Phantom of the Opera
Phantom of the Opera
Appleton North High School
March 19 2011
Seeing a high school production of Phantom of the Opera was different. I haven't seen Phantom that many times, really, but enough to have the image of how it ought to be done. I was wondering what was going to be done differently, because sometimes high school productions of shows are altered. But as far as the music and dialogue goes, not much was changed at all.
One very significant change to things though, was not really their fault. Fire codes and all that mandated that there could be no pyrotechnics of any sort. So the poor Phantom lost his fireballs and his exits amidst clouds of smoke. It made some scenes a wee bit less dramatic, but they did they best they could with what they had.
The set was interesting. It was sort of a hybrid of professional looking sets and props mixed with what I'd expect to see at a high school show. No matter the caliber of the performance, amateur theatres just don't have the recourses to make everything look that realistic. So I'm sure that they rented some things and made other things. For example, the infamous chandelier looked very professional, but the phantom's pipe organ did not. Not to say that the parts of the set they made didn't look very good, because they did, but the contrast was a little jarring.
Another thing that was interesting about the set was the placement of the orchestra. They didn't have a pit in their auditorium, so instead they had the orchestra up on a platform above the stage. They usefully used this platform later on as a second level for more characters to run around on. Depending on the set, sometimes they were visible and sometimes they were not.
They had four "boxes" on the sides of the stage for the cast that were playing the audience members to sit.
The show was double cast for almost all of the roles. I am guessing that they alternated performances. I was told that we saw the "A" cast, which would have been useful if the program actually said which cast was which. It said for the Ensemble, but not for the principles. Logic would tell me that the "A" cast was the first person listed on the list. So I am going to guess that when it said that the Phantom was played by "Josh Lepak"/"Mason Vechart" that I saw Lepak.
Overall, I think that they did a very good job. I liked how they transformed the theatre during the overture. Parts of their set were covered in sheets which various cast members removed dramatically during the overture, returning the theatre to its former glory as we travelled back through time. They also had the cast members running through the audience at times in order to expand the stage a bit.
While watching the show, I could definitely tell where they got inspiration from for the costumes - the movie. Most of the costumes were pretty much straight out of the movie. This isn't a good or bad thing, just an observation.
So one of the alterations to the show was made apparent right away, when Lefevre is showing the new managers around the theatre and annoying Reyer. It was jarring at first, but I got used to it, and enjoyed the change after a little while, even if it made some of the songs sound a little bit different.
M Reyer was played by Ian Parker, and was one of the few people who was not double cast. I thought that he was quite funny in the two scenes that he was in. The poor conductor/director (I forget which) is eternally frustrated by all of the external forces that make his job difficult. And the fact that Piangi can't pronounce certain words properly.
The managers have always been some of my favorite characters, and Mac Writt as Andre Firmin and Gina Berceau as his wife, Madame Firmin did not disappoint. Yes, instead of our two friends, M Andre and M Firmin, we had a husband and wife duo running the theatre. Lefevre was also Madame Lefevre played by Laurel McKenzie. This made "Notes" and "Prima donna" sound a little odd, with more female voices, but you know... it worked. The two of them were a fantastic comedic team, playing off each other very nicely. Traditionally, Andre has a tendency to be fascinated by anything female in the opera, and by making Firmin his wife, it opened the way to comedy. She kept dragging him away (by the ear) from the ballet girls, and then from Carlotta.
Even when she did not physically drag him away, she would give him the most fantastic Looks when he would get to be too much of a flirt.
They reprised this once more during the beginning of masquerade. Traditionally, the two managers don't recognize each other, and are sneaking around in their costume before confirming that they know each other, and laugh it off. They are a little jumpy.
Well in this version, Andre does not recognize his wife, and he goes up to her, asking her if she's here alone. He takes her hand to kiss it, and she removes her mask. He did a cute eep, and then sighed and moved her hand up to grab his ear. It was cute. She just smiled and kissed him, and the two went off to enjoy the party. They were fun to watch in the background, they got quite cuddly when the full attention was not on them.
I love the song Notes and they did not disappoint. As I said, it was a bit odd at first to have a female voice singing some of the lines, but I got used to it, especially since she sounded great. The both of them had the perfect sarcastic and then growing annoyance as they read the notes from the Phantom. I especially liked after Carlotta and Raoul had come in with their notes, and Andre and Firmin grabbed them and compared all four of them. They looked at the notes, at each other, back to the notes and then nodded, mystery solved.
