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annaskellington · 2 months ago

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A Recounting of Phantom of the Opera: Middle East/European Tour

Hello everyone!

I had the opportunity to see Phantom of the Opera: Middle East Tour/European Tour 3 different times during its run in Lisbon and I’m here to do a review/recounting of everything I saw on the show that was different from normal and worth noting. This is a mixture of what I saw on stage and my opinions on it. You are valid to have your own opinions and if the show is coming to a city near you, I definitely recommend to check it out!

Keep in mind, this is a non-replica. Stephen Barlow is the director and Andrew Riley did the costumes and set design. I have only seen one other production of Phantom and it was the Italy run they did with Ramin Karimloo, also a non-replica, therefore I use it quite a bit in my comparisons (as well as the original) simply because it’s the only one I’ve seen live other than this one.

Extra details: The chandelier is in the audience instead of on stage. There are screens on the sides of the stage with the subtitles. On the first night, it only had the subtitles, but on the following nights, it also had a house-cam being livestream into those screens. There are two Portuguese members on the cast: Francisca Mendo – a ballerina and Lara Martins – Prima Donna. I mention them quite a lot since they were the main attraction of the performances.

The Phantom - Nadim Naaman

Christine - Georgia Wilkinson

Raoul - Dougie Carter

Prima Donna - Lara Martins

Auction House

There is only old man Raoul, the auctioneer and an ensemble member on stage - the one holding the items. The auctioneer is pointing at the audience when the items are being bided which makes it slightly awkward when you look at where he’s pointing and it is just random audience members. Seeing old man Raoul by himself is also weird for some reason. Overall, the lack of people is really odd during this scene.

Overtude

“A little illumination! Gentlemen!” and then the chandelier just lights its light bulbs and just stays like that for a long while. Nothing is happening. Then finally the curtains open and you see the Hannibal cast getting ready and into positions and then finally, Lara Martins starts singing.

Hannibal

On opening night there was a flub: Christine isn’t on the stage at all for most of Hannibal. When the managers start saying their lines of “Meg Giry, Madame Giry’s daughter, promising young dancer”, Meg starts dancing closer to Madame Giry and she hits the staff on the ground and asks “Christine Daae, where is she?” and Meg replies “I don’t know mama!” which leads to the “Daae? Curious name…”, but Christine only enters the stage much after.

However, on the following nights, it proceeded as normal with “Christine Daae, concentrate girl” to which Meg says “Christine, what’s the matter” and leads to “Daae? Curious name…”.

Think of Me (Carlotta)

When Carlotta is talking to the maestro, Madame Giry goes to talk with someone down from the orchestra which I found really fun. Then the thing that interrupts Carlotta is actually a bucket that falls on the left side. Carlotta throws herself on the ground and just lays face flat on the ground which made me laugh so much, everyone is fanning her and worrying about her. Then, when the ex-owner is leaving and usually would say “If you need me, I shall be in Frankfurt” instead he says “If you need me, I shall be in Alentejo” which got a huge laugh from everyone. Alentejo is an area of Portugal, very beautiful but not touristic at all, probably one of the two Portuguese cast members might be from that area. On opening night, the subtitles had the original line but on the following nights, it had been changed to the Alentejo version. Another big change is Madame Giry is acting much more caring of Phantom and his plans. That woman was giving a performance of a lifetime. When the managers are saying “A full house and we have to cancel”, Madame Giry says “Ler her sing for you” but no one listens to her and everyone is starting to leave as well as the managers, but she hits her staff on the ground and says “Monsieur!” and after a few moments of silence “She has been well taught”.

Think of Me

When Christine starts singing, she’s super shy and everyone starts leaving. All of the cast members start exiting the stage whilst complaining and being angry. When she gains courage, they all start coming back like holy shit, she can sing. They close the curtains behind her as she gets to the Raoul part and when Raoul says his lines, there’s a faint applause being heard and she starts bowing which caused the audience to applaud as well muffling Raoul’s part. This happened only on opening night, other nights the audience was quiet as you heard the fake clapping from the stage. But Raoul says his part like usual, the box he’s in is on ground level so you just see his little head peak out.

