Last week we paid another visit to the Adelphi Theatre to catch up with Summer Strallen, who plays Meg Giry in the show. In the first of a three-part video blog, Summer tells us what she thinks of her character, how she’s enjoying Love Never Dies – and whether or not she thinks Meg is in love with the Phantom…

Watch out for more from Summer…

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…

No special birthdays to celebrate in the rehearsal room today, but even without the lure of cake we called in to see how the cast were feeling at the end of another gruelling week. We arrived just as the cast were breaking for lunch and asked them how things were going and for their highlights of the week so far!

Ever mindful of your insatiable appetite for all things Love Never Dies, we popped down to the rehearsal studios on Friday with our trusty Flip camera.

It was a very significant day for a certain US choreographer who has reached the end of a very memorable week!

Aside from a chat with the birthday boy himself, we also managed to catch up with Pip Jordan (Dance captain), our “chubby funster” blogger Adam Pearce, who is reunited with his former Joseph colleague Jonathan Stewart, Ramin Karimloo (The Phantom), and rounded the clip off with a few succinct words from our director Jack O’Brien.