Prima Donna was great too. Andre and Firmin kept shooting looks at each other, telling each other to come up with more to say. Piangi was following their lead, but a beat behind them. It was funny.
During the Reprise of Notes it was pretty clear how worn the two of them were getting, and I wanted to hug them both, which is exactly as it should be.
For me, the managers are very important characters, and these two were perfect for the roles. Mme Firmin, by the way, was one of the few roles that were not double cast.
La Carlotta was played by Sally Eronson. Carlotta is supposed to have a good voice, very operatic, but speak in an exaggerated accent. She's supposed to be a diva in the fullest sense, strutting about and generally being very arrogant. She has Piangi wrapped around her little finger, and she reigns over the managers as well. Sally Eronson was perfect! She grandstanded just enough to get the point across, but she also did not sound annoying, as Carlotta can (sometimes intentionally on the part of the person playing her). I thought that her Think of Me was actually quite pretty, and I would have loved to have heard her finish. Her accent was there, and it was pretty good, but it also was not too thick.
Carlotta is typically not one of my favorite characters, but I really enjoyed her in this performance.
She was quite funny in the production of Il Muto as she was trying to get through. I liked when she and Christine "kissed" behind the fan. They were both hamming it up a bit. A nice touch that she added though, was after the first frog croak, she commanded everyone to start over from a certain spot, shooing people back into their places and telling the orchestra where to start over.
I could also tell that she was really fond of Piangi, and not just because she could boss him around, but they seemed to act like they were close. That made the ending sort of sad.
Piangi (Sam Panzer) was also not double cast. He had a good operatic voice as well during the opening number. Mostly though, he was really funny. In the opening number, I like how he strutted about the stage, with no mind really for where anybody else was. The rest of the people just sort of scuttled out of his way. The crew were making fun of him behind his back, and it was rather amusing. They were making fun of Carlotta as well, actually.
I mentioned already that during Prima Donna, Piangi was trying to help the managers, but he was always a step behind them. There's a line in the song "Your devotees are on their knees to implore you" where upon Andre and Firmin did just that, but Piangi didn't notice right away until Firmin gestured at him frantically. Then he followed suit, very slowly and ponderously, before getting back up again with equal grace and speed. Well he is a large man, as Italian tenors are prone to be.
I also liked him during Il Muto. Granted he was supposed to be over-acting, as he is Panzer playing Piangi playing the count, but it was really funny. I guess that they decided that the Phantom interrupted right before his cue to do something, because he kept coming out from behind the screen where he was hiding and then going back as Carlotta started the scene over several times. He had a great "shocked" expression when the maid was revealed to be Serafino.
There are quite a few songs where there are a lot of things going on. I think this makes things challenging to do, because some voices can overpower other voices. These also tend to be the songs that I like: Angel of Music, Notes/Prima Donna, Notes II and the finale. There's a lot to hear, and if you know the lyrics, of course, you can understand everything, but only if you can hear it. For the most part, they did pretty well at balancing the sound.
Mme Giry (Kiersten Bentley) and Meg Giry (Val Letko) both did good jobs in their roles. They spend a lot of time singing together in the group songs, and their voices blended very nicely. I liked the natural authority that Mme Giry had. She was very quiet, but everybody listened to her. Now that's power, and she played it well.
It's important for me that Meg Giry does her part well in Angel of Music because I like the harmony in that song (And I like Meg's part in that song better anyway) and she did a very good job of it. I would have liked to hear the both of them sing more, but I know how the show goes. Ah well.
Mme Giry was sufficiently unnerved and calm at the same time when she told Raoul of where she had first seen the Phantom, many years ago. She didn't make the story any more dramatic than it needed to be, and that worked very well. I'm not sure if it was on purpose, or a coincidence, but while she was talking about seeing the man in a cage, someone was moving something in one of the "boxes" and for a moment, it looked like a cage.
