Word: stage
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...most stimulating change of pace after Starlight Express's romance of the rails? For Andrew Lloyd Webber it was the sweep and dash of pure old-fashioned romance. He found it in French Novelist Gaston Leroux's 1910 thriller Le Fantome de l'Opera, long a standby for stage and screen adaptations (notably Lon Chaney's 1925 silent horror film). The version devised by Lloyd Webber and Librettist Richard Stilgoe dispensed with much of the novel's narrative superstructure to focus on two characters: the gruesomely disfigured genius who haunts the Paris Opera and the young Swedish soprano, Christine Daae...
Like Cats and Starlight Express, though, Phantom is likely to prove "castproof," for much of its attraction lies in its spectacular coups de theatre inspired by Victorian stage machinery. Among the highlights: a boat gliding across a gloomy underground lake, and a chandelier that appears to crash onto the audience at the end of Act I. The multiple trapdoors that create many of the illusions -- there are 102 tiny ones to accommodate the candles that rise from the gloom to illuminate the Phantom's subterranean realm -- are all controlled by computer. Says Will Bowen, assistant production manager in London...
...discussing a movie deal with Universal Pictures for a cinematic version of his roller-skating-trains musical Starlight, bruiting the possibility of writing a movie score for his Trump Tower neighbor Steven Spielberg, and launching plans for a U.S. production company with Director Harold Prince to seek out and stage new American musicals. "Music is born into Andrew," says Brightman. "Music just comes out of him. Without it, he wouldn't be Andrew...
...main reason is that the Harvard calendar is created at least four years in advance. If anyone actually gets mad and decides to fight for a schedule change, at best it will only help students who are currently in high school--people probably well into their heavy acne stage...
...bare staging lets the actors take center stage, and allows the audience to see the very talented band. Under the direction of Allen Barton, the musicians do a good job with Stephen Schwartz' music, even the difficult "Alas For You." In a nice touch, the band even participates in a game of charades...