Ramin Karimloo is excited to be bringing the Phantom back home. "I just got giddy thinking about Toronto," the Canadian star of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies tweeted over the weekend.
On Friday, Lloyd Webber confirmed that he is planning to bring his Phantom of the Opera sequel to Toronto next year.
While on the British talk show The Michael Ball Show, the composer said that Love Never Dies -- which has received mixed reviews since opening in London earlier this year -- will hit Toronto in 2011 and then move to Broadway.
The next day, Karimloo -- who is currently playing the Phantom in the West End production -- talked about his part in the plans on Twitter.
"I guess it's safe to say that I'll be in LND London up until March. Then it's another project before Toronto later in the year then NY," he wrote on Saturday.
In a later tweet, he spelled it out: "Ok, Toronto and New York is for Love Never Dies. As it stands now. Before that, album work, band work, and beard work."
The Toronto production of the mu-sequel will be significantly different from the one currently on stage in the West End. Lloyd Webber admitted he wasn't entirely happy with the production currently on the West End. "I'm a perfectionist," he said.
Robert Jones, who designed Lloyd Webber and Mirvish Productions' recent The Sound of Music, will give the show a new look in Toronto, the composer said, but he remained mum about the rest of the creative team.
Earlier this month, the New York Post's Michael Riedel wrote that director Jack O'Brien and Jerry Mitchell and choreographer Jerry Mitchell were out and that Australian director Craig Revel Horwood would be taking the reins in Toronto. (A call and e-mail to Horwood's agent was not returned.)
Will Mirvish Productions have a hand in the Toronto production of Love Never Dies? Mirvish director of communications John Karastamatis would neither confirm nor deny: "It certainly would be wonderful if Toronto had a production of this caliber and profile. Here's hoping."