As the original team of six boys take their final bows at the Adelphi, we meet the new kids on the block who are stepping into their shoes (the eagle eyed among you will notice that we are one Gustave down as Tom is currently on holiday…)
So over to the team on their final day of rehearsals, as they introduce themselves and tell us what they have enjoyed so far, and what they are looking forward to most…
Our blogger Adam Pearce, aka Love Never Dies‘ tattooed strong man Squelch, spends an hour a day in the makeup chair in his dressing room at London’s Adelphi Theatre – that’s a long time to sit still, so we’ve speeded up the process slightly in our latest video, which shows how makeup artist Danny transforms Adam into Squelch each night. Danny and Adam also explain how the process works in a voiceover… and Adam reveals some of the early reactions to his new look!
In the third, and final, instalment of our dressing room interview with Summer – who plays Meg Giry – she tells us where her future plans lie, who her career role model is and talks of the pressures of coming from a show biz family…
And find out what she thinks of Meg ..
Our leading lady, Sierra Boggess, popped into the BBC studios this weekend to meet the four semi-finalists in Over The Rainbow, the TV search for a Dorothy to star in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s forthcoming production of The Wizard of Oz.
Sierra gave the girls some invaluable advice on the challenges facing the winner, before singing the title song from Love Never Dies. We were there to capture the girls as they waited for the visitor, as well as exclusive footage of Sierra on and off the set.
In the second part of our video interview with Summer Strallen, who plays Meg in the show, she tells us how the keeps the role fresh – and how she winds down after a show, especially one as emotional as Love Never Dies…
Watch part one of our interview with Summer here.
Apologies for the lack of blogs recently – it’s been a busy few weeks since opening night! Unbelievably, it’s now over a month since Love Never Dies premiered, and we have got some exciting video clips coming up for you.
Here our bloggers Adam Pearce (Squelch) and Niamh Perry (Fleck) tell us what’s been going on in the past few weeks, and introduce their very special upcoming video blog feature…
As those of you who have seen the show will be aware, our cast members employ a range of circus skills during each performance of Love Never Dies. Now the show is up and running and the cast, understudies and swings are no longer called upon to rehearse their newly acquired skills on a daily (or more) basis, they need to take every opportunity to keep their skills honed. So yesterday afternoon Jack Horner, Tom Oakley, Ashley Nottingham, Jonathan Stewart and Tim Walton descended on our offices for a session of fire poi training (to you and me, that means twirling sticks very cleverly while they are lit at one end).
It was a very damp, grey and miserable Thursday in the West End of London but the boys soon both brightened and warmed up our garden as they set to igniting the poi and working through their impressive routines under the watchful direction of Jack.
While they talked us through the process we captured their training session on film. We also took the opportunity to chat to Jonathan and Tim about how the show was going two weeks after the premiere and asked them if they managed to enjoy the opening night and after show party…
It’s now two whole weeks since Love Never Dies celebrated its Opening Night. As the show settles in at the Adelphi, we paid a visit to Sierra’s dressing room for an update on how she and Ramin think the show is going – and talked reviews, parties and how, for the cast, the real work has barely begun…
It has seemed like a very long haul for all concerned, but last night saw the first public performance of Love Never Dies at the Adelphi Theatre. The show is now in preview until the official opening night on March 9th which is when the press get in to see the show and give their verdicts.
There was a small technical hitch after the first number, and then director Jack O’Brien took to the stage to assure the audience “that’s not it… !” and ”that has NEVER happened before” before he asked for a little patience as the crew worked behind the curtain to fix the issue. After only a few minutes the show was ready to restart (it had all gone so swimmingly in the afternoon’s dress rehearsal too!).
With the show back in full swing the audience reaction was, on the whole, positive with many people rising to their feet to give the cast a standing ovation at the end. Not bad at all for a first preview! We obviously don’t want to give anything away but we did ask a few audience members for their initial reactions during the interval and at the end of the show, see the clip below.
After the final curtain we asked the two leads for their views. Ramin Karimloo, who plays the Phantom, was ecstatic about performing in front of an audience at last. “We were so ready for that”, he grinned, “you can work through the scenes systematically, but there is nothing like getting the sense of pace you gain from audience reactions.” He added that “it was great to get a few laughs too”. With typical gallantry he referred to his leading lady’s performance (ignoring the fact that his rendition of ‘Til I Hear You Sing’ in the first act had also provoked a rapturous reception) “Did you hear the reaction Sierra got for her aria (Love Never Dies)? God, it was amazing, they couldn’t get enough…insatiable!”.
And indeed she did both look and sound fabulous. Sierra herself was unable to stop grinning widely… “Wow, I am in the West End!” reality was hitting clearly hitting home. I asked how she was feeling, having missed the first dress rehearsal on Saturday. “I feel great, it was so weird, it literally came from nowhere and just knocked me out, I suddenly developed a temperature of 103″, but clearly Sierra is right back on top form having been given a thorough check up from the doctor “he was stunned by how quickly I had recovered, the fever disappeared as quickly as it arrived, he had never seen anything like it!”
If you are lucky enough to be one of the first to see the new show, share your review with us here!
This afternoon we popped down to the Adelphi to track down a few more members of the Love Never Dies cast for our weekly video blog and in the meantime thought we’d share a few observations from our seats in the Dress Circle – and below is another little video blog of exactly what is going on behind the scenes as rehearsals are now well into their final week…
We arrived as the cast and crew were about to begin the technical rehearsal of Act Two’s ‘Bathing Beauty’ as the track ends and runs into the next scene. After making our way along a maze of corridors (backstage at the Adelphi, like lots of London theatres, is a bit of a labyrinth) with the smell of varnish hanging in the air as members the finishing touches are put to vital props and costumes, we found our way to auditorium where members of the cast including Summer Strallen (Meg Giry) were running through the scene as the rest of the cast, crew and creative team watched from the seats in the stalls. As Jack O’Brien and Jerry Mitchell joined the actors onstage to physically walk through and “block” the scene, the team of swings and understudies (check out our latest rehearsal update for more about them) took notes on the scene from the Dress Circle before sharing their thoughts on the process with us in our latest video blog (which you can see here).
We moved to another vantage point in order to witness Musical Supervisor Simon Lee going through some very unusual limbering-up techniques, which you can see in our video clip below…!
Having watched various stages of the rehearsal process, the show is now really coming together as the cast are now virtually all fully costumed, wigged and made up in order to fully test the effect of the lighting. The lighting team under the close scrutiny of Paule Constable, the Lighting Designer, were running through some of the astounding and innovative illuminations that will really bring this already fantastic set to life. The lighting looked so beautiful as it struck the gorgeous colours of the ensemble’s costumes that it prompted Jack to declare that they looked “good enough to eat.”
As we’re less than a week away from the first preview now the excitement is truly building. With an extra day of rehearsal now available to them, the cast and crew are working flat-out to make sure this will be one hell of a show. And from where we were sitting – it certainly will be.
Our video clip gives you some idea of what’s going on at the theatre offstage as the crew gear up for the show…