Angel of Music

“Rehearsals, always rehearsals” – I love that line from Meg Giry, on one of the nights Madame Giry rolled her eyes at Meg. Fast forward to when the phantom tells Christine to look at the mirror. It looked so spooky. Nadim had his hands on the glass and was really creepily moving his hands and face around. When Christine sings the part where she turns her back to the phantom and turns to the audience, Nadim flinched as well. He opens the mirror like a door and she steps inside.

Title song

It starts spinning and shows the other side of the circle is some stairs going down. When it starts, the phantom is at the bottom of the stairs and she’s at the top. He never really allures her or drags her, he just slowly convinces her to go down the stairs. At one point he’s in the bottom with a blue light and she’s at the top with a yellowish light to show their contrast. When it gets to the ensemble singing “He’s there, the Phantom of the Opera”, the stage rotates once more and turns fully blue. They enter the boat and the turn the smoke machines all the way up. Christine does her high notes sitting on the boat, which is definitely a choice, and goes to show it is prerecorded cause there is no way she would’ve been able to do the high notes sitting down. The Phantom also doesn’t really react to the high notes, he’s focused on rowing the damn boat. So, it comes across as the high notes are simply part of the song and not that he was able to almost wrench the high notes from her voice. He says half heartily “sing, my angel of music” because, again, he's not paying that much attention to her.

Music of the Night

Christine spends the beginning still sitting in the boat. At one point, the phantom grabs his music sheet book and hands it to her and convinces her to open it. She does and is like damn, this is actually kinda good. So, he grabs his cloak and lays it on the ground where she goes and sits whilst reading the book. At the end of the song, they just stare at each other and she leans in for a kiss, but he backs away and sings the last note of the song.

STYDI

He didn’t get that angry, at the beginning he does “throw” her to the other side of the lair where she hands up holding the wall for emotional support. He didn’t crawl around since there’s barely any space, he sings those lines just standing up and covering his face. At the end, he sits back at the piano bench and she hands him the mask and he quietly take it.

Bouquet Magical Lasso

The ballerinas are walking from stage left to stage right where the box 5 sits and they’re being really sneaky and scared going towards it. The first girl gets closer when, FNAF style, Bouquet jumps out and snatches her arm and holds it whilst singing the first few lines. He then steps out, after which Madame Giry arrives and as she says her lines she puts her cane in between them and they start wrestling it for some reason. I too would like to get my ass kicked by Madame Giry but it was weirdly violent for her character. You never see the Phantom and Christine returning.

Notes I/Prima Donna

As the song starts, one of the ensemble members comes on stage and starts sweeping the floor, I love it. When the managers are reading the notes, there are two ensemble members on stage, one of them is trying to take a peek at the newspaper and one of the managers gives it to him so he reads it with other cast member. Not sure why, but cute addition. Whilst the Phantom reads the note, the light inside Box 5 lights up and Madame Giry is always looking at it. When the note reads “leave Box 5 empty” the lights flicker causing Raoul to get closer to inspect. After they read the note, the managers start singing Prima Donna. When Carlotta says “Precious little ingenue”, Raoul goes in her direction to I don’t know, defend Christine or smack Carlotta. Raoul gets close to Box 5 and starts inspecting it whilst Madame Giry is trying to protect Raoul (and the Phantom I guess) and pay attention to the managers at the same time. Raoul eventually looks back and starts singing his lines alongside Madame Giry and Meg Giry, they are forming a little circle on the left. Eventually the rotating stage starts spinning and Carlotta starts walking on it whilst cast members are walking around. They then place some spiral stairs on stage that Carlotta climbs. Then randomly, as we near the end of the song, a pink background drops and petals start falling from the sky. It’s cute, but random, especially cause the ballerinas show up and start dancing but Prima Donna isn’t a diegetic song, the other characters aren’t meant to be hearing it, but maybe in this production Prima Donna is an actual song that they perform? I have no idea and if I think too hard, I’ll get a headache. I just know that when the Phantom says his last threat “So it is to be war between us” – both Madame Giry and Raoul look super spooked out and worries as they run off stage leaving Carlotta alone on stage. The curtains fall behind her and on opening night Lara got a standing ovation.