Masquerade is another of my favorite songs and I thought they did it awesomely. One of the reasons that I love this song is because of the costumes. They aren't all that brightly colored, because honestly, nothing in this show is, but it is one of the more colorful scenes in the play. The costumes were great, nicely elaborate. In the touring version of Phantom that I saw, they had mannequins on the stage to make it look like there were more people there than there are in the cast. In this production though, they didn't have that problem. There were people standing still on the stairs instead of mannequins. That amused me. And try as hard as I could, I did not notice the Phantom's entrance, even though I was watching for it. His costume as the Red Death was quite snazzy too. I approved.
As I said before, no pyrotechnics allowed, so the Phantom exited by flying upwards and out of sight.
Onto the main three characters, and their songs now.
I don't really care for Christine that much as a character. I'm not sure if that makes me overly critical or not of Christines in general. It is a very big part, and rather vocally demanding. Christine was played by Emily Wisniewski. I think that she had the character down, and she was very pretty. She sang
Think of Me and Wishing You were Somehow Here Again just fine, although there were some high notes that I don't think she could quite hit. I'm biased, because I have a much jazzier version of the second song that I adore. For the most part, though, she did fine.
She struggled a bit with the ending of the title song though, when the Phantom says "Sing for me!" and she does so, but she just couldn't hold those powerful high notes. I think she should have dropped them down a little. She had no problem with the low notes in the song, which is what I like about the title song.
All I Ask Of You on the other hand, was beautiful, and beautifully done. They had a pretty backdrop with lots of stars. Very shiny. She and Raoul sounded very nice together.
During Twisted Every Way I really like the line of Christines: "He kills without a thought/he murders all that's good, I know I can't refuse/and yet I wish I could" because it's such a dramatic point, not only with what's going on, but in the music as well. She didn’t really perform the line the way that I prefer it to be done. Again, she did fine, but just not the phrasing that I prefer.
Raoul was played by Andrew O'Neill and I liked him. I don't normally care for the song Little Lottie I've always found it creepy but actually, when he sang it, I didn't mind it at all. I thought that he was rather cute the way he was around Christine.
He was just as frustrated as everyone else during Notes, and I liked watching him converse with Meg in the background of Prima Donna.
Raoul really got his chance to shine during All I Ask Of You. He had a very good voice, and I liked listening to him sing.
I definitely approved of the way that he played Raoul. He seemed used to getting his way, and used to people following his orders, but he wasn't overly arrogant. He also didn't seem completely blinded by his love for Christine. He loved her, yes, but he seemed more angry at the Phantom.
There are two moments in the play where the Phantom and Raoul have parallel lines, and I thought they did a really good of emphasizing that. It was the only time in the show when Raoul got to have reverb. I hadn't really noticed this before with the show, but it really does seem more like Raoul is more interested in stopping the Phantom for the sake of stopping the Phantom, rather than rescuing Christine. Granted, he does want to rescue Christine, but it seemed that the focus was more on stopping the Phantom. I liked that.
The Phantom was brilliant. He was played by Josh Lepak and it was hard to believe that he's just in high school. Then again, I see enough children's theatre to say that about a lot of people, but it was still true. Not only was his voice great in Phantom of the Opera but he had just the right blend of pretty and creepy in Music of the Night. He was walking the line between genus and insanity, between in love and obsessed and he swung back and forth pretty effortlessly. He achieved that nice balance where sometimes I wanted to tell him to chill, and sometimes I wanted to hug him and tell him that everything would be okay.
As I mentioned before, he was deprived of his fireballs, which made things a little less dramatic for him in certain parts, (One moment, he actually kinda looked silly, flying around) but over all, he was fantastic.
His first entrance in the mirror was pretty good. Between the mask covering one side of his face, and his hat shadowing the other side of his face, he was very creepy looking, just as the Phantom ought to be.
They did the title song really well. That's one of the most important parts of the show to me, the boat ride. I know that in the professional versions, they have the Phantom and Christine running around the stage very quickly, teleporting them around by means of using doubles. They did that here, but I think that they exited from the left and remerged on the right side a little too quickly for me to maintain my suspension of disbelief.
The boat scene was done very well though. I liked how the candles lit themselves on cue for the Phantom, rather than coming onto the stage still lit. I think that seemed a little bit more realistic.
Another thing that they did with the Phantom was to visually show how he controlled Christine, and then other people as well. He worked his "magic" by means of tossing out a handful of sparkly confetti. It actually worked pretty well, since it wasn't over done. It was just something he did. I think that represented the hypnotic power of his voice. It certainly made some things make more sense. He would shower people with the confetti and then they would walk around a bit in a trance, doing what he wanted of them. I just was impressed that he didn't still have sparkles on his hands, and that Christine didn't have them in her hair.
