Posted: 10/18/26 at 10:18am
With The Phantom of the Opera having turned 40, my thoughts have recently returned to Martin Smith, and my search for "documentation" of his very brief time in the role of The Phantom from October 2, 1989 to December 7, 1989.
I took this search very, very far in the fourteen years I have been searching - and when I say every possible avenue has been explored, I mean every single possible avenue was explored. I'd rather leave it at that. I've also learned - after hearing it from multiple people - that there were tapes in the early 1990s, with one person even informing me of their being sure they had one cassette in a box in storage but had no intent to retrieve it, makes it all the harder.
I know it seems silly. And frankly embarrassing to have spent half of my life on this (I'm now thirty and began this fourteen years ago). But as dumb as it sounds it has truly been disheartening, and whenever it pops back up it causes an immense amount of frustration and I end up distancing myself from the show and Martin's work as a result to try and not think about it anymore.
In the time since, there was one interesting find which was the following Thames news piece from September of 1989, discussing Martin's upcoming takeover of the role:
I still run the website as well:
https://www.inmemoryofmartinsmith.com/
Feel free to reach out if you knew him, worked with him, or otherwise have anything you'd like to say or share (stories, kind words, or even any performance material). We have a decent sized archive of performance material but there is still much we are lacking - particularly his appearances on Friday Night Is Music Night and Songs From the Shows. I've since been able to find a list of his appearances on these shows and if anyone has any archival access and could help find them I can provide program dates.
And of course if you somehow have his Phantom, you would be helping me put to rest something that has weighed on me for many years now.
Updated On: 10/18/26 at 10:18 AM