Poor fool

Carlotta doesn’t “pretend kiss” her husband. She’s doing her “Adieu” note when the husband shuts her up by banging his walking stick on the ground. Instead of kissing, they just snarl at each other. Later on, during “a toad, madame?”, one of the cast members brings the throat perfume/spray for Carlotta, like in the Italy Tour production which serves as an explanation to her sudden toad voice. “She’s singing to bring down the chandelier!” but the chandelier just flashes its lights, doesn’t shake around at all. When the managers are bringing the ballet, one of the cast members is getting a chair to take offstage but ends up in the middle of the ballerinas, so he does ballet with them and the chair is still in his arms, it was actually peak comedy. Also, Bouquet is the actual actor and he’s hanging there and you can see all the wires holding him up, you never see Phantom attacking him so when one of the managers turns to Madame Giry after she gives him the “I told you” eyes, whilst everyone is running and screaming, and says “It’s an accident, simply an accident!”, it actually could be.

All I Ask of You

Christine goes to the stairs and starts using them to go up which is super odd. I guess they’re meant to be a different staircase in the Opera but it’s definitely weird seeing her using the stairs that we just saw the Phantom using to go from the mirror to the lair and now she’s using to go from the theatre to the halfway point which is the rooftop. Which means if she went even higher on the stairs, she would end up…higher than the roof? They sing the first part of the prelude on the stairs. When Raoul says her name the first two times, Christine starts going down the stairs while holding Raoul’s hand, but then the Phantom says her name the third time and she gets really scared and runs through the door that is in the middle of the stairs. She’s gone and the stage starts spinning slowly and you see Raoul take out the box with the ring from his pocket and look at it, then you see him run through the door as well to join Christine. They sing their song on the very tight space that is the top of the dome and instead of kissing, during the instrumental part, Raoul goes on one knee and takes out the ring to propose. She’s super happy and jumping around whilst smiling and then they sing the final bit of the song and finally, at the end, they kiss.

All I Ask of You Reprise

The Phantom shows up and he’s on the lower half of the dome, sort of hard to explain but basically on the ledge of the dome. He sings the song and when Christine and Raoul are singing, Nadim says “No... Please Stop...” in a very painful way, I liked it. He was begging them to stop hurting him. Then he runs away and the curtain falls and the cast members are doing their bows when the chandelier starts flickering its lights and falls in a vertical line. I might be remembering this wrong, but it wasn’t that it was super fast, it was more the fact that it wasn’t slowing down that made me think like wow. But it falls and I would say that ends up maybe 3 meters of the ground, not low enough for people to stand up and touch it, but much lower than I was expecting.

Masquerade + Notes II

It’s set in this hall of mirrors which is quite cute. When Christine and Raoul are singing their part of “secret engagement”, there is a dancer in the middle doing a solo performance and everyone is looking. When she finishes dancing, they all start clapping and scare Christine. Immediately after, it is revealed that there were two ballerinas painted in gold hiding in plain sight holding the candles and they basically jump out of the wall spooking everyone and start dancing. The Red Death costume looks a lot more like the 2004 movie, he shows up on the mirror of the back wall and the wall moves towards the front of the stage before he starts singing. He just goes back through the mirror whilst there is smoke, no special effects really. They remain in the hall of mirror until the end of Twisted Every Way. Funny enough, when Christine sings “Stop it, I’ll drive myself mad!”, Raoul is the only one that gets her a chair and stays, the rest of them just leave. Also, before that, during Notes II, Madame Giry enters the scene with her back turned on the group and looking off stage really disquieted, we can assume the Phantom has just given her the note and when the Phantom is talking about Christine in the note “No doubt she’ll do her best…”, she tries to go to Raoul who has his back turned on her but all of the cast on stage block her path and form a circle around her, really menacing.

