I saw Phantom on Broadway!
I've was meaning to get tickets to see Phantom (finally! XD) this summer, but I kept forgetting. Finally, I remembered to bug my mom to get them, but that was like two weeks ago, so she was concerned that she wouldn't be able to find tickets. What ended up happening is that she did get tickets...but they were all the way in the last row. XD;
I went anyway (with binoculars, ftw), and, unsurprisingly, it was AWESOME~ I thought I had Jennifer Hope Wills as Christine, but on the way out I noticed the sign on the door said Julie Hanson was playing Christine, so I'm not sure who I saw XD;. Well, whichever one she was, I like her as Christine. I really liked her Think of Me, though I thought her high notes were a little flat. On the whole, her timbre was somewhere between pleasant and annoying...sometimes I really liked her singing, other times it was a little annoying... It's hard to describe XD; The Phantom (Howard McGillin) was great! His falsetto was perfect and the way he held "night" at the end of "Music of the Night" was...wow :O! Oh! And Piangi (Roland Rusinek) was a really good operatic tenor! XD! I didn't really care for Raoul, but he was fine.
I expected to be bored during Point of No Return because the musical version is so tame compared to the movie version, but I was pleasantly surprised! It was pretty jaw-dropping as well. Though maybe because I was expecting it to be nothing of the sort...
Anyway, I loved it, just like I expected I would. Now that I've seen it, I'm happy to say that I think the movie is just as good. They're two separate things (thought the movie is basically the musical with a bunch of things chnaged XD; ) and I don't think she should be compared.
I just re-watching the movie today, in fact. I hadn't watched it in a while and it's wow-factor hit me again, full throttle XD. It's great...the musical's great... I don't see why people are complaining, really...;]