The Phantom of the Opera

Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Lyrics by Charles Hart. Book & additional lyrics by Richard Stilgoe. Directed by Laurence Connor. Until Jan. 23 at the Princess of Wales Theatre, 300 King St. W. 416-872-1212

Well, at least the chandelier is a lot better.

Even die-hard fans of the original version of The Phantom of the Opera would have to admit that the famous chandelier slunk to the stage rather arthritically at the Act I curtain.

I’m pleased to inform you that, in the new production which opened at the Princess of Wales Theatre on Friday night, the chandelier comes plunging down at a velocity guaranteed to draw gasps. I know. I was seated directly under it.

It makes for a satisfying 30 seconds of theatrical excitement, but about the rest of what is being called “the spectacular new production,” I am less certain.

After nearly 30 years and God knows how many viewings, I had started to think of Hal Prince’s original staging of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s popular show as maybe being a bit old-fashioned, a bit too artificial.

But having seen what director Laurence Connor has done this time around, I take that all back. What Prince and his original creative colleagues gave the show was a sense of mythic scope. This wasn’t just a melodramatic romance, this was the melodramatic romance of all time.

That’s why the sets were so spacious, the stage pictures so formal, the acting so deeply emotive. When you came out of Prince’s Phantom, you felt you had really seen a show.

This time around, you feel like you’ve seen the idea of a show. Connor has some clever notions on how to make previously awkward moments (like the death of the meddling stagehand Buquet) seem fresh and interesting.

But when the Phantom’s legendary lair, for example, has about the same dimensions as a typical Toronto studio apartment, you start to feel cheated. “The Music of the Night” is a long song during which the Phantom weaves a web of enchantment around Christine, but if all they can do is retrace the same claustrophobic floor pattern, over and over, it loses its magic.

The Phantom, in fact, doesn’t have an awful lot of time on stage for a mythical leading character. That’s why Prince and company made every one of his entrances a thing of grandeur and mystery. In this version, Paul Brown’s design minimizes every effect and the Phantom just seems to be hanging out, waiting for a chance to speak.

But that wouldn’t be so bad if we were getting a performance of size and substance when he actually started having his say, but we’re cheated there again.

All three of the show’s leading performers (Chris Mann’s Phantom, Katie Travis’s Christine and Storm Lineberger’s Raoul) act with little interest at all.

Mann has no middle ground between catatonic and hysterical, Travis plays the whole show like the legendary bunny with her eyes caught in the headlights and Lineberger seems to have swaggered in from something called Fifty Shades of Surly.

And after having gotten used to generations of fine voices in these roles, you wonder just what’s going on here. All I can say is that, if I were Christine, I wouldn’t be taking voice lessons from someone with that active a vibrato.

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To be totally fair, some of the supporting roles are done very well. Jacquelynne Fontaine is a stylish Carlotta, getting laughs without the strident overacting many portrayers of the role fall into and although David Benoit and Edward Staudenmayer are a tiny bit broad as the managers Firmin and André, they are also quite funny and original.

But in the end, the trouble is that this is not really a brand new take on The Phantom of the Opera, but the kind of half-hearted renovation you do on a house when you don’t want to rip things down to the foundation and start all over again, but just let some terribly trendy decorators fiddle it with enough to ruin the original.

And with this, the curtain falls on my 15 years as theatre critic for the Toronto Star.

Yes, it’s over now, the music of the night.