Don Juan rehearsal

On opening night there was a bit of a failure on the production team as you could hear in the background them moving the set around. Usually you hear it only faintly, but in this scene, they were switching the hall of mirrors for the stairs with the rooftop and you could hear the sets being moved around. One of the cast members even looks off stage when it gets very loud. On other nights it is not as noticeable. For some reason, when Madame Giry enters the stage alongside the chorus, she brings this stick with a lamp (sidenote: on the second viewing, it was someone else that brough the stick with the lamp, unsure of what happened there). It adds to the ambience. When she says “Can you be certain of that?”, the light starts flickering and they all look scared at it. Also, it takes a lot longer for the piano to start playing by itself. After Piangi fails “those who tangle with Don Juan” for the last time, it takes half a minute for the piano to start playing. During this period, you hear Piangi say “I’m doing my best, but I don’t understand” to which Carlotta replies “Don’t listen to them, Carlo”, right after you hear Madame Giry say “You sang it quite beautifully mademoiselle, I’m sure it will do more than justice to the role” and Piangi says “it is no beauty! No music!” and finally the candles on the piano burst creating smoke and the chorus all raise their music sheets absolutely shaking in their boots and sing the lines correctly. It ended up being more funny than spooky, but the Madame Giry light flickering did add an extra flair.

Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again

Yet again, on her way to the rooftop, Christine uses the same stairs of the title track. She uses the door in the middle to access the rooftop but instead of being at the top of the dome where she and Raoul sang All I Ask of You, she is on the ledge where the Phantom sang the reprise. It’s definitely weird that she sings this song on the rooftop and not on the cemetery, doesn’t look like she’s singing about her father at all. But there is some fake snow falling so I’ll take my wins where I can. Trigger warning: suicide. However, when she gets to the ledge, she goes to the very edge and starts looking down almost like she wanted to throw herself off it? In the Italy Tour, they also had Christine doing this but right before All I Ask of You. What is their obsession with having Christine wanting to end her life? It’s a tad weird. Georgia sang it beautifully though.

Wandering Child

The Phantom shows up on the top of the dome, so their positions are switched from what they were in All I Ask of You. Raoul shows up as well on the opposite side of Christine on the ledge. Nadim only says “Come to me, angel of music” once and then it’s just like a full minute of Raoul being like “Leave her! Can’t you see she’ll never be yours!” and Christine looking at the phantom in silence. A tad awkward. Then Christine starts backing away into the ledge and when she’s about to fall, Raoul runs towards her and even the Phantom starts sliding down the dome to get to her. That was cool, ngl. Then when the Phantom is taunting Raoul, Dougie actually starts climbing the dome? Which makes sense why the Phantom then replies “That’s right, that’s right, keep walking this way”, I just found it odd that he was actually going to the phantom. For a moment I thought we would get a fight like in the restaged version, but we don’t. Christine jumps up and grabs Raoul’s pants to pull him down making him almost fall and they run away together whilst the Phantom screams “don’t go, don’t go!”.

Point of No Return

There is a table, everyone. The Phantom starts singing behind the curtain still and Christine figures out it’s him immediately. Which I think makes sense, she’s been hearing his voice for ages. In the Italy Tour production, Ramin was imitating Piangi’s accent and voice so it’s understandable if she didn’t figure it out, but the OG production always had that small issue. However, with her figuring it out super early, she immediately backs away and is super scared of him. They go around the table, Christine always making sure she is far away from him. At one point she turns to Raoul and the managers, but I guess they don’t see her or don’t figure out why she’s scared because they’re just there enjoying the show. They look like that Pikachu :0 image when she removed his hood. The problem with her figuring it out means that the song is no longer sexy nor alluring. The phantom is just singing and she’s scared. After she sings her part of “I’ve decided”, she gets on top of the table and starts crawling all sexy towards him. When she gets to him, she starts rubbing her hands all over his chest and homeboy is stressed. She calmly removed his hood and two police with guns immediately get on stage. On Box 5, Madame Giry and her daughter peak out and are looking really scared for Phantom, they enter Box 5 expecting him to be there and are confused for a moment when they don’t see him which then leads them to look super stressed out at the Phantom (my personal headcannon is that Madame Giry went there to warn the Phantom to run away before the guards could shoot him whence why she looked so scared when it was too late and he was already on stage, she’s also holding Meg to her chest super tightly). Phantom then sings his part and when he reaches the “Anywhere you go”, he removes his own mask very calmly. The only person that reacts to his face is Raoul who is taken aback by it, Christine doesn’t flinch nor move. They don’t have him putting a ring on Christine, but he does go down on one knee. Side note: on the last night I saw it, which is the night I’m unsure if it was Georgia Wilkinson or Bridget Costello singing the role, Christine was fully nodding her head at the Phantom as he sang the All I Ask of You lines, she was fully ready to be with the Phantom and stay with him, she was nodding and smiling which made the Phantom smile as well, I don’t remember at all Christine doing this on the other nights (the nights where I’m certain it was Georgia playing the role). The curtains, however, open to reveal a very dead Piangi with a sword sticking off his chest and everyone starts screaming, Erik looked absolutely devastated at the interruption. The Phantom snatches Christine’s hand and starts running away from everyone just as Raoul jumps from his box to the stage and starts running towards them. They are able to flee, so Raoul picks up the mask and rushes towards Madame Giry who is now one of the few people on stage looking very sad at dead Piangi. Carlotta at the same time comes screaming onto the stage saying to the managers “How could you let this happen” and rushes towards Piangi to cradle his body.

