#cooper grodin

[wheel-of-fish]

Phantom acting choices (2/?)

Cooper Grodin (with Julia Udine and Ben Jacoby, U.S. Tour, 2014)

He Liangchen (with Yang Chenxiuyi, Shanghai, 2023)

Hans Peter Janssens (Antwerp, 2000)

Peter Karrie (Toronto, 1998)

Earl Carpenter (with Rachel Barrell, London, 2006)

Ted Keegan (with Emilie Kouatchou, Broadway, 2022)

Hugh Panaro (Broadway, 2005)

John Owen-Jones (with Celia Graham, London, 2002)

Brad Little (World Tour, 2014)

Tomas Ambt Kofod (with Sibylle Glosted, Copenhagen, 2019)

Set 1

[meilas]

Just a collection of unintentionally funny moments, featuring: 1) David Arnsperger and his smooth af caress 2) Cooper Grodin going "ew get off me" 3) Cooper Grodin going "don't trip don't trip don't trip" 4) John Cudia falling off the organ 5) John Cudia whipping a poor partygoer 6) Peter Joback doing his best impression of "Hello, My Baby" 7) Peter Karrie's self-caress 8) Michael Crawford throwing a tantrum 9) Thiago Arancam thinking he's going to get laid

Credit for most of the gifs goes to @glassprism and @wheel-of-fish

[worm-anon]

cooper Grodin’s don juant robe was made of parachute marterial. He climbed onto the table in that scrne becsuse he was supposed to go doen a trapdoor. Notice how when he was on the table propetly he waslooking sround? He forgor where the trapdoor was.

[night-unfurls-its-splendour]

So I discovered the absurdities of the Poto re-staged tour the other night

How do I articulate how I feel about the blocking/choreo?

I guess... I guess I would say its like watching

PotO! (The Musical!): a cheesy musical adaptation of what was already a musical.

I've seen High School Productions with more tasteful blocking

[glassprism]

Hi GP! can u do a list of phantoms in the restage tour who does a punch at Christine in the first unmasking?

Whilst keeping in mind that I don't have video of every restaged tour Phantom (and it's not something you can distinguish over audio), here's a list of Phantoms who throw a punch at Christine during the first unmasking:

Chris Mann

I hope that helps!

...Fine, here's a list of maybes:

Derrick Davis

Josh Piterman

Raphael Wong

I call them "maybes" because you can interpret them as trying to smack Christine, but you can also interpret them as wild flailing (Derrick Davis, especially in his second run) or him trying to grab Christine and missing (Josh Piterman and especially Raphael Wong, whose movement looked so unambiguously like a grab and not a punch that I didn't even want to put him on this list).

So really... it's mostly Chris Mann and maybe Derrick Davis in his first run, where I imagine he was influenced by Mann anyway, as the latter was his immediate predecessor.

[whatsnewtonetflix]

Even despite issues concerning Internet Archive, What's New to Netflix has managed to persevere and bring you all of the dirt on the new titles coming in October 2024!

Then we tag along with Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin as they head across country evading the FBI and the mob in Midnight Run from 1988. Next, Aaron Pierre and AnnaSophia Robb have to deal with a town full of corrupt cops led by Don Johnson in Rebel Ridge, directed by Jeremy Saulnier, from 2024. And finally, Johnny Depp goes full creep as Whitey Bulger in the film based on a true story, Black Mass from 2015.

All of this plus we spend a lot of time talking about the recent Halloween franchise trilogy—so much so that everything else seems like a blur, but it's the season for that type of thing, so why would anyone complain?

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD

got a suggestion for the show?: whatsnewtonetflix@gmail.com

[potoconfessions]

we need more cooper content

SO TRUE COOPER GRODIN COME OUT COME OUT WHEREVER YOU ARE

[prettynerdieworks]

Cooper Grodin & Grace Morgan ▼ Phantom of the Opera US Tour ▼ 7.27.14 ▼ Milwaukee

[wheel-of-fish]

hello hi fish how are you

I was wondering if you could put a non-cooper restaged production on the watchlist? I know it’s bad but it’s so much fun to watch 😅 The way the Phantom jumps onto the don juan table is just so funny to me like why don’t they just shoot him? He’s right there! They just back off dramatically like

We do love Derrick Davis, so I suppose I could do that.

