A collection of various discussions I've had about the story at various different dates, assembled here for my own reference.
Ironically -- for one who has no experience of either marriage or fatherhood -- I ended up addressing these issues again with the rather different set of characters from the Australian Version in "Waiting in the Wings". It's a much more typical Igenlode-arc, I'm afraid, in that it starts on a note of euphoria and spirals steadily downwards -- fluff really isn't my native habitat. And since it's an 'unseen moments' scenario covering the final scenes of the play and is, as always, as strictly within canon as I could make it, given the source material with which it has to fit there's no way that it's ever going to end well...
Having written perforce a 'strong Christine' for the "Choices of Raoul" (up until the Epilogue, where I think she is reverting to type with a certain degree of relief) I found some difficulty in writing the passive character required for the final scenes of Act II :-( I rather like the fan-theory that she is basically being hypnotised in almost every scene she has with the Phantom -- the blocking in the filmed version would certainly appear to suggest this -- but I haven't used it!
The Raoul for this story came out much more consciously aristocratic and rather keener on horses :-) And -- not having mucked up his relationships with his family entirely -- he is starting from a situation of dull mediocrity rather than existential despair. He still ends up committing a disastrous error of judgment where Gustave is concerned, though :-(
And I was able to make use of my 'head-canon', in which -- thanks to an early confusion on my part -- "Once Upon Another Time" actually matches Christine and Raoul's Act I relationship (which, if you look at it as I did without knowing the identities of the singers, it does...)
I can't really lay claim to any serious research on this one -- it's all based on my existing knowledge. Our local theatre was one of the last great Edwardian 'hemp houses' to survive -- seating nearly two thousand people -- and I saw round the backstage areas before it was modernised... those endless ranks of rope up the side walls, and the vast scenery doors. We used to sit in the cheap seats up in the 'gods', on the uncushioned concrete steps.
I've based most of the backstage stuff on my own experience of amateur dramatics in the local church hall, though... including the short corridor leading from the dressing-rooms to a sidelong view of the stage, and the little office (actually belongs to the Vicar ;-) I don't know if the prompt always sits stage left, but ours did!
Raoul is quite familiar with a backstage environment (which is how he manages to interpret 'stage left' so confidently), but I've hypothesised that the Phantom's custom-built theatre is probably highly mechanised/electrified and full of ingenious gadgets; certainly the set used for the Australian DVD looks nothing like any backstage area I've ever been in, so there is something weird going on... And America is very 'foreign' so far as Raoul is concerned. (Of course, he is functioning in a foreign language, and one that's nothing like the English he has been taught -- he and Pieczinski couldn't even pronounce one another's names if they tried, let alone spell them.)
On handing Gustave over to Meg: this concept hit me like a ton of (painful) bricks in the middle of writing the "Choices of Raoul" (and is enshrined in an ink-outlined box in the middle of the relevant portion of that manuscript, emphasised for later attention!)
Because as a consequence of various changes made for the Australian version... it makes an awful lot of sense. ALW has arranged to put Raoul into the horrible position of either keeping his word to Christine (to look after Gustave) or the Phantom (to 'leave alone'); so to whom, out of all the strangers and foreigners in Phantasma, is he going to entrust Gustave, if it comes to it? Possibly the one who has finished her performance for the night and is on her way back to the dressing-room, who shares a language with the boy, whom Raoul already knows, and who has in fact done exactly the same thing only the previous day at Christine's own request...?
The worst of it is that, in this version of events, Meg didn't actually have the slightest intention of involving Christine's son in her suicide bid... until Raoul 'suggests' it...
And it's not his fault; it really isn't. He's acting with the most honourable of intentions, and in all innocence. The only trouble is that he is so caught up in Christine and his own torment that he doesn't notice Meg is at snapping point herself. (In fact he does notice -- at least twice -- but his obsession with the Phantom is of overriding concern. Meg, after all, is not a threat to Christine; how could she possibly be? He's a little sorry/worried for her, but just at this point he has MUCH more important fish to fry.)
People like to characterise Erik as being the 'adult' choice in "The Phantom of the Opera" with Raoul representing a regression to childhood (and Christine's choice of Raoul thus showing that she is not prepared to grow up 'properly'); but in fact the Phantom doesn't behave in a particularly stable or adult way, while Raoul is organised and responsible :-) And healthily sceptical, whereas Christine's belief in her "Angel of Music" is clinging onto her childhood fantasies...
Likewise one can make a pretty good (or tongue-in-cheek) case that for Christine to choose the Phantom in "Love Never Dies" represents a regression to an adolescent romantic ideal in place of facing up to the problems of adulthood via her marriage... but of course, she doesn't ever get to choose. She chooses to sing the Phantom's song, but without any idea of the implications: she gets railroaded by the author.
(Really, in Chapter 3, she wants them both: but she does at least realise that one cannot ask a husband, however repentant, to put up with that!)
I always did want to appropriate "Once Upon Another Time" for the state of Raoul and Christine's relationship :-D But in fact, "Love Never Dies" is all too applicable to their situation as well... as Christine suddenly realises here, not aware, alas, that she has been kept in ignorance of one vital fact about the performance...
Poor Christine. Poor, poor Raoul.
In canon, Christine is definitely seen to choose Erik -- but what if she chooses Erik on the rebound...? ;-) If she goes through all this agonising, comes to a choice, offers herself -- in a pretty public way -- to Raoul, and then sees him reject her...?
After all, what can she possibly think: that he's petty enough to turn her down because she hasn't met his terms, has refused to slap Erik in the face, wants to go with him after the performance instead of before? She hasn't the faintest idea why he is acting as he does, and he refrains from telling her.