Final lair

Down once more they go down the stairs. As the Phantom finishes his “Why?”, the door in the middle of the stairs (that they used to get to the rooftop) opens and Raoul and Madame Giry step out. At this point I have no ideia how this is possible, I’m going to assume that the Phantom ran with Christine to the mirror and somehow Madame Giry knew about something on the lower floor that had access to the door at the stairs. Much like the Italian production, Christine is wearing the PONR dress during the final lair, unlike in Italy, she doesn’t even grab any sort of wedding dress, it is never explicitly said that the Phantom wants her to marry him (remember, he never gave her a ring during PONR). Christine sings her lines sitting on the boat, much like the first lair she refuses to exit the boat and this is not a Phantom that will drag her or be violent so he just lets her make a fuss inside the boat. During the line “Joys of the flesh” Christine shakes her head and turns her back to the Phantom disgusted.

Raoul randomly shows up on these stairs that we have never seen before that are behind the lair set, I was only able to see these stairs on the opening night when I sat on the left side of the audience, on the other nights those stairs were completely obstructed. Raoul is singing his “Free her!” lines whilst on the stairs still, which is odd like nothing is stopping you from getting down and seeing her. At this point as well, Nadim got absolutely mad man and he was laughing nonstop, at one point he randomly pulls out a knife from his pants. It did not look like a knife at all, I thought it looked like a light bulb and my brother thought it looked like a wand, so do with this information whatever you will. Eventually the Phantom says “Be my guest sir” and Raoul finally descends the stairs and goes to the set. I half expected him to pretend to be swimming before he stepped into the set, since he has to walk on the “water” for a bit, but he doesn’t. He has to pass in front of the Phantom before getting to the boat and he’s so scared and nervous. He hugs Christine and she starts getting the paddles to get the fuck out, but oh no, the Phantom knows his way around a rope, so Raoul gets choked by the rope that the Phantom used to dock his boat. Finally, Christine exists the boat and goes to Raoul and I guess realized that the Phantom has impeccable rope tying skills because she just stares at Raoul completely dumbfounded instead of undoing the rope. Finally, Nadim gets violent. He snatches Christine and pushes her away towards the right side of the stage (Raoul is on the left) so he positions himself in the middle. Fun detail, when the Phantom sings “This is the point of no retuuuurn”, he puts one foot on top of the piano stool and ends up looking like a model taking a very awkward picture. She screams “tears of HATE” on his face so he ends up sitting on the stool and at this point, Nadim is shaking so much. The Phantom is just in absolute shambles.

