Word: phantomed
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Connoisseurs of musicals know that the story has limitations. The Phantom can sing only one kind of song to Christine: I-adore-you-and-you-ab hor-me. Poor pastel Raoul can never be much more than a Parisian Freddy Eynsford-Hill. And yet -- in the magnificent Lloyd Webber version, the appealing Yeston-Kopit or even the lame Ken Hill -- the story works. The Phantom and Christine sing ) their volcanic sentiments in a plot as spare and potent as legend...
...these little Phantoms are springing up," says Hill, "purely because of the enormous success of Andrew's show." Yet very few theatergoers attend other Phantoms in the belief they're getting the Lloyd Webber. "People are coming to our show," Kopit says, "not because they can't get tickets to the Webber version, but because of the Phantom story. There is something dreamlike and mythic in the story of an innocent girl and a dark, foreboding, romantic figure who gets her under his power. We can identify both with the girl and with the deformed figure, who is perhaps...
...There's a current fascination with disfigurement," Yeston says, "not only of the face but of the soul. The Phantom is the outsider, the Steppenwolf. In many ways he captures a central irony of our times: it's the one who has the imperfect appearance who has a kind of moral perfection." The superiority of the wounded: it is a metaphor that speaks -- no, it sings -- to every loser in love or in life...
...What Andrew and I loved about the book," Mackintosh says, "was that it took itself terribly seriously." And so, for a few hours, do we take the Phantom. We live fully in his grandeur and pain. And when we leave, he keeps singing. The Phantom of the Opera is there, inside our minds...
...THEATER: Phantom Mania Stalks the Land...