Love Never Dies review

There are spoilers in this review. It's of this Melbourne production of Love Never Dies which is free to watch this weekend:

This Andrew Lloyd Webber musical isn't bad bad in the same way as some of the others, it just makes me feel ill watching it.

I think maybe the show would have been better if the characters weren't supposed to be the ones from Phantom, because it makes all of my red flags go off seeing Christine so quickly welcoming of the phantom just because he says he feels great pain without her and they reminisce about their "one night" together.

I mean, I am still thinking of him as a real horror; manipulative / stalker / threatening / murdering.

And both phantom and Raoul - when confronting each other - treat her as a possession, and Raoul has become just angry and useless... there's no-one really to root for out of the two of them.

And I would not put a child in the trust of a twisted and murderous man just because he's biologically his father.

It's not that the show is bad bad, it just makes me feel like everything the show wants me to get on board with is wrong. I'm sitting there going "no, no, no, no, no" at every moment that I think is supposed to be positive.

I think if you looked at the book for this musical in isolation, this phantom would be no more of a horror than a grumpy goth with bad skin.

So... either you have a phantom who is far too horrible for you to want him to succeed, or a completely declawed phantom who is just bland.

A word I don't like

I don't mind the word "moist" at all. I am not sure why people don't like it. But I really don't like when people are doing a cooking show or cooking instructional video and use the word "slurry" to describe mixing something into a paste - because it just makes me thinks of farms and how they smell.

Currently playing : Nier

I'm currently playing Nier (not Automata) on Xbox 360.

I really like it. It is a beautiful, sad game, with beautiful music and good artwork.

I finished the game with one ending last night, and decided - rather than play and get the next ending to the game, I would start over again from nothing.

There's an achievement for completing the whole game under 15 hours which I'm aiming for. I'm skipping all the sidequests, which means sadly I miss out on Devola & Popola singing together.

It is unrelentingly sad, just chock full of sad stories, sometimes unnecessarily sad. 

For example - when you go to turn in your final fishing sub-quest, there's another man standing in the quest-giver's place. He tells you that the old man who gave you the quest died then says no-one in town really liked him anyway. I mean, come on, writers, you didn't need to do that! This has no impact on the overall story of the game, they just decide to throw in things like that all the time.

But the sadness is a good outlet for me in this world we're living in. It's easier to put your heart into a bunch of fictional grief and feel that than look at the world today pretending along with everyone else that the daily massive amounts of death aren't that bad.

What's The Buzz - Jesus Christ Superstar - sounds like invincibility to me

Andrew Lloyd Webber has been releasing musicals for the public to enjoy for free for a short window of time during this lockdown period. This week, it is appropriately Jesus Christ Superstar.

I say "appropriately", but really... he's made Jesus Christ available for 48 hours from Good Friday until Easter Sunday, which is the exact opposite of how Easter is supposed to work.

Anyway. I started watching, and this song "What's The Buzz" starts up.

And I think to myself... hang on, this tune... what is it? It is the song of my people. Yes! It is:

Sorry, that's all I can think now. (Yes I know Jesus Christ Superstar came first)

Persona - Poem for Everyone's Souls & Elvis Presley - My Boy

I noticed a thing.

The melody for "Poem For Everyone's Souls" - which is the music for the Velvet Room in all the Persona games - and the chorus to the song "My Boy" by Elvis Presley really sound a lot like each other.

(listen at @1:35)


(listen at @0:31)