Phantom celebrates it's 7000 Performance!- Page 3

[lensman55]

Posted: 8/14/03 at 1:20pm

>It is a putrid, putrid show without a shred of artistic >credibility.

OK, we know what DollyPop likes, what has "artistic credibility" in your narrow little world and why isn't there room for POTO in it?

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/14/03 at 2:24pm

"It has been established that Phantom is a masterpiece ..."

That certainly SOUNDS authoritative, Teacheroftheater, but, can you back that up? By whom? When? Where?

"... and it should be a requied master class for those learning about theater."

You mean, going and watching it? Or an entire course devoted to the marketing that is, you know, somehow more forgivable than Les Miz's?

[ChristineDaae]

Posted: 8/14/03 at 2:53pm

I never wanted to start fights or disagreements. All I said was wow Phantom is celebrating 7000 performances... Now, why does Dollypop come out of no where and give me ten reasons why it stinks? I don't know. But I hope we can end the disagreemnts. When someone states they're opinion about Phantom or any show you guys should respect it and not give reasons why it's such a horrible show. From recent posts Dollypop, I see your a teacher? You should know better.

Updated On: 8/14/03 at 02:53 PM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/14/03 at 3:01pm

Why on earth do people get so freaked out about disagreements or heated discussions? Of course people are posting their opinions. Some are informed and some are less so. Some are based on personal reactions in a specific moment, some are the result of scholarly work. But the notion that a message board should be:

"This is my opinion on this."

"Oh how very nice, this is my opinion about something else."

"Lovely, this is my opinion on something else entirely."

is a vision of a world without conflict, which, let's face it, is the essence of theater.

Be happy that you started a thread that has a little juice. And if you feel you can actually back up your opinions with facts that support your argument, (hello, teacheroftheater) then more power to you.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 8/14/03 at 3:35pm

It is a teacher's duty to correct mistakes, and Christine, you are sorely mistaken here.

Can anyone dig up the original reviews of POTO when it first opened in NY? The press was not kind to this show. The NY Times, in fact, hated it. It continues to run solely because of clever marketing and tie-ins with tourist agencies. Check the amount of foreign speaking tourists who semi-fill the Majestic Theater these days. You don't have to speak English fluently to appreciate the sets, costumes and over-orchestrated music that POTO boasts.

The show stinks.

Posted: 8/14/03 at 3:38pm

phantom's great, i've seen it three times, but every time the curtain falls at the end i'm left unsatisfied. I'd rather listen to the cd.

[PJ]

Posted: 8/14/03 at 3:48pm

No Dollypop I won't miss you. (hands "Mr. I Know Theatre" a Kleenex)

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 8/14/03 at 3:52pm

RAG, if by “unsatisfied” you mean unmoved then the show is a FAILURE and can in no terms be considered GREAT. If you mean it left you wanting more or made you want to come back and see it again at the next performance, then it is more successful.

[TEACHEROFTHEATER]

Posted: 8/15/03 at 11:54am

The musical The Phanton Of the Opera will be around to entertain theatergoers for generations to come.

As has been established, it is a masterpiece.

It is very cliche and common to "put down" a success of this magnitude. We are all impressed that some seem to think "great" theater had to originate centuries ago or "be something that school children have no desire to see."

How very foolish. Yes, yes, keep the sleep inducing works coming because some of them are "serious and great theater."

As has been demonstrated, forcing boring "great works" down the throats of young people has led to lack of education, reading ability and culture within our society.

We all know how great Shakespeare is and how his works influenced everything that followed and blah blah blah.

For many reasons, it is best for people, for students and for the future of theater to have people ENTERTAINED when they see a show.

I suppose it is nice that next season there will likely be another musical that you need to absorb the original cast recording to, in order to follow, understand and really enjoy the show. Somewhere, if not on Broadway, there will also be a production of one of Shakespeare's masterpieces (hopefully, the demand for tickets will be met).

Thankfully, The Phantom of the Opera will still be running, to thrill and enthrall and continue to create new generations of musical theater lovers.

[ChristineDaae]

Posted: 8/15/03 at 12:26pm

Oh it's a teachers duty to correct mistakes? Is it a teachers duty to make-fun of someones opinons? You must be one popular teacher.
I don't want to see the original reviews of Phantom, I like it and thats all that matters.

"I think I know a little bit about theater." HAHA thats funny

[tomooseone]

Posted: 8/15/03 at 12:29pm

Hey guys - thought id share this with you.

