The Phantom of Nostalgia
Three and a half decades, half a mask, and now it's gone.
Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Phantom of the Opera closed on April 16th, after a record-setting, 35-year run. Somehow, in these meta decades, no former cast members have actually moved into The Majestic Theater and lived in the shadows and rafters, obsessing over new actresses rotating into the role of the ingénue Christine. “The Phantom of the Phantom of the Opera,” might be the perfect next show for the venue, and a nod towards Broadway’s long, derivative period.
Weber’s musicals have always been a guilty pleasure, even to the people who have loved them most. The Middlebrow’s favorite is Jesus Christ, Superstar which has just enough edge that you can call it subversive if you quint. The Middlebrow’s least favorite Weber is Sunset Boulevard, because that really got Broadway turned towards recreating non-musical movies as light opera.
Cats, one has to respect for its brazenness. Imagine dragging T.S. Eliot like that. Imagine that the absurdity of a live-action movie version of Cats was a pivotal joke and plot point in Six Degrees of Separation only for reality to trump John Guare’s masterpiece play and film by delivering exactly that, starring Taylor Swift?
But Phantom will always be Weber’s most iconic work. If you grew up in the late 80s and through the 1990s and had friends who were actresses, singers or both, they had a Phantom souvenir program, sheet music or branded novel in their bedrooms that always looked like this:
Some sought these volumes, others received them as gifts. Some had porcelain phantom masks and roses they dried themselves, for posterity. This show was huge. It touched a lot of people. For the longest time, you could only see it in New York City or London. Another version, based on the same 1909 novel by Gaston Leroux made the rounds as a touring show, available for regional productions in your hometown. It debuted in 1991 and was written by acclaimed playwright Arthur Kopit, but nobody ever mistook it for the real thing.
The plot of Phantom of the Opera is that the Paris Opera House is inhabited by a mysterious musical savant who hides his scarred face behind a mask and lives in the darkness of the theater, avoiding the performers, audiences and other passersby until he falls in love with Christine, the newest member of the theatre’s ensemble. The Phantom falls in love and is enchanted by her singing and he presents himself as her “angel of music” and mentor. From the shadows, he contrived to aid her career, which escalates into acts of violence against other cast members, directors and critics and, ultimately, Christine’s childhood sweetheart, who returns just as her career is taking off.
It’s all very broadly told and the music relies heavily on synthesizers to bring the gothic tale into the 1980s. The sets are magnificent and they build an entire world within the bowels of the opera house, with its own foggy river and swan boat. The climax of the production (sorry, ya missed it) involves a chandelier crashing into the stage, flying over the audience’s heads along the way. It is part opera and part theme park ride and can be very satisfying.
It’s popularity was achieved quite skillfully as Weber realized that his show could not be harmed by horrors, silliness or plot contrivances so long as he maintained the overwhelming sense of fantasy about being loved so intensely and truly that nothing else in the world could possibly matter. Whether this is the escapism of a romance novel or a Romantic novel is entirely up to each audience member, but the distinction hardly matters if the escape is achieved.
The show started losing money in New York, says producer Cameron Mackintosh, before the pandemic and lost money weekly until its closure was announced, which inspired a last minute rush for seats. Now, it will be retooled for a tour of the United States.
Phantoms never die, they only menace.