In the meantime, a gif:

[meilas]

[ange-de-la-musique]

Reviewing more phantoms and Raouls. As usual, I’m doing both in one post.

Dmitry Ermak had a very good first lair, with a sensual motn and a very strong unmasking. He had a very nice, classic phantom voice that he made rather raspy in his more emotional scenes, which I enjoyed. He was a very...wriggly boy in stydi, I loved it. Very much enjoyed his second unmasking and final lair, he played a very tired, sad phantom who did a very good job reacting to Christine and Raoul.

I’ve said before why I like Hugh Panaro (along with a million other people) but I’ll say it again here I guess. His reputation as a “sexy phantom” is uh not unfounded. His acting really emphasizes the sensuality and underlying darkness of the character. Every aspect of his movement is clearly very well thought out. I know he’s a fan of Susan Kay’s phantom and it definitely comes across in his performance. He can also be very sassy at times, which I’m not always a huge fan of but it definitely works well with his performance.

Cooper Grodin....oh Cooper. His voice is...as others have pointed out, he sounds like he was doing some heavy drinking before performing. His acting is extremely aggressive even for the restaged tour. He barely cared about Christine and it felt like he barely cared about the show.

As with Hugh, it’s been discussed why Michael Crawford is so wonderful, aside from bringing to life the character and creating an iconic portrayal. His acting is truly something else, I suppose it helps that as the first he isn’t influenced by any other actors in the role and truly took the time to make it his own. He has a very smooth, elegant motn, with the whole thing feeling like one very long, deliberate movement with a lot of emphasis on his hands. His more distressed scenes have some very Lon Chaney vibes, with more great hands and great distressed noises. His very light voice works well with his portrayal, making him feel even more ethereal and simultaneously phantom-like and angel-like.

Marcus Lovett has a pretty rough voice. Not necessarily bad, just rough. His acting though...we love to see it. A hypnotic motn, he’s very mature, very in control, knows what he’s doing and is perfectly comfortable leading Christine around his lair. This maturity extends all throughout the show up to the final lair, when he seems old and tired. He’s certainly no man-child yet there’s a real sense of desperation.

As for Raouls...

I wasn’t too impressed with Evgeny Zaytsev at first but he significantly improved when with a decent Christine. Overall he can be relatively boring but he does have quite a few nice touches, and his final lair stands out as very good.

Jeremy Hays was there. He existed. He had a very nice voice, I just found his acting kind of boring, he didn’t do much.

Ben Jacoby came across relatively charming in Little Lotte and got progressively worse from there, culminating in him grabbing Grace Morgan’s ears and dragging her head around the rooftop like that.

Reece Holland has a hell of a voice and he knows how to use it. He has some very interesting infliction and was clearly having fun playing with the notes. He was a very earnest, very sweet Raoul who put a lot of energy into his performance.

Simon Thomas doesn’t really stand out to me in any way other than his good chemistry with Anna O’Byrne. He doesn’t really do much but he does go out of his way to be very gentle and soft with Anna’s more nervous, hysterical approach and they work well together.

[eriksangel666]

Tumblr, I gotta kvetch about the US tour for a sec. I saw it with Mark Campbell in 2014, and I loved his performance, he left me sobbing in my seat. And then after 1 month he left, why we don’t know but the two theories are 1) he was getting vocally ill and 2) artistic disagreement with director Laurence Connor (which apparently happened during rehearsals for the tour in London with one of the Phantoms they hired as well) But I’m not mad about him leaving what I am mad about is... 

Cooper. Grodin. 

If you like Cooper, I am totally fine you liking him. But I find him to be...weak sauce. Like I saw him as Bouquet when I went and...the dude’s acting was weird. Just not for me. The vibe I got from him as Bouquet was kinda like the stereotypical high school bully you see in teen movies. And his Phantom came across to me as awfully cocky and his voice is nice, but not Phantomy, not one that would spirit me away through a mirror. And when the reviews for Phantom came out with Cooper in them, the reviews were very mixed. 

But I’m not even mad about Cooper’s performance. What I am mad about is that the only bootlegs that came out in the early days of 2015 were of Cooper! The only bootlegs we have of Mark are audios, and even then they didn’t come out for months afterwards so it was like Mark’s performance never existed! And don’t get me wrong, we now have plenty of other bootlegs of Chris Mann, Quentin Oliver Lee, and Derrick Davis for people to watch. And many people love those Phantoms, which is great! I’m just soooooooooooo stung that I can never rewatch the performance of one of my favorite Phantoms of all time because there are no visual bootlegs and I can’t relive one of the best performances I’ve seen in my life other than in my head :/ 

Anyway that’s my Tuesday, how’s yours?