Down in the Phantom's lair, he had the dummy that looked like Christine, but it was a real person, standing very still and moving a bit like an automaton. I was impressed that she just stood there so very still for quite awhile. Well done, whoever you were.
A few more notable scenes. Christine goes to the graveyard to sing Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again and meets up with the Phantom. He throws sparkles at her and coaxes her closer when Raoul shows up. He rushes at the Phantom, who jumps up onto the headstone, and then over to another one. This is the previously mentioned moment when he looked a bit silly, rather than the impressive angel of death. However, flying around notwithstanding, the way that they worked around the problem of not being able to use fire worked pretty well. Rather than scaring Christine because Raoul is walking into the path of the oncoming fireballs, the Phantom hypnotizes him (sparkles again) into very slowly and deliberately walking towards the crypt that contains Christine's father. The doors opened quite dramatically, and I guess the idea was that the Phantom was going to shut Raoul up in the crypt. Christine pulls him away and snaps him out of it.
I know that Don Juan Triumphant is supposed to be a strange show, creepy and jarring and just in general, not pretty. But they really had a hard time with it. The first rehearsal didn't go well, as it's supposed to not go well, but then when everybody is under the Phantom's spell, they are supposed to sing better. They didn't, really.
The Point of No Return before the Phantom takes over, was difficult to understand, and just... did not sound good. And it wasn't just because it's not really supposed to. It was not a highlight of the show, that's for sure.
When they got into The Point of No Return properly with the Phantom and Christine singing, it got better. I meant to try to watch for when she figures out who Don Juan really is, but I was distracted by watching Raoul and the Firmins, who were having interesting responses to the show. Anyway, the phantom makes it all clear that that's who he is, and then Christine unmasks him. I liked the unmasking, as it wasn't very deliberate, but he still seemed stunned by it. Everybody was still for a moment.
His Phantom make up was pretty good I think. It made him look sufficiently deformed and scary (and crazed). The escape/kidnapping wasn't as dramatic as it could've been. No fire again, and no trap doors. He just swirled his cape and everything went dark.
The finale is my favorite scene in the whole show, and they did not disappoint. The only criticism that I have was that Raoul was not miked properly or something, because many of his lines were not very audible. Also, instead of singing all of his lines, he spoke them. "I did it all for you, and all for nothing."
I liked how the Phantom roughly got Christine ready for the "wedding." Her words to him clearly hurt him, but he didn't say anything, just placing the veil on her and shoving the flowers into her hands. And I loved how sulky he got when Raoul came, as he flopped down in his chair.
He used a nice trick to get Raoul into the trap. More sparkles and Raoul walked right over to the Christine dummy, who cheerfully put the noose around his neck and held it firmly. Raoul didn't snap out of it until he was well and truly trapped, and if I was the Phantom, I would have planned it that way.
So like I said, when the three of them are singing together, you couldn't really hear Raoul singing, which was too bad, because I like how he and the Phantom sing together.
The kiss was great. I liked how utterly dumbfounded both guys were. I could see Raoul's thought bubble though, that the second more passionate kiss was entirely unnecessary. The Phantom got a bit more into the second kiss too.
Another highly charged scene where the Phantom took out a knife. I liked how it was basically silent at that point.
The show ended as it always does, with the Phantom hiding behind his cloak on his chair, and Meg coming to reveal that he's gone, all that's left is the mask. It's such a low key ending to this show, and I think that sets it apart from a lot of other shows, that go out with a bang.
Final comment on the show is about the end of the first act. The Phantom sings his heartbreaking reprise of All I Ask Of You and then we go back to the stage, and "disaster beyond your wildest dreams will occurs".
I haven't seen Phantom all that many times, but I have a perfect record of not being very impressed with the crashing chandelier.
It fell, and it fell very nicely, but... well... rather than saying it fell, I'd say that it lowered rather quickly. I know, I know, we don't want to break it, and we don't to cause any damage to anything or anyone. But I've never seen it fall very fast, even when I saw the professionals do it, so there you go.
Overall, this was a very good amateur production of Phantom of the Opera, and I was glad to have the chance to see it.
