phantoms
Last night, we got the chance to see the touring production of Phantom of the Opera down at the Cadillac Palace, which is, of course, the perfect venue, with its own ornate chandeliers to accompany the one that crashes into the audience. Despite my love and vast amount of musical theater knowledge gleaned from my trusty undergrad History of Musical Theatre class and having worked on several musicals in the 90s (as well as being surrounded by theater kids in high school and college who regularly belted out numbers at parties and in the Denny's parking lot) this was actually the first time I've seen it live on stage. Mind you, when I first got into theater in the early 90s, two musical reigned at the top of the charts--Les Mis, which I had seen my senior of high school, and Phantom, which I procured the soundtrack for at Christmas in 1991. Which meant I spent that entire winter and spring til graduation, alternating them in my tape deck. While my Les Mis soundtrack was just the major songs, the latter was a double set, with pretty much the entire score and book intact. So last night, despite the fact that for more than two decades I only listened to Broadway tunes occasionally, and usually it was Les Mis or my other favorite from around the same era, Into the Woods. And yet, as soon as the first cords of the auction scene and the first lines of dialogue were uttered, I knew each line that was next.
So, I was watching interested in the staging particularly (since I was far more a tech than a performer, but when the first organ notes and rock beat of the title song hit and they started Christine's descent into the sewers, the boat scene staged exquisitely, all smoke machines and candles rising out of the floor, it touched something off in me. That 18 year old who was so obsessed. I was beginning to worry she might not show. Despite my teenage obsession, its always felt by far inferior to Les Mis. And Andrew Lloyd Webber in a larger body of work has interested me less. Placed next to its competitor, as well as next to excellent and more complexly wrought modern musicals (Hadestown, for example, or Hamilton, ) it falls short (lyrical complexity, character development. ) It also feels very 80s/90s dated. In fact, this is the only musical that I wanted to see more than J (he hated the movie version from years ago, which I've never seen) It was also interest to see it in that particular theater, the last production of which we saw on that stage being Moulin Rouge, which less musically elaborate than Phantom even with the jukebox numbers and mash-ups. Still the staging effects, and casting were still magnificent (and I would actually say better vocalized than the Brightman/Crawford recordings I was raised on (they were more akin to the more recent anniversary release, which you can hear what I'm talking about HERE.) The chandelier spectacle and the sound design (that threw the voice of the Phantom eerily around the theater, including sounding like it was coming for a second from the box that was right next to us (we were in our usual fave seats at the front of the dress circle--which you can get at a discount for seats that close b/c of slightly obstructed views at the sides though they kind of have limited leg room.)
I think the short-fallings boil down to characterization more than any problems with the music itself. We don't really know much about the Phantom beyond his obsession or much about the magnetic draw between the characters (I kept thinking about the more recent Nosferatu film that drew out those themes very well. Am I still, nevertheless, listening to the soundtrack on repeat today and vowing to spend the rest of the winter wandering around the apartment holding a candlelabra in a bell sleeved dressing gown? Of course I am.
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