A murderous ghost stalks the Paris Opera House yet again, more than a century after Gaston Leroux created him in a penny-dreadful novel. This time it’s a boyish phantom, less fiendish than petulant, in the musical tragedy laced with comic relief at the Hollywood Playhouse.
There, artistic director Andy Rogow has doctored a recipe by composer Maury Yeston and playwright Arthur Kopit. But like the well-intentioned but misguided scientists of countless other horror yarns, he can only watch as the creature he brought to life marches off to wreak unexpected havoc.
Cursed with a split personality, the centerpiece of Rogow’s season lurches awkwardly between fetching romantic highlights and garish pulp melodrama, a wildly erratic musical tragicomedy that seethes more than it sings.
Some of that is built into Yeston and Kopit’s stage thriller, whose comedy is never comfortably integrated with the melodrama. Their version of Leroux’s Victorian-era tale The Phantom of the Opera is built with parts off the traditional Broadway musical shelf, from My Fair Lady to The Student Prince to Threepenny Opera.
Rogow and his design team try to infuse the production with mystery, action, dread and strong family values. But these ingredients also don’t fit together as naturally as they should, thereby enhancing the show’s inherent problems and adding a few more. These contrast vividly with the very touching love story at its center. Jennifer Zimmerman is an appealing Christine and Tally Sessions a sympathetic phantom in their lyrical interludes between the production’s bombastic excesses.
Yeston and Kopit’s Phantom was developed about the same time that Andrew Lloyd Webber set his hand to the rock opera that has become the phenomenally successful The Phantom of the Opera. Webber, with collaborators Richard Stilgoe and Charles Hart, got his on stage first in the mid-1980s. By the time the Yeston/Kopit Phantom opened in Houston in 1991, high-level competition was unthinkable.
Instead, this turned into the OTHER Phantom, one that would have been good enough for Broadway in a Webberless world. Practically speaking, however, the Kopit/Yeston Phantom has become the alternative that stock and regional theaters offer their patrons whileWebber’s The Phantom of the Opera churns on seemingly forever on Broadway and tour.
Yeston, the composer of Titanic, Nine and a portion of Grand Hotel, is no slouch at songwriting. His score for Phantom is a good one, showcased best in Hollywood through the soaring ballads performed by Zimmerman and Sessions, both strong and disciplined vocalists. There are also a few lively production numbers and a serio-comic This Place is Mine (A Diva’s Work Is Never Done) by the scheming Carlotta (Lourelene Snedeker).
Music director Eric Alsford, part of an instrumental quintet, can’t bring out the full dimensions of Yeston’s orchestral music but does a reasonable job of backing the show’s better singers.
David K. Sherman’s eclectic set extends out over the audience via a wraparound catwalk in a vain attempt at environmental theater. Some of Sherman’s creation is nifty, as are some of Estela Vrancovich’s costumes, some of Ginny Adams’ lighting and some of Andrew Fiacco’s choreography (when there’s room for choreography).
But the theater’s biggest and most complex production in recent memory also taxes its resources beyond the limits; more of the scenery, costumes, lighting, choreography and Rogow’s staging are tatty. Phantom isn’t a flop by any means — Zimmerman and Sessions are worth the ticket alone — but overall this will be remembered as the hit that might have been, and wasn’t.
Jack Zink can be reached at or 954-356-4706.