Appleton North High School
March 19 2011
Seeing a high school production of Phantom of the Opera was different. I haven't seen Phantom that many times, really, but enough to have the image of how it ought to be done. I was wondering what was going to be done differently, because sometimes high school productions of shows are altered. But as far as the music and dialogue goes, not much was changed at all.
One very significant change to things though, was not really their fault. Fire codes and all that mandated that there could be no pyrotechnics of any sort. So the poor Phantom lost his fireballs and his exits amidst clouds of smoke. It made some scenes a wee bit less dramatic, but they did they best they could with what they had.
The set was interesting. It was sort of a hybrid of professional looking sets and props mixed with what I'd expect to see at a high school show. No matter the caliber of the performance, amateur theatres just don't have the recourses to make everything look that realistic. So I'm sure that they rented some things and made other things. For example, the infamous chandelier looked very professional, but the phantom's pipe organ did not. Not to say that the parts of the set they made didn't look very good, because they did, but the contrast was a little jarring.
Another thing that was interesting about the set was the placement of the orchestra. They didn't have a pit in their auditorium, so instead they had the orchestra up on a platform above the stage. They usefully used this platform later on as a second level for more characters to run around on. Depending on the set, sometimes they were visible and sometimes they were not.
They had four "boxes" on the sides of the stage for the cast that were playing the audience members to sit.
The show was double cast for almost all of the roles. I am guessing that they alternated performances. I was told that we saw the "A" cast, which would have been useful if the program actually said which cast was which. It said for the Ensemble, but not for the principles. Logic would tell me that the "A" cast was the first person listed on the list. So I am going to guess that when it said that the Phantom was played by "Josh Lepak"/"Mason Vechart" that I saw Lepak.
Overall, I think that they did a very good job. I liked how they transformed the theatre during the overture. Parts of their set were covered in sheets which various cast members removed dramatically during the overture, returning the theatre to its former glory as we travelled back through time. They also had the cast members running through the audience at times in order to expand the stage a bit.
While watching the show, I could definitely tell where they got inspiration from for the costumes - the movie. Most of the costumes were pretty much straight out of the movie. This isn't a good or bad thing, just an observation.
So one of the alterations to the show was made apparent right away, when Lefevre is showing the new managers around the theatre and annoying Reyer. It was jarring at first, but I got used to it, and enjoyed the change after a little while, even if it made some of the songs sound a little bit different.
M Reyer was played by Ian Parker, and was one of the few people who was not double cast. I thought that he was quite funny in the two scenes that he was in. The poor conductor/director (I forget which) is eternally frustrated by all of the external forces that make his job difficult. And the fact that Piangi can't pronounce certain words properly.
The managers have always been some of my favorite characters, and Mac Writt as Andre Firmin and Gina Berceau as his wife, Madame Firmin did not disappoint. Yes, instead of our two friends, M Andre and M Firmin, we had a husband and wife duo running the theatre. Lefevre was also Madame Lefevre played by Laurel McKenzie. This made "Notes" and "Prima donna" sound a little odd, with more female voices, but you know... it worked. The two of them were a fantastic comedic team, playing off each other very nicely. Traditionally, Andre has a tendency to be fascinated by anything female in the opera, and by making Firmin his wife, it opened the way to comedy. She kept dragging him away (by the ear) from the ballet girls, and then from Carlotta.
Even when she did not physically drag him away, she would give him the most fantastic Looks when he would get to be too much of a flirt.
They reprised this once more during the beginning of masquerade. Traditionally, the two managers don't recognize each other, and are sneaking around in their costume before confirming that they know each other, and laugh it off. They are a little jumpy.
Well in this version, Andre does not recognize his wife, and he goes up to her, asking her if she's here alone. He takes her hand to kiss it, and she removes her mask. He did a cute eep, and then sighed and moved her hand up to grab his ear. It was cute. She just smiled and kissed him, and the two went off to enjoy the party. They were fun to watch in the background, they got quite cuddly when the full attention was not on them.
I love the song Notes and they did not disappoint. As I said, it was a bit odd at first to have a female voice singing some of the lines, but I got used to it, especially since she sounded great. The both of them had the perfect sarcastic and then growing annoyance as they read the notes from the Phantom. I especially liked after Carlotta and Raoul had come in with their notes, and Andre and Firmin grabbed them and compared all four of them. They looked at the notes, at each other, back to the notes and then nodded, mystery solved.
