Follow Us
Drama Around the Globe
  • Home
  • About
  • Maerten van Heemskerck
  • Contact
  • Articles
  • Books
    • Academic >
      • Barrymore Handbook
      • Distortions
      • Germans in English Short Stories
      • How to develop professionalism among student writers
      • Literary Exile in the Twentieth Century >
        • Stefan Heym
        • Hans Henny Jahnn
        • Hermann Kesten
        • Else Lasker-Schüler
        • Heinrich Mann
        • Stefan Zweig
      • Writer Perception, Writer Projection
      • Wuppertal- Bethel Exchange Program
    • Creative >
      • Iran, Iran: Secret Poetry--an introduction
      • Iran, Iran: Secret Poetry samples
      • Who's Afraid of Noam Chomsky?
      • WriteWriteRewrite
      • Workbook Poetry
      • Kreative Schocks, Creative Shocks
    • Educational >
      • Aristotle's Word Processor
  • Drama
    • Plays >
      • A Doll's Confession
      • Alan Lost in Boston
      • "Beat me, Beat me!"
      • Canterbury Tales
      • Encounters
      • Happy Shalom
      • Mah Own Constitution
      • Mendelssohn Does Not Live Here Anymore
      • Metronome Ticking
      • Private Moments
      • Rent-controlled Apartment in the Village
      • The Americans are Coming
      • The Astrologer
      • The Funeral: A comedy
      • The Girl on the Other Side of the Fence
      • The Rehearsal
      • Van Gogh's Jewish Daughter
      • Victorian Holiday
      • Vow of Silence
    • Rescued Jewish Theater
    • Videos
  • Essays
    • Education Essays >
      • How to develop professionalism
    • Language Essays >
      • Language
    • Literature Essays >
      • Literature
  • Film
    • Private Moments
    • The Americans are Coming
    • Victorian Holiday
  • German
    • Artikel
    • Biographie
    • Bücher
    • Gedichte
    • Geschichten
    • Schauspiele
  • Interviews
  • Poetry
    • Poem Blog
    • America
    • Friends
    • Humor
    • Passion
    • Tributes
    • War Zones
  • Reviews
  • Satires
    • Satire Blog
  • Stories
    • Stories Blog
    • Stories: Europe
    • Black Shoe Polish
    • Santa Claus on an Overcrowded Train
    • Stories: America
    • A stained-glass window that no longer allows light to come through
    • Free Italian chandelier
    • Old Tibetan carpet dealer visiting the U.S.
    • Stories: Asia
  • Translations
    • Translations: Dramas >
      • La Ronde, Henrik Eger translation
    • Translations: Stories >
      • The Message of the Christmas Night
      • Spoerl, Waiting. Warten.
  • Translations: Misc.
  • Workshops
  • Individual Reviews
  • Editor's Desk

Review: ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ at the Academy of Music

11/7/2017

0 Comments

 
“I’m not going to take this on the road unless it’s as good as what people have read about, with the same lighting and the same sound. I think that’s my biggest bequest—that I imposed my standards. It’s sensible, actually, because the real thing will last longer than something shoddy.”
 
Cameron Mackintosh, in an interview with the Financial Times
​
There’s a reason Cameron Mackintosh is the world’s most celebrated and most influential producer of theatrical shows. Decades after a musical has been written and shown to be successful, Mackintosh “constantly restages the same musicals in new productions, with fresh directors and casts,” even though, as he told the Financial Times last year, “Musicals are expensive to keep running.”
Picture
Derrick Davis and Eva Tavares. Photo by Matthew Murphy.
And so Mackintosh, the master magician among producers, has created yet another version of the most popular of musicals in his stable, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. Based on a widely-read French novel, Le Fantôme de l’Opéra by Gaston Leroux, first published as a serialization in 1909 and 1910 and later developed into various stage and film adaptations, the story eventually morphed into Lloyd Webber’s musical in 1986 with lyrics by Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe.

The melodramatic plot centers around a mysterious, disfigured musical genius living in the subterranean labyrinth beneath Paris’ Opera Populaire. He’s in love with a beautiful young soprano, Christine Daaé, who becomes his obsession. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, a French Romantic/Gothic novel by Victor Hugo, seems to have served as the godfather to The Phantom of the Opera;Hugo’s novel had as much of an appeal in 1831 as Phantom in 2017. No wonder Phantom has become the longest running show in Broadway history.

