But for a glorious slice of camp escapism, executed at the highest possible standard, this show is hard to beat.
Is the love triangle convincing? Not entirely. Much has been made of the decision to scale back the orchestra (previously the biggest in the West End) from 27 performers down to 14 I don’t have the original set-up as a point of comparison, of course, but the score still feels suitably epic. Her character is hardly an empowered heroine, yet the actress makes her vital and engaging Donnelly, meanwhile, makes a nuanced Phantom, despite the part’s cartoonish trappings. This is the West End at its crowd-pleasing best, buoyed by a standout turn from St Louis as Christine, who flits effortlessly through the show’s many musical styles. Second act opener Masquerade is especially dazzling, while that gondola journey down into the depths, lit by hundreds of candles that emerge from the darkness, makes an unforgettable set piece. Second act opener Masquerade is thrilling / Handout And yet one question kept haunting me, like a disembodied voice terrorising a theatre: surely a show doesn’t run for 35 years on the West End without good reason? What were my grounds for this aversion? None, really, aside from the vague notion that Phantom, with its massive light fixtures, made-up operas and dry ice, is the most Andrew Lloyd Webber of Andrew Lloyd Webbers, and therefore something to be endured, not enjoyed. The Phantom of the Opera is a production that I’ve spent years avoiding as assiduously as I’d dodge, well, a creepy man in a half-mask trying to make me take a haunted gondola ride down to his sewer because he just, like, really wants me to listen to the songs he’s written. Chess? You had me at “music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus from ABBA.” Blood Brothers? It’s an anti-Thatcher parable showcasing Scouse accents of varying quality - extremely On Brand (I am yet to meet anyone outside my Merseyside secondary school who also had to study it as part of GCSE English).Īll of those musicals name-checked above are edging towards (or in the case of Chess, happily exist within) the realm of the uncool, but I have always written off one West End show as too kitsch even for my own dubious tastes.
Les Misérables? Sobbed through it more times than I can remember (it’s a downward spiral from I Dreamed a Dream, which arrives… about 15 minutes into a near three-hour marathon). New West End Company BRANDPOST | PAID CONTENTĮre’s an embarrassing secret: I love nothing more than an 80s mega-musical with a synthesiser-heavy soundtrack.
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