PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, de Jong Concert Hall, Harris Fine Arts Center, Brigham Young University, Jan. 17; through Feb. 2, tickets at 801-422-4322 or www.byuarts.com
Before I get too far into this, let me just say that you should see Brigham Young University’s Phantom of the Opera. It is by far the most ambitious production they’ve staged (they’re one of the first universities to ever try it), and overall the play is very well done. If you like Phantom, the ticket price will be well spent. Even if you’re not a phan, there’s plenty of spectacle for everyone to enjoy.
I am not a phan.
Preston Yates takes the lead as the eponymous Phantom, and he does a commendable job with it. His voice is rich, and he has no trouble hitting the big notes. He sings in that hammy, billy goat, Broadway style, but that comes with the territory.
The truth is, the play is a lot of good fun until the Phantom enters. The show opens with a fictitious opera, Hannibal, which makes some well-placed jabs at Verdi and his Aïda. Then “Think of Me,” maybe the best number in the entire show, comes quickly to introduce the vocal talents of our female protagonist, Christine Daaé (DeLaney Westfall).
But then the Phantom shows up and ruins everything. The repetitious sequence of “I am your angel of music; come to me, angel of music” is tired, and it drags on until we’re beaten over the head with an ‘80s drum kit and the creepy “Music of the Night.”
I understand that the Phantom should be creepy by definition. He’s obsessive and psychotic, but it should be an alluring and mystical creepiness. There’s nothing appealing about the play’s Phantom. He’s not witty or kind, not charming or clever, and the plot hinges on him not being a looker. Just reading the text, we would assume he’s a compelling musician, but Andrew Lloyd Webber took away that as well.
We’ve been told dozens of times that the Phantom is “the angel of music,” but when we hear his opera, Don Juan Triumphant (a clear parody of Mozart’s masterpiece Don Giovanni), it’s aggressively bad. It opens with a cacophony and then sinks into reduced, reused, and recycled themes from earlier in the musical. The only new number is the lackluster “Past the Point of No Return.”
If the Phantom is a poor composer, what’s left to make him even a partially sympathetic character? His series of murders? His voyeurism? His threats? Fashion sense? Interior decorating skills? Or maybe we’re supposed to connect with the post-mortem Elektra complex he’s trying to engender in Christine.
But then again, Raoul (Tim Cooper ) doesn’t have much to offer other than that he is the only single male in the production who is not a homicidal maniac – hardly a compelling profile for match.com.
Speaking of Christine and Raoul’s fast-tracked amour, Phantom doesn’t seem to get its own humor. The play pokes fun at opera arias that exist only as vehicles for virtuosity or forced romance, yet it subjects us to Christine’s grating vocal gymnastics in the song “Phantom of the Opera” and the contrived pairing of Christine and Raoul in “All I Ask of You.”
Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe there’s more to the dynamic of the characters than I can see. As soon as the opening bars of “All I Ask of You” began, the sea of couples surrounding me in the audience began snuggling and interlocking their fingers like gears in clockwork – as if this was all “their song.” I just wasn’t feeling it.
And as much as Phantom likes to poke fun at operas for being over the top, let us not forget that at the end of the play Raoul continues to belt out his vocal lines whilst hanging from a noose. I habitually enjoy pointing out that La Traviata is an opera where the diva dies of tuberculosis for two-and-a-half hours, but a hanging aria really takes the cake.
But that wasn’t BYU’s fault. I have no complaints against Westfall or Cooper. They both did their parts justice and commanded the stage. I can’t say the same for the orchestra. The violins and brass were consistently out of tune, and the production in general suffered from a number of technical difficulties. A few microphones were woefully off axis, leading to some really muddied audio, and there was a mixing crisis anytime we had an ensemble number. But overall, the staging was incredible, and I had never understood the lyrics as well as I did at Thursday’s performance.
The “Masquerade” scene alone makes the evening worth it. The varied and elaborate costumes were truly a marvel, and there was even one deft dancer on stilts! To top off such a miraculous scene was a Phantom entrance that outdoes even the West End production and certainly puts to shame the film adaptation.
The only thing about the staging that didn’t always work was a projection in the back of the stage. At times it greatly helped facilitate a scene change. But every time the Phantom said something off stage, they flashed a photo of him on the screen. It was a miscalculation. The projection might have sounded good in planning, but the effect was tacky and forced. The worst was when Christine is supposed to see a bridal version of herself in the mirror, but instead we just see a ginger Bride of Frankenstein. It was almost comic.
Some parting thoughts:
First: this musical debuted in 1986. It’s pushing 27. I doubt a single member of BYU’s cast was alive when it first came out, yet it’s been running continuously on London’s West End and New York’s Broadway. The musical was tired from the beginning, and now it’s time to finally put it to bed.
I’m sure some readers will disagree, and that’s fine. We’re all entitled to our opinions. But I would invite them to listen to the original London cast recording with fresh ears. Lest we too hastily place Sarah Brightman in our pantheon of immortal vocalists, take a while to soak in her Kermit-the-Frog-on-helium singing over those Casio keyboard rhythm presets.
Let’s put the play to bed and wait at least a decade for the revival.
Second: what does the musical have to offer by way of moral or literary merit? Christine and Raoul are stick figures parading as characters. To call them “two-dimensional” would be an insult to two perfectly good dimensions. And once again, the Phantom is a sociopath and a bully. Are we supposed to be moved that he doesn’t murder Raoul and rape Christine because she gave the Phantom a kiss? Should we forget the two hangings and chandelier attack that led up to the climax? I ask not so rhetorically, what are we supposed to get out of this?
Third and finally: there are some great tunes in the musical, and there are many opportunities for spectacle, but we ought to consider whether Phantom is deserving of the feverish devotion we’ve given it. The play is worth seeing, but I’m afraid that in the food pyramid of music, it equates to a really glitzy order of French fries.
