`Love Never Dies` delayed until 2011

B`way will have to wait to find out what happens to Webber`s `Phantom.`

New York: Broadway will have to wait a bit longer to find out what happens to Andrew Lloyd Webber`s ‘Phantom.’The producers of ‘Love Never Dies’ announced Tuesday that the sequel to ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ will now open in New York in spring 2011 instead of this November. As a reason, they cited the composer`s "postoperative problems" following his successful surgery for prostate cancer last year.

According to the statement, Lloyd Webber`s doctors have advised him not to travel long distances by air "until the problem has been investigated." No further details were provided. In the meantime, he will work on ‘Over the Rainbow,’ a BBC reality television series in which a young woman will be chosen to play Dorothy in Lloyd Webber`s London stage version of ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ "I am extremely frustrated that I cannot travel to New York for the time being," Lloyd Webber said in a statement. "I will be focusing my time on producing `The Wizard of Oz` in London now and plan to be available for the creative process of bringing `Love Never Dies` to Broadway as soon as possible." Speculation about the show`s possible Broadway postponement began immediately after ‘Love Never Dies’ opened in London last month to wildly divergent reviews. They ranged from The Daily Telegraph`s positive notice, which called the musical Lloyd Webber`s finest show since the original ‘Phantom,’ with "a score blessed with superbly haunting melodies," to Variety saying the musical was "simply torpid. Only a radical rewrite will give it even the remotest chance of emulating its predecessor." Meanwhile, both the London and New York productions of the original ‘Phantom of Opera’ are still running, with the New York ‘Phantom’ the longest-running show in Broadway history. Bureau Report