Prima Donna was great too. Andre and Firmin kept shooting looks at each other, telling each other to come up with more to say. Piangi was following their lead, but a beat behind them. It was funny.
During the Reprise of Notes it was pretty clear how worn the two of them were getting, and I wanted to hug them both, which is exactly as it should be.
For me, the managers are very important characters, and these two were perfect for the roles. Mme Firmin, by the way, was one of the few roles that were not double cast.
La Carlotta was played by Sally Eronson. Carlotta is supposed to have a good voice, very operatic, but speak in an exaggerated accent. She's supposed to be a diva in the fullest sense, strutting about and generally being very arrogant. She has Piangi wrapped around her little finger, and she reigns over the managers as well. Sally Eronson was perfect! She grandstanded just enough to get the point across, but she also did not sound annoying, as Carlotta can (sometimes intentionally on the part of the person playing her). I thought that her Think of Me was actually quite pretty, and I would have loved to have heard her finish. Her accent was there, and it was pretty good, but it also was not too thick.
Carlotta is typically not one of my favorite characters, but I really enjoyed her in this performance.
She was quite funny in the production of Il Muto as she was trying to get through. I liked when she and Christine "kissed" behind the fan. They were both hamming it up a bit. A nice touch that she added though, was after the first frog croak, she commanded everyone to start over from a certain spot, shooing people back into their places and telling the orchestra where to start over.
I could also tell that she was really fond of Piangi, and not just because she could boss him around, but they seemed to act like they were close. That made the ending sort of sad.
Piangi (Sam Panzer) was also not double cast. He had a good operatic voice as well during the opening number. Mostly though, he was really funny. In the opening number, I like how he strutted about the stage, with no mind really for where anybody else was. The rest of the people just sort of scuttled out of his way. The crew were making fun of him behind his back, and it was rather amusing. They were making fun of Carlotta as well, actually.
I mentioned already that during Prima Donna, Piangi was trying to help the managers, but he was always a step behind them. There's a line in the song "Your devotees are on their knees to implore you" where upon Andre and Firmin did just that, but Piangi didn't notice right away until Firmin gestured at him frantically. Then he followed suit, very slowly and ponderously, before getting back up again with equal grace and speed. Well he is a large man, as Italian tenors are prone to be.
I also liked him during Il Muto. Granted he was supposed to be over-acting, as he is Panzer playing Piangi playing the count, but it was really funny. I guess that they decided that the Phantom interrupted right before his cue to do something, because he kept coming out from behind the screen where he was hiding and then going back as Carlotta started the scene over several times. He had a great "shocked" expression when the maid was revealed to be Serafino.
There are quite a few songs where there are a lot of things going on. I think this makes things challenging to do, because some voices can overpower other voices. These also tend to be the songs that I like: Angel of Music, Notes/Prima Donna, Notes II and the finale. There's a lot to hear, and if you know the lyrics, of course, you can understand everything, but only if you can hear it. For the most part, they did pretty well at balancing the sound.
Mme Giry (Kiersten Bentley) and Meg Giry (Val Letko) both did good jobs in their roles. They spend a lot of time singing together in the group songs, and their voices blended very nicely. I liked the natural authority that Mme Giry had. She was very quiet, but everybody listened to her. Now that's power, and she played it well.
It's important for me that Meg Giry does her part well in Angel of Music because I like the harmony in that song (And I like Meg's part in that song better anyway) and she did a very good job of it. I would have liked to hear the both of them sing more, but I know how the show goes. Ah well.
Mme Giry was sufficiently unnerved and calm at the same time when she told Raoul of where she had first seen the Phantom, many years ago. She didn't make the story any more dramatic than it needed to be, and that worked very well. I'm not sure if it was on purpose, or a coincidence, but while she was talking about seeing the man in a cage, someone was moving something in one of the "boxes" and for a moment, it looked like a cage.
