The Phantom

My enrichment group (29 women) went to Hale Tuesday night and saw the play "Phantom." Its not your traditional Phantom of the Opera story. We had heard many good things about it and every six months we try to go see something there, so this is the play we saw this time. I was less than happy with the ending and the portrayal of the characters, needless to say.

I understand that there are many people who loved this version of the story, BUT! I didn't. I thought the actors themselves did a fine job, however, the more I've thought about it, the more I've become disenchanted with the characters and how they ended things. Granted, Phantom is not traditionally one of the most cheeful stories of all time, but they really botched this! NONE of the characters had ANY redeeming qualities about them, except maybe Phillippe, and he was such a small role that he doesn't count.

The Phantom ends up murdering people in cold blood. Christine leads the Phantom on and lets him believe she is going to stay with him forever, UNTIL he trusts her to show her his face and THEN she screams and leaves him because he's ugly. The theater owner turns out to be the Phantom's father from a torrid love affair of earlier years BUT he's never told the Phantom this until the Phantom is shot and dying. He's left the Phantom in the caverns underneath the opera house his entire life, saying he's been protecting him from the world. The Phantom's mother died when he was 8 so he's been down there hangin' out.

There were parts that resembled the original (or what I call the original) story, but not enough to convince me that it was just told from a different perspective. It was enough different that I didn't like it at all.

And for my final comments about Phantom (and this might make Meg cry), I'll stick with Gerald Butler- who's always been my version of the Phantom. I loved that his voice wasn't as pure as Michael Crawford's. I loved it that he was tender and crazed all at the same time. Loved it. Yep, in my world, he's my Phantom.