Playbill revealed today that Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, is undergoing a major change from its current West End inception and is heading to Mulbourne, Austrailia:
Love Never Dies will play at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre in May 2011. A new creative team will take a fresh look at the musical that is currently playing London’s Adelphi Theatre. Lloyd Webber has enlisted Priscilla Queen of the Desert director Simon Phillips to helm the Australian premiere, which will also feature a new production design by Gabriela Tylesova. Bob Crowley (Mary Poppins) rendered set and costume designs for the current London production. Tim McFarlane will produce the Melbourne staging. Tickets for Love Never Dies will go on sale Oct. 25. “Im delighted that Andrew Lloyd Webber has chosen an Australian team to work on his inspired new structural changes, which promise to further intensify the thrills and spills of the story as told in London,” Phillips said in a statement. “Ive already begun developing a design with Gabriela Tylesova, hoping to do with the razzamatazz of Coney Island what Maria Bjornsons iconic Phantom designs did with the opulence of the Paris Opera, and I cant wait to start the search for the formidable talents required to do justice to the score!”Australia has always been part of the international plan for Love Never Dies, which premiered in London this past March. However, critics were cool on the lushly scored musical that follows the Phantom and Christine to Coney Island ten years after the original production ends its tale.The musical was to premiere on Broadway in November but has since delayed its arrival. Tony-winning director Jack O’Brien and Jerry Mitchell, who staged the original London production, are reported to have withdrawn from the project. Lloyd Webber’s plan to stage an altered version of Love Never Dies while the original is still running is not unheard of for the award-winning composer. When the London production of Sunset Boulevard opened in 1993, he followed with an altered staging in Los Angeles in 1994. The L.A. production (and its star) famously arrived on Broadway the following year, while the London production shuttered to undergo an overhaul and subsequently opened with a new cast.
As a Doctoral Student in Public Affairs, one of the early research projects I decided to complete in my studies was a Cost/ Benefit Analysis on Florida’s Ban on Gay Adoptions. I was able to show, through the process of policy analysis, that the ban was costing Floridians millions of dollars in taxes and that the social science research done on the topic indicated gay men and lesbians were actually very good parents. In fact, no published studies undergoing a rigorous scientific peer-review process have ever existed to the contrary. Of course, when a federal appeals court ruled several weeks ago that the ban was unconstitutional, I was ecstatic. But when Governor Charlie Crist promised he would not appeal the decision, I immediately endorsed him for Senator.
I am very happy to report that two of my articles were accepted for publication in the Journal of Social Service Research this week. The first, an article that was reworked from a data-driven to a clinical piece is titled, “Using the Internet to Meet Sexual Partners: Research and Practice Implications.” The article, focusing on drug use within sexual relationships initiated in the on-line environment, is co-written by Dr. Sophia Dziegielewski (Professor, School of Social Work, University of Cincinnati) and will appear in a special upcoming GLBT-focused issue of the journal. The second, “Reducing Alcohol Abuse in Gay Men: Clinical Recommendations from Conflicting Research” sheds light on the conflicting studies about alcohol use and abuse in gay men and provides the clinician with recommendations on how to effectively screen gay male clients for alcohol abuse. Both should appear in-print and on-line in late 2010 or early 2011.
In their usual ignorant, non-educated, and failing nature, the Republicans, led by John McCain (the sour and sore loser of the 2008 Presidential election) blocked repeal of the miltary’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy which prohibits openly gay men and women soldiers from serving. No Republicans voted to advance the bill, and two Democrats from Arkansas, Sens. Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln, voted no. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the majority leader, voted no in a procedural move so he could bring the bill back to the floor in the future. The Republicans are well out of touch with the beliefs of the American people on this policy. The vast majority (around 75%-80%) believe the policy should be repealed and that gay and lesbian soldiers should be able to openly serve their country. The Republicans should be ashamed for using a social policy tactic to deny passage of the Bill, which included a 1.4% pay raise for the troops as well as funding for the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. This filibuster is an interesting and sad statement by Republicans, who are desperate to use divisive social issues to drum-up support from their far right-wing supporters. In November, voters should remember that the Democrats were the ones to not only support repeal of DADT, but also to give our men and women in uniform a much needed raise in pay and support our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.