Here is the original New York Times review of Phantom - it seems they didnt like it and hated Sarah Brightman - its quite funny!!!!!!! Wierd how one person can stop so many people seeing something.




"Phantom of the Opera
By FRANK RICH
Jan. 27, 1988

It may be possible to have a terrible time at "The Phantom of the Opera," but you'll have to work at it. Only a terminal prig would let the avalanche of pre-opening publicity poison his enjoyment of this show, which usually wants nothing more than to shower the audience with fantasy and fun, and which often succeeds, at any price.

It would be equally ludicrous, however --- and an invitation to severe disappointment --- to let the hype kindle the hope that "Phantom" is a credible heir to the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals that haunt both Andrew Lloyd Webber's creative aspirations and the Majestic Theater as persistently as the evening's title character does.

What one finds instead is a characteristic Lloyd Webber project -- long on pop professionalism and melody, impoverished of artistic personality and passion -- that the director Harold Prince, the designer Maria Bjornson and the mesmerizing actor Michael Crawford have elevated quite literally to the roof. "The Phantom of the Opera" is as much a victory of dynamic stagecraft over musical kitsch as it is a triumph of merchandising uber alles.

As you've no doubt heard, "Phantom" is Mr. Lloyd Webber's first sustained effort at writing an old-fashioned romance between people instead of cats or trains. The putative lovers are the Paris Opera House phantom (Mr. Crawford) and a chorus singer named Christine Daae (Sarah Brightman). But Mr. Crawford's moving portrayal of the hero notwithstanding, the show's most persuasive love story is Mr. Prince's and Ms. Bjornson's unabashed crush on the theater itself, from footlights to dressing rooms, from flies to trap doors.

A gothic backstage melodrama, "Phantom" taps right into the obsessions of the designer and the director. At the Royal Shakespeare Company, Ms. Bjornson was a wizard of darkness, monochromatic palettes and mysterious grand staircases.

Mr. Prince, a prince of darkness in his own right, is the master of the towering bridge ("Evita"), the labyrinthine inferno ("Sweeney Todd") and the musical-within-the-musical ("Follies").

In "Phantom," the creative personalities of these two artists merge with a literal lightning flash at the opening coup de theatre, in which the auditorium is transformed from gray decrepitude to the gold-and-crystal Second Empire glory of the Paris Opera House.

Though the sequence retreads the famous Ziegfeld palace metamorphosis in "Follies," Ms. Bjornson's magical eye has allowed Mr. Prince to reinvent it, with electrifying showmanship. The physical production, Andrew Bridge's velvety lighting included, is a tour de force throughout -- as extravagant of imagination as of budget.

Ms. Bjornson drapes the stage with layers of Victorian theatrical curtains -- heavily tasseled front curtains, fire curtains, backdrops of all antiquated styles -- and then constantly shuffles their configurations so we may view the opera house's stage from the perspective of its audience, the performers or the wings.

For an added lift, we visit the opera-house roof, with its cloud-swept view of a twinkling late-night Paris, and the subterreanean lake where the Phantom travels by gondola to a baroque secret lair that could pass for the lobby of Grauman's Chinese Theater. The lake, awash in dry-ice fog and illuminated by dozens of candelabra, is a masterpiece of campy phallic Hollywood iconography -- it's Liberace's vision of hell.

There are horror-movie special effects, too, each elegantly staged and unerringly paced by Mr. Prince. The imagery is so voluptuous that one can happily overlook the fact that the book (by the composer and Richard Stilgoe) contains only slightly more plot than "Cats," with scant tension or suspense. This "Phantom," more skeletal but not briefer than other adaptations of the 1911 Gaston Leroux novel, is simply a beast-meets-beauty, loses-beauty story, attenuated by the digressions of disposable secondary characters (the liveliest being Judy Kaye's oft-humiliated diva) and by Mr. Lloyd Webber's unchecked penchant for forcing the show to cool its heels while he hawks his wares.

In Act II, the heroine travels to her father's grave for no reason other than to sell an extraneous ballad whose tepid greeting-card sentiments ("Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again") dispel the evening's smoldering mood. The musical's dramatic thrust is further slowed by three self-indulgently windy opera parodies -- in which the sophisticated tongue-in-cheek wit of Ms. Bjornson's sumptuous period sets and costumes is in no way matched by Gillian Lynne's repetitive, presumably satirical ballet choreography or by Mr. Lloyd Webber's tiresome collegiate jokes at the expense of such less than riotous targets as Meyerbeer.

