerely combines its craft to make us feel the joy of creation and a reverence for our place, our moment in time.

I think I'm finally old enough to have seen this show.