Masquerade is another of my favorite songs and I thought they did it awesomely. One of the reasons that I love this song is because of the costumes. They aren't all that brightly colored, because honestly, nothing in this show is, but it is one of the more colorful scenes in the play. The costumes were great, nicely elaborate. In the touring version of Phantom that I saw, they had mannequins on the stage to make it look like there were more people there than there are in the cast. In this production though, they didn't have that problem. There were people standing still on the stairs instead of mannequins. That amused me. And try as hard as I could, I did not notice the Phantom's entrance, even though I was watching for it. His costume as the Red Death was quite snazzy too. I approved.
As I said before, no pyrotechnics allowed, so the Phantom exited by flying upwards and out of sight.
Onto the main three characters, and their songs now.
I don't really care for Christine that much as a character. I'm not sure if that makes me overly critical or not of Christines in general. It is a very big part, and rather vocally demanding. Christine was played by Emily Wisniewski. I think that she had the character down, and she was very pretty. She sang
Think of Me and Wishing You were Somehow Here Again just fine, although there were some high notes that I don't think she could quite hit. I'm biased, because I have a much jazzier version of the second song that I adore. For the most part, though, she did fine.
She struggled a bit with the ending of the title song though, when the Phantom says "Sing for me!" and she does so, but she just couldn't hold those powerful high notes. I think she should have dropped them down a little. She had no problem with the low notes in the song, which is what I like about the title song.
All I Ask Of You on the other hand, was beautiful, and beautifully done. They had a pretty backdrop with lots of stars. Very shiny. She and Raoul sounded very nice together.
During Twisted Every Way I really like the line of Christines: "He kills without a thought/he murders all that's good, I know I can't refuse/and yet I wish I could" because it's such a dramatic point, not only with what's going on, but in the music as well. She didn’t really perform the line the way that I prefer it to be done. Again, she did fine, but just not the phrasing that I prefer.
Raoul was played by Andrew O'Neill and I liked him. I don't normally care for the song Little Lottie I've always found it creepy but actually, when he sang it, I didn't mind it at all. I thought that he was rather cute the way he was around Christine.
He was just as frustrated as everyone else during Notes, and I liked watching him converse with Meg in the background of Prima Donna.
Raoul really got his chance to shine during All I Ask Of You. He had a very good voice, and I liked listening to him sing.
I definitely approved of the way that he played Raoul. He seemed used to getting his way, and used to people following his orders, but he wasn't overly arrogant. He also didn't seem completely blinded by his love for Christine. He loved her, yes, but he seemed more angry at the Phantom.
There are two moments in the play where the Phantom and Raoul have parallel lines, and I thought they did a really good of emphasizing that. It was the only time in the show when Raoul got to have reverb. I hadn't really noticed this before with the show, but it really does seem more like Raoul is more interested in stopping the Phantom for the sake of stopping the Phantom, rather than rescuing Christine. Granted, he does want to rescue Christine, but it seemed that the focus was more on stopping the Phantom. I liked that.
The Phantom was brilliant. He was played by Josh Lepak and it was hard to believe that he's just in high school. Then again, I see enough children's theatre to say that about a lot of people, but it was still true. Not only was his voice great in Phantom of the Opera but he had just the right blend of pretty and creepy in Music of the Night. He was walking the line between genus and insanity, between in love and obsessed and he swung back and forth pretty effortlessly. He achieved that nice balance where sometimes I wanted to tell him to chill, and sometimes I wanted to hug him and tell him that everything would be okay.
As I mentioned before, he was deprived of his fireballs, which made things a little less dramatic for him in certain parts, (One moment, he actually kinda looked silly, flying around) but over all, he was fantastic.
His first entrance in the mirror was pretty good. Between the mask covering one side of his face, and his hat shadowing the other side of his face, he was very creepy looking, just as the Phantom ought to be.
They did the title song really well. That's one of the most important parts of the show to me, the boat ride. I know that in the professional versions, they have the Phantom and Christine running around the stage very quickly, teleporting them around by means of using doubles. They did that here, but I think that they exited from the left and remerged on the right side a little too quickly for me to maintain my suspension of disbelief.
The boat scene was done very well though. I liked how the candles lit themselves on cue for the Phantom, rather than coming onto the stage still lit. I think that seemed a little bit more realistic.
Another thing that they did with the Phantom was to visually show how he controlled Christine, and then other people as well. He worked his "magic" by means of tossing out a handful of sparkly confetti. It actually worked pretty well, since it wasn't over done. It was just something he did. I think that represented the hypnotic power of his voice. It certainly made some things make more sense. He would shower people with the confetti and then they would walk around a bit in a trance, doing what he wanted of them. I just was impressed that he didn't still have sparkles on his hands, and that Christine didn't have them in her hair.