Aside from the stunts and set changes, the evening's histrionic peaks are Mr. Crawford's entrances -- one of which is the slender excuse for Ms. Bjornson's most dazzling display of Technicolor splendor, the masked ball ("Masquerade") that opens Act II.

Mr. Crawford's appearances are eagerly anticipated, not because he's really scary but because his acting gives "Phantom" most of what emotional heat it has. His face obscured by a half-mask -- no minor impediment -- Mr. Crawford uses a booming, expressive voice and sensuous hands to convey his desire for Christine.

His Act I declaration of love, "The Music of the Night" -- in which the Phantom calls on his musical prowess to bewitch the heroine -- proves as much a rape as a seduction.

Stripped of the mask an act later to wither into a crestfallen, sweaty, cadaverous misfit, he makes a pitiful sight while clutching his beloved's discarded wedding veil.

Those who visit the Majestic expecting only to applaud a chandelier -- or who have 20-year-old impressions of Mr. Crawford as the lightweight screen juvenile of "The Knack" and "Hello, Dolly!" -- will be stunned by the force of his Phantom.

It's deflating that the other constituents of the story's love triangle don't reciprocate his romantic or sexual energy. The icily attractive Ms. Brightman possesses a lush soprano by Broadway standards (at least as amplified), but reveals little competence as an actress. After months of playing "Phantom" in London, she still simulates fear and affection alike by screwing her face into bug-eyed, chipmunk-cheeked poses more appropriate to the Lon Chaney film version.

Steve Barton, as the Vicomte who lures her from the beast, is an affable professional escort with unconvincingly bright hair.

Thanks to the uniform strength of the voices -- and the soaring, Robert Russell Bennett-style orchestrations -- Mr. Lloyd Webber's music is given every chance to impress.

There are some lovely tunes, arguably his best yet, and, as always, they are recycled endlessly: if you don't leave the theater humming the songs, you've got a hearing disability. But the banal lyrics, by Charles Hart and Mr. Stilgoe, prevent the score's prettiest music from taking wing. The melodies don't find shape as theater songs that might touch us by giving voice to the feelings or actions of specific characters.

Instead, we get numbing, interchangeable pseudo-Hammersteinisms like "Say you'll love me every waking moment" or "Think of me, think of me fondly, when we say goodbye."

With the exception of "Music of the Night" -- which seems to express from its author's gut a desperate longing for acceptance -- Mr. Lloyd Webber has again written a score so generic that most of the songs could be reordered and redistributed among the characters (indeed, among other Lloyd Webber musicals) without altering the show's story or meaning. The one attempt at highbrow composing, a noisy and gratuitous septet called "Prima Donna," is unlikely to take a place beside the similar Broadway operatics of Bernstein, Sondheim or Loesser.

Yet for now, if not forever, Mr. Lloyd Webber is a genuine phenomenon -- not an invention of the press or ticket scalpers -- and "Phantom" is worth seeing not only for its punch as high-gloss entertainment but also as a fascinating key to what the phenomenon is about.

Mr. Lloyd Webber's esthetic has never been more baldly stated than in this show, which favors the decorative trappings of art over the troublesome substance of culture and finds more eroticism in rococo opulence and conspicuous consumption than in love or sex.

Mr. Lloyd Webber is a creature, perhaps even a prisoner, of his time; with "The Phantom of the Opera," he remakes La Belle Epoque in the image of our own Gilded Age. If by any chance this musical doesn't prove Mr. Lloyd Webber's most popular, it won't be his fault, but another sign that times are changing and that our boom era, like the opera house's chandelier, is poised to go bust."




So there you have it - how wrong that guy was eh? It has been ALW's most popular musical and thousands love it so PFFFFFFT to him. LOL

Tom

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/15/03 at 1:59pm

"As has been established, it is a masterpiece."

Good thing you're a Teacheroftheater and not a Teacherofresearch because merely typing your assertion a second time doesn't back it up with evidence any more than the first time you said its masterpiece status has been established without any example of by whom or when.