Sure enough, the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, a magnificent opera house with fine acoustics—as expected—was sold out on opening night. An orchestra of 52 players under the musical supervision by John Rigby created a feast for the ears, and the cast displays a wonderful ensemble spirit while letting each star shine, with Derrick Davis as the Phantom and Eva Tavares as the object of his desires.

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises was the sound design by Mick Potter, who managed to spook the audience with his unexpected, meticulous sounds from unexpected places. He created a perfect soundscape, no matter where one sat—helped by a loudspeaker system so sophisticated that one could hear the Phantom talking and whispering and pleading from various places all over the Academy of Music as if he were wooing all of us, rather than only the young innocent Christine. The placement of the Phantom’s voice created just the right atmosphere for an omnipresent, powerful, yet vulnerable creature—a human being who had already gone into another world.
​
The musical was directed in yet another fine-tuned version by Laurence Connor, the latest reincarnation of a stunning work that awed us like a royal gala during the Victorian era. No expenses were spared in using some of the best talent from around the world, including choreographer Scott Ambler and set designer Paul Brown, plus the lighting design by Tony Award-winner Paule Constable.
Picture
The Ensemble. Photo by Alastair Muir.
Perhaps the most spectacular work was the original, Tony Award-winning costume design by the late Maria Björnson. There was also the famous “dressed” chandelier, worth $2,000,000 and considered to be one of her greatest triumphs. Sure enough, the audience looked at this gigantic chandelier as if it were the famous apple that comes down on New Year’s Eve in New York, except that many of us were sitting right under it, making me wonder whether it was really safe to sit in one of the best seats in the house. Of course, everything worked: the audience shrieked and then sat back and recovered, before the next surprise hit the audience.

The stage design made me gasp at times as it looked dangerous, and it made me smile when the same ominous tower with its canal below opened up and revealed the backstage world of the French theater with its cast of eccentric singers and beautiful ballerinas, all troubled by the lack of a decent salary.

It seemed that the audience did all the right things: being awed, being frightened, being entertained.

And yet, there were moments that the producer in England could not have anticipated. When one of the actors on opening night carried a severed head onto the stage, instead of being shocked, the audience, perhaps remembering the often-shown photo of Kathy Griffin and the fake, severed head of Donald Trump, laughed out loud. Shortly thereafter, the symbol of the Republican Party, a huge elephant, could be seen stage right. A number of people in the audience laughed again.

Watching the old plot of a young and vulnerable singer who is torn between two men—within the context of the many discussions about sexual exploitation of some powerful men in 2017, both in the US and now around the globe—made me wonder about the future of spectacular shows like the Phantom.

Will we continue to see such shows the way previous generations loved black and white minstrel shows, or will theater audiences move away from spectacular shows that take the best from the circus world and the best from the film world, filling large theaters with a whole new generation of theatergoers? Or did we visit an amazing super-show that no longer can be improved and will, eventually, run its course?

Time and the zeitgeist will tell.
​
Running Time: Two hours and 38 minutes, with one intermission.
The Phantom of the Opera plays through Sunday, November 12, 2017 and is presented as part of the Broadway Philadelphia series by The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts at the Academy of Music – 204 South Broad Street, in Philadelphia, PA. For tickets, call the box office at (215) 893-1999, or purchase them online.
This review was published originally by DC Metro Theater Arts on November 7, 2017. 
Back to EDITOR'S DESK
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Archives

    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    September 2013
    June 2011
    January 2011
    November 2009
    July 2008
    June 2008
    January 2002
    January 1992

    RSS Feed

​Click below for a translation into your own language 
from Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, and  Azerbaijani to Vietnamese, Welsh, Xhosa, Yiddish, Yoruba, and  Zulu—​thanks to the latest version of Google Translate.
Picture
Tower Of Babel
by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563).
Click here to contact the Editor
Copyright Henrik Eger, 2014-2020.
Update: December 30, 2020.
All images are credited to the best of our knowledge. We believe known sources should  be shown and great work promoted. If there is a problem with the rights to any image, please contact us, and we will check it right away. 
​