When Christine sings “You deceived me”, she sits on the stool and picks up the music book, sort of offering it up to him. When he finishes saying “You try my patience”, he snatches one of the music sheets from the book and cripples it in his hand, something he immediately regrets and tries to straighten the music sheet again (fun side note: on the second viewing, Nadim ripped the page out but it fell on the ground so he couldn’t catch it, it ends up looking more violent than it did the other times since it just looks like the Phantom is super pissed). As Christine sings “Pitiful creature of darkness”, the Phantom is trying to fix the sheet and straighten it out again. She puts her hand on his shoulder quite soon and he’s looking at her as she finishes the “You are not alone” part. Christine then gives him a very brief kiss and, after pulling away, starts putting her hand on his scars and trying to look into his eyes – their foreheads almost touching. The Phantom straightens himself before going for a huge hug. She hesitates for a bit, but then hugs him back until the end of the instrumental part. The Phantom uses the discarded knife that was on the stool to cut Raoul’s ropes and, whist screaming for them to go, pushes the boat away. Not before Raoul, who I’m guessing had the mask in his pocket (men’s pockets am I right?) tries to return the mask to which the phantom pushes it away. He then falls on the ground whilst screaming and sees the monkey music box so he crawls towards it and sits crossed-legged on the ground cradling the music box whilst winding it up, he looked so much like a little traumatized kid, like hugging the monkey was a coping mechanism.

The joke, however, was on me because I ended up the one being traumatized since there was no ring return at all. He’s crying and hugging the box and I’m looking around wondering if I’ll see Christine mimicking swimming on her way to the Phantom or showing up on the stairs to drop the ring from above, but no. In fact, there was no ring to be returned since he never gave it to her during PONR. The Phantom just cries for longer whilst the instrumental of the ring return plays out and randomly says the “Christine, I love you” which came absolutely out of nowhere, nothing triggered him to say that. They start singing All I Ask of You and it causes the Phantom to stand up and place the monkey on the stool. When he first heard Christine, he smiled, I think he thought she was coming back for him, but then he heard Raoul and looked really sad. He sings his final line and, where in the instrumental he would usually hide, the Phantom just picks up the music book and looks to the audience while the set slowly slides away from the audience into darkness. We see old man Raoul on the left holding the Phantom mask, we see Christine in the Masquerade outfit on the right holding a ballet pose and, for last, we see the monkey music box on top of the stool. And that’s it.

Opinions

It’s a totally different production and obviously, comparing it to the original will lead to overall disappointment. This Phantom isn’t so much intoxicating and alluring as usual, instead he has a rather more human approach to the matter. It seems like he truly just wants someone to sing his music, he’s in love with Christine, yes, but it isn’t that he’s infatuated – he’s simply in love with the idea that someone so beautiful and talented would care about his art. That’s all very well, but, unfortunately, it’s where the book and lyrics really come to ruin the experience. Some lines that he sings are really out of context in this Phantom – “touch me, trust me” and “joys of the flesh” are some of the examples where they don’t really work anymore. Christine also ends up losing some of her agency when it’s not her removing the mask from him during Point of No Return, but in my opinion, I like that he removes his own mask since this Christine is not really dragged around the way other Christines are. Raoul also played a much more naïve part in this story. It’s not a matter of being mean to Christine or gaslighting her, this Raoul just truly is blind. More often than not when it comes to the Phantom, he’s trying his best to protect Christine but ends up ignoring her in the process, which leaves Christine alone in the matter, needing to fend for herself – which in my opinion is why they had Christine doing what she did before Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again.

In regards to the actors, Nadim is really good but in the Final Lair, he switched too much. He started straight up laughing in Raoul’s face and waving a knife around when, at no point, was he shown to be that sort of angry Phantom. Nadim also has a very sweet voice, he played Raoul for many years and, it’s not that his voice isn’t fit for the Phantom, it’s just hard to explain. His Phantom feels, at times, imitations of other Phantoms without being able to shine on his own. He had really amazing moments, the standout for me being Wondering Child where he truly let his voice shine through and my god, I felt it in my bones. He was screaming out his care for Christine and explaining to her how much she hurt him and meant to him, it was truly amazing. I was able to wait for him at the stage door on my last time seeing it and he was super kind, he thanked us for waiting and apologized for having taken so long (he took about 20 minutes, we waited almost an hour for Ramin in Milan), so I really want to recommend everyone to check his Phantom out and form opinions by yourselves because I think he truly has the potential.

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