Nobody is saying great theater is boring. In fact, great theater is not. I shudder to think that a Teacheroftheater uses Shakespeare as an example of boring theater. Ask any young person who is turned on by a great production of Taming of the Shrew or The Tempest or Twelfth Night if the great productions were boring and they'd laugh in your face. In fact, I saw a fantastic production of The Tempest done by inner city high schoolers through a program of Shakespeare & Company. Luckily, their teachersoftheater took the time to show them how not to be afraid of the language and the importance of telling the story, because they did a great job of it.

The funny thing is, t.o.t., that YOU set up the comparison between Les Miz and Phantom, as if the legions of people who think Phantom is crap hold Les Miz in the highest regard. I only brought Les Miz up because you said that it used marketing to fill its seats while all Phantom had to do was rely on the whole world hearing about its masterpiece status. It was then, as it is now, an assertion at which to laugh.

A talented teacheroftheater would be able to make Shakespeare come alive for young people. However, I am sure that your students must enjoy field trips to Phantom of the Opera. Maybe you can take them to the Cats tour too.

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 8/15/03 at 2:13pm

Thanks, Namo. TOT please tell us where you “teach” theatre so we can keep our children away from you.

If POTO is as “good as it gets” I think I need to kill myself.
You are entitled to your opinion, of course, but to teach kids that POTO is what theatre is all about is just plain wrong.

And who ESTABLISHED POTO as a Masterpiece? Is there a committee? Did ALW get a little plaque or something?

I defended you on another thread when someone attacked you (I believe it was about the Tonys and Lip-synching.) But your posts here really disturb me.

[TEACHEROFTHEATER]

Posted: 8/15/03 at 2:14pm

blah blah blah

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/15/03 at 2:18pm

Well, there ya go. That just told me all I need to know.

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 8/15/03 at 2:20pm

Well said, TOT. Are you as articulate with your students who may question your opinions?

[TEACHEROFTHEATER]

Posted: 8/15/03 at 2:27pm

Until they are banned, an appropriate response to the boring attackers is....

blah blah blah

Posted: 8/15/03 at 2:30pm

wow, lol.

[lensman55]

Posted: 8/15/03 at 2:34pm

>"Phantom of the Opera
>By FRANK RICH
>Jan. 27, 1988

review snipped for space sake.

Yeah, there's no agenda here. This certainly doesn't [look] like someone who has an axe to grind again Andy Loud Webby! (I don't like him myself, I think he's a troll with atrotious (sp) manners. But I wouldn't base my review on my opinions of the composer!)

[lensman55]

Posted: 8/15/03 at 2:40pm

>Until they are banned, an appropriate response to the boring >attackers is....

>blah blah blah

Appropriate? Maybe. Credible? No.

You've stated that it's a masterpiece, others have stated that it survives based on marketing alone. I like the play, I don't know that I would say it's a "masterpiece," but I do like it. What, besides it's longevity (sp) which others will attribute to marketing and hype, do you base your claim for the play being a "masterpiece?"

[ChristineDaae]

Posted: 8/15/03 at 4:16pm

Why do you think it's been running for 16 years? The show still attracts so many people! It can't be that bad to be running 16 years.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/15/03 at 8:00pm

Imagine. A teacher refusing to back up his assertions with evidence feels the need to call those who are asking for some sort of standard of argument "attackers."

Honestly, tot, you blah blah blahed because you had no answer. I would imagine that is something you've seen your students do, provided you instruct pre-teens.

Christine, McDonald's is the most successful restaurant in the history of the world, it doesn't mean the food is particularly good or good for you. People go back to it, as do the fans of Phantom of the Opera, because it is familiar. They recognize the POTO title, its big song and and its mask logo. Thanks to the marketing, it is recognizeable. Most people fear the unknown. Phantom was a known title before Webber wrote a note for it.

Dollypop mentioned that you don't have to have a deep grasp of English to go, sit in the theater, and look at the pretty stagecraft and marvel at the lip-synching.

It's the mainstream theater's equivalent of McNuggets. You wouldn't want to make a steady diet of it, but so many of you do. And nobody, but nobody, would declare McDonalds' food gourmet, as TOT has declared POTO a masterpiece.

Updated On: 8/15/03 at 08:00 PM

[Kelly]

Posted: 8/15/03 at 10:17pm

This is ridiculous. Someone likes a show and someone doesn't. Get over it and move on.

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 8/15/03 at 10:18pm

Can I get a AMEN!

[DofB5]

Posted: 8/15/03 at 10:24pm

AMEN! Sometimes I want a steak and sometimes only a Big Mac will do!

D