[glassprism]

hey there! i just read your post about musical bootlegs, and you mentioned that some filmers just disappeared. do you have any examples? i'd love to learn more about the history of bootlegging

Oh, that would probably be a really long list. I'll just note some of the most well-known ones that occurred during my time trading (so post-2011), whether within the trading community or in Phantom. Keep in mind too that some filmers disappear for a long while only to make a return; I won't be listing them since they're still around in some form. I'm also not going to name many of them because, well, safety, but you might be able to tell who they are based on the bootlegs I list as theirs.

One of the first is a filmer who filmed, among other things, the last show of Phantom's 3rd national tour, the video of Chris Mann and Katie Travis in Phantom, and the complete video of Dallas's modernized version of Les Miserables. They're well known to me because they actually posted their releases on Tumblr for a time, only to get harassed out because people kept yelling at them for bootlegging or selling bootlegs. They disappeared shortly thereafter; not sure if it's related to what happened to them on Tumblr, but it was a loss because I believe they were situated on the West Coast, whereas most other US filmers are in the East Coast, around Broadway, so we lost someone who could film productions in LA, San Francisco, and the tours.

Another who disappeared shortly thereafter was someone who was, well, a prolific filmer of many shows on Broadway and occasionally tours all over the US and was active since at least the mid-2000s. If you've watched, I don't know, the Cooper Grodin restaged tour videos, the original Broadway cast of Hamilton, the original Broadway cast of the 2nd revival of Les Miserables, any of those, you've seen their videos. From what I've gathered, they experienced some personal issues that caused them to take a break from filming and they have not returned since.

Also happening around the same period of time was another, mainly Broadway-based filmer who also did a few videos on the West End. (They filmed a video of Ben Crawford with Ali Ewoldt as well as the video of David Thaxton and Kelly Mathieson.) My recollection is that this person experienced a lot of leaks of their videos, causing them to take stricter and stricter measures in an effort to stop that, which culminated in them leaving altogether. Them leaving along with the two above contributed in some part to the dearth of bootlegs you see in the... late 2010s or so, at least with Phantom, because they were some of the most prolific filmers around. It wouldn't be until after COVID-19 that I saw a resurgence of filmers on Broadway.

Going back in time a bit! If you ever look at trading lists, you might see that there are a lot, and I mean a lot, of videos from the Broadway production of Phantom from 2012-2015 or so. That's almost entirely due to two filmers who were also very active on Tumblr and were based in NYC and went quite often to catch various understudies, swings, and unusual cast combinations. Both have since left filming, though in their case, it's at least partially because they're working in the theater industry in some capacity now.

And onto more depressing cases... there were a couple of filmers based in Europe, I think Germany or Austria, though they definitely made trips to other countries. They filmed several of the Phantom Hamburg revival videos, a lot of Elisabeth videos, and a number of the West End Les Miserables videos (if you see one that's heavily focused on Anton Zetterholm - yeah, that's one of theirs, that filmer was a fan). Unfortunately both were... I think either arrested or had their homes raided (or both) and collections confiscated, and while I think they were released, you can bet that put them off filming.

Finally and most recently, that I know of, the filmer who got the one complete video of Jonathan Roxmouth in the World Tour was caught and has not done any filming since, obviously. That was a shame as well because they had been planning to get more videos of the World Tour with the various alternates and understudies, but of course that never happened.

So that's a few, there's way more around, but I was just trying to think of some of the most prolific recorders around.

[vanitatumvanitas]

Gotta tell a bit of a story with this one. I can’t remember the first time we watched this production of the restaged tour, but I know it was a long time ago, and this unique “Delilah” has been stuck in my head since then. Needless to say, I was shocked to hear it again as we watched some funny clips during a stream. Now my earworm is in a short audio clip so it can become stuck in your brain as well!

[thediaryofatheatrekid]

Watch What Happens: Featuring Laurence O’Connors absolutely awful staging.

[potoconfessions]

same anon as before; isn't cooper's phantom a wannabe fuckboy tho?

key word is wannabe; he tries but he's a bit pathetic. however he manages some level of fuckboy so. he's getting there.