18 April 2020 Saturday

[scenicdesign71]

After watching the Company interview posted by Eric on the FB board (which made me freshly mourn not being able to see the production anytime in the foreseeable future; otherwise, I found the interview itself wildly unenlightening, but your mileage may vary) -- I've ended up randomly watching, of all things, the 25th-anniversary staging of Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall, which can be streamed for free until tomorrow morning.

I've just finished the first act, and while the show itself remains utter nonsense, I am impressed by the performances of Sierra Boggess and Ramin Karimloo (leading a fine cast overall).  Both beautifully sung (despite Boggess's sometimes strange vowels) and remarkably expressive by contrast with the templates originally set by Brightman (waxen and seemingly sedated) and Crawford (a whiny cipher), they surprisingly succeed in making me believe these characters might have been written by someone who had actually met an Earthling once.  (More remarkable still, they find some genuinely steamy chemistry in the later sections of the title song -- a feat I had always written off as flatly, not to say laughably, impossible).  Maria Björnson's original design ideas have been smartly adapted to fill the ginormous RAH (and largely video-fied -- but the LED walls are cleverly integrated with enough substantial "real" scenery to provide a suitably spectacular overall effect, including a chandelier that slyly declines either to rise or fall, but shoots enough menacing sparks to make you glad you're not sitting beneath it just the same).

It probably benefits particularly from my having started, just beforehand, to watch someone else's decidedly mediocre regional/educational rendition of the same show -- which I mention not to pick on the latter production, but because it confirms what I've always suspected about Phantom as a piece of musical storytelling: a not-especially-skillful exercise in empty style to begin with, it falls embarrassingly to bits in anything less than a truly first-class production (and sometimes even there).  Try doing what I did, and watch the prologue and overture of the smaller production, immediately followed by that of the anniversary concert, for an instant primer in how smart staging and design become absolutely crucial when the material they're supporting is this thin.  The RAH staging of this sequence manages to create a thrilling ambience (even for this PotO-hater, and even with a deadhung chandelier), while the university version -- even with a polished full orchestra (and, once the show proper begins, some quite respectable voices) -- might leave a newbie wondering how this musical ever ran on Broadway for 32 performances, let alone 32 years.

And I'm not sure it's entirely a question of budget; though no fan of the show myself, part of me would be intrigued to design a smaller-scale production of Phantom someday, just as a challenge: to see whether I could supply, from the visual end of things, the thick atmosphere which is all the show really has to offer, in sufficient quantity to make it work, with relatively limited resources -- by going in some other creative direction entirely.  Step One would be a direct about-face from the strategy attempted by that university production: a few wan, bare-bones and wholly unsatisfactory distant echoes of Björnson's original ideas (plus a vague hint of the real Opéra's barrel-arched underground tunnels, good for a tiny research brownie-point, but not much else.  There's a reason most stage and film designers have tended to reimagine the Phantom's lair more-or-less fancifully: the actual subterranean "lake" is low-slung, architecturally barren and not especially atmospheric... even, I'd wager, by candle- and/or torchlight).