Down in the Phantom's lair, he had the dummy that looked like Christine, but it was a real person, standing very still and moving a bit like an automaton. I was impressed that she just stood there so very still for quite awhile. Well done, whoever you were.
A few more notable scenes. Christine goes to the graveyard to sing Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again and meets up with the Phantom. He throws sparkles at her and coaxes her closer when Raoul shows up. He rushes at the Phantom, who jumps up onto the headstone, and then over to another one. This is the previously mentioned moment when he looked a bit silly, rather than the impressive angel of death. However, flying around notwithstanding, the way that they worked around the problem of not being able to use fire worked pretty well. Rather than scaring Christine because Raoul is walking into the path of the oncoming fireballs, the Phantom hypnotizes him (sparkles again) into very slowly and deliberately walking towards the crypt that contains Christine's father. The doors opened quite dramatically, and I guess the idea was that the Phantom was going to shut Raoul up in the crypt. Christine pulls him away and snaps him out of it.
I know that Don Juan Triumphant is supposed to be a strange show, creepy and jarring and just in general, not pretty. But they really had a hard time with it. The first rehearsal didn't go well, as it's supposed to not go well, but then when everybody is under the Phantom's spell, they are supposed to sing better. They didn't, really.
The Point of No Return before the Phantom takes over, was difficult to understand, and just... did not sound good. And it wasn't just because it's not really supposed to. It was not a highlight of the show, that's for sure.
When they got into The Point of No Return properly with the Phantom and Christine singing, it got better. I meant to try to watch for when she figures out who Don Juan really is, but I was distracted by watching Raoul and the Firmins, who were having interesting responses to the show. Anyway, the phantom makes it all clear that that's who he is, and then Christine unmasks him. I liked the unmasking, as it wasn't very deliberate, but he still seemed stunned by it. Everybody was still for a moment.
His Phantom make up was pretty good I think. It made him look sufficiently deformed and scary (and crazed). The escape/kidnapping wasn't as dramatic as it could've been. No fire again, and no trap doors. He just swirled his cape and everything went dark.
The finale is my favorite scene in the whole show, and they did not disappoint. The only criticism that I have was that Raoul was not miked properly or something, because many of his lines were not very audible. Also, instead of singing all of his lines, he spoke them. "I did it all for you, and all for nothing."
I liked how the Phantom roughly got Christine ready for the "wedding." Her words to him clearly hurt him, but he didn't say anything, just placing the veil on her and shoving the flowers into her hands. And I loved how sulky he got when Raoul came, as he flopped down in his chair.
He used a nice trick to get Raoul into the trap. More sparkles and Raoul walked right over to the Christine dummy, who cheerfully put the noose around his neck and held it firmly. Raoul didn't snap out of it until he was well and truly trapped, and if I was the Phantom, I would have planned it that way.
So like I said, when the three of them are singing together, you couldn't really hear Raoul singing, which was too bad, because I like how he and the Phantom sing together.
The kiss was great. I liked how utterly dumbfounded both guys were. I could see Raoul's thought bubble though, that the second more passionate kiss was entirely unnecessary. The Phantom got a bit more into the second kiss too.
Another highly charged scene where the Phantom took out a knife. I liked how it was basically silent at that point.
The show ended as it always does, with the Phantom hiding behind his cloak on his chair, and Meg coming to reveal that he's gone, all that's left is the mask. It's such a low key ending to this show, and I think that sets it apart from a lot of other shows, that go out with a bang.
Final comment on the show is about the end of the first act. The Phantom sings his heartbreaking reprise of All I Ask Of You and then we go back to the stage, and "disaster beyond your wildest dreams will occurs".
I haven't seen Phantom all that many times, but I have a perfect record of not being very impressed with the crashing chandelier.
It fell, and it fell very nicely, but... well... rather than saying it fell, I'd say that it lowered rather quickly. I know, I know, we don't want to break it, and we don't to cause any damage to anything or anyone. But I've never seen it fall very fast, even when I saw the professionals do it, so there you go.
Overall, this was a very good amateur production of Phantom of the Opera, and I was glad to have the chance to see it.