The Other Phantoms

For those of us who can't get enough of the man in the mask, ALW's musical version is certainly the most famous, but there are at least two others that I can think of. The Ken Hill version ran in London and apparently influenced ALW to make drastic changes to his original one-act concept musical. As ALW put it in an interview, the audience at the concept production laughed their heads off, but there was no need for another funny Phantom show, because Ken Hill had already done it so well.

The second musical that I'm thinking of, by Kopit and Yeston, is running this weekend in Pittsburgh.

Is anyone familiar with these two versions of POTO? Is there any chance of their getting to Broadway, or at least Off-Broadway? If you've seen either of them, what did you think? Was it just bad luck that they've forever lived in the shadow of ALW's crashing chandelier, or is there a good reason for their comparative obscurity?

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Paul Williams wrote the film "Phantom of the Paradise" in the early 1970s, a fusion of "The Phantom Of The Opera," "Faust," "The Picture of Dorian Grey" and other classic works of Gothic horror into one modern tale, set against the backdrop of the 1970s rock scene.

It's a camp classic which predates and eerily predicts numerous elements of the yet-to-appear Rocky Horror. For decades a stage production has been rumored to be in development, but it hasn't happened yet.

I am not a fan of the Yeston/kopit Phantom. The score doesn't work for me, and the book is clunky.
I was very young when the Ken Hill production was touring the states. I think it was before the Webber version went on tour. From what I remember, it followed the novel fairly well. It used actual opera music for the score. I have a cast recording for the Hill production somewhere.

Neil Berg did a concert recently where he combined numbers from all three major versions -- Webber, Kopit/Yeston, and Hill. Have to wonder how that went.

ETA: Apparently he also threw in numbers from Phantom of the Paradise and Phantom of the Country Palace, among others. Yikes.

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Updated On: 6/28/13 at 09:06 AM