#poto czech

[noppan]

Here's one of my favourite promo photos of POTO Prague. So elegant.. so phantomy...

[marleneoftheopera]

Point of No Return photos in Prague, truly in a category of their own.

[operafantomet]

Speaking of POTO Prague, I always felt some of the ensemble costumes were better than the leads... e.g. Meg's DJT costume (or many other DYJ bodices)> Amnita, DJT rehearsals female ensemble costumes... And usually it's the opposite. What do u think?

I always felt all the female DJT costumes were too similar to eachother, to be frank... They all have that long bodice with V-shaped opening, continuing into a flounced skirt of to or three different colours. The costume of Meg and Christine are not too far apart, except the colours:

Meg's also have shoulder straps and a mock blouse. Mock blouses on similar V-opening bodices can be found in the other Don Juan women's costumes too, along with flounced skirt:

So if anything I would have loved to see some different skirts and maybe a jacket or two, just to spice things up. But I DO agree that there are some gems amongst the ensemble and supporting cast costumes overall. Some favourites:

The Hannibal princesses:

The Hannibal Slavemaster:

The Sylvan Glades:

Several of the Don Juan Rehearsal (Sitzprobe) attires:

(overall I do think costume designer Roman Solc has been quite attentive to the lead roles, though... From the Phantom and Christine to Meg and Piangi)

[webbysmuse]

Radim Schwab and Tereza Štěpánková singing the title duet during her Christine debut.

[theres-music-in-you]

Some photos from the re-opening of POTO Prague! Featuring Tereza Štěpánková and Natálie Grossová as Christine (debut for both of them!), Monika Sommerová as Carlotta (a former Christine, and also currently pregnant!), Radim Schwab as the Phantom, and Tomáš Vaněk as Raoul.

[keetadelopera]

People, why are you sleeping on Czech Raoul? He has such a cool design 🗣️

[nipuni]

Serve the meal and serve the maid! 🍎

A speedpaint video of this will be available at my Patreon on June 1st!

[phantomchristinesuk]

European tour Christines

The Christines for the next stops of the tour have been revealed this week.

Georgia Wilkinson & Bridget Costello will share the role of Christine.

Maria Conneely will be 1st