(He could have left a very nasty sting in the tail of that letter -- since the entire 'bet' was Erik's idea and made at Erik's instigation, the news would potentially have torpedoed any trust in that relationship right at the start, and wouldn't have left Raoul any worse off than he was already -- but for whatever reason, he doesn't do it.)
When Raoul walks out right as she is in the middle of singing to him, she's upset and hurt... and she seeks refuge in the song, and subsequently in Erik. She knows that if she once gives in to Erik she will go up like a house on fire -- be consumed -- and in fact she still seems to hold back (she doesn't exactly fling herself into his arms after the performance until yet again he uses the power of his voice on her); but in the fact of a rebuff like that, losing oneself in someone else becomes a rather more inviting prospect...
My personal theory about Christine is that she has a weakness for men who cry :-) Raoul wins her back by showing vulnerability; and after all, the Phantom gets nowhere with her by seducing her, threatening her or bribing her... but when he breaks down, then she softens towards him. Which means that he's probably using the wrong tactics before the performance -- possibly why his intervention doesn't have nearly such a decisive effect on her as he presumably hoped :-D Instead of going with the last argument she heard -- and the most forcefully put -- she ends up dithering right back where she started. (In fact, given that she started on the assumption that she was going to sing the song, and now 'wishes she could refuse', he hasn't made much of a net gain :-p)
So I'm tempted to think that she is actually making that decision on the grounds of which man she feels needs her most -- who is weakest, rather than who is strongest. (In which case Raoul's behaviour would be doubly offensive, because after 'suckering' her into making the decision he has apparently now decided that he doesn't need her that much at all...)
The treatment of Raoul's letter, in musical terms, is... very odd. From a dramatic point of view it ought to be a big climax or turning-point; and from the way it's written, one would assume that it is supposed to create some sympathy in the audience for Raoul (who is finally Being Noble, after all). But in fact its impact is weirdly undercut in both versions of the production: in the West End version, Christine's immediate reaction is instead to wonder where Gustave has got to (whereupon the Phantom goes into a dangerous rage that possibly ought to have made her question the wisdom of her choice, especially as the people he targets prove to be completely innocent...), while in the Australian version, Christine not only doesn't spare Raoul a moment's regret, but she instantly accuses him herself of kidnapping her son -- an even more abrupt transition! She is apparently feeling far from nostalgic towards her 'childhood friend' at this point...
So the question is just what did Raoul manage to do that could manage to wipe out all her sympathy so quickly -- such that she never gives him another thought, even on the point of death? My theory for the purposes of "Waiting in the Wings" was -- perhaps he turned her down... :-D
If the story can get even one person to see that "Love Never Dies" is a tragedy as much for Raoul as for Erik -- and that Raoul has a point of view, beyond existence as an inconvenient obstacle to Erik's happiness -- then it will have achieved its aim.
For Raoul, it's a reeling journey from the moment when it seems everything has finally come right -- the looming spectre of the Phantom finally faced and overcome, things back as they were between himself and Christine, the destructive force of self-hatred lanced and drained, and a tentative reconnection with his son -- to the moment less than an hour later when it seems that everything that can go wrong, has gone wrong. And when he has endured through that into a sort of acceptance, the additional blow of finding that things can actually still get much, much worse...
He can't even kill himself. The moment for that has gone; the moment when it might have been a mercy to overdriven body and mind alike. That tide has ceased to ebb, and is running in again, whether he wills it or not... And he believed then that both Gustave and Christine were safe -- he can never trust that reassurance again.
To be honest, the only future I can see for Raoul in this scenario is the solitary battle with loneliness, memories and drink until the Great War comes and wipes out whatever remains of the men and the world he once knew. Gustave is the last thing he has of Christine -- a child so very like her in every way -- and he is sending him to Erik in what is basically an act of willed expiation and self-annihilation. He doesn't have to do this: Gustave ran to him, away from the strange, frightening menace that had stolen the comfort of his mother, away from the Phantom from whom he had already fled in terror. He makes the choice... and leaves himself with nothing.
The plot is a tragedy -- I can't help that. (Well, I did try to help it in The Choices of Raoul, but that's another story...) In fact, if anything I've written it as a worse tragedy than the one Lloyd Webber presents us with (though I didn't invent most of those implications; it's just stuff that was added into the Australian Version without any thought as to the effect on Raoul, because the composer clearly doesn't pay any attention to Raoul's situation at all...)
But if Raoul makes the wrong choices for all the right reasons, at least in this story he gets to make his own decisions; if the love of his life turns to another man, at least it is through misunderstanding and not indifference; if he loses his son, at least it is through his own renunciation and not by casual default... and he has a chance to remember first that Gustave loves him.
I've consciously written the story as a downward spiral, but at least I've had the decency to put Raoul at the centre of all that is done to him instead of shoving him off into the wings to attend on Christine's and Erik's immortal love-story! One reason why Erik barely even appears in this story is that it was constructed around the 'missing scenes' -- the actions of the characters off-stage while the visible drama is going on -- and the dear Phantom is scarcely out of the limelight throughout the entirety of the final act. (Which says something about the perceived priorities of the plot...)
So the intention was quite deliberately 'to make the reader cry': to make the reader actually care about what LND does to Raoul (which isn't, to put it mildly, very nice) and to give the character back a bit of dignity in the middle of what is by any standards an appalling tragedy, instead of just writing him out of the plot like a bad fanfic.
I can at least give him catharsis in place of bathos (to put it in terms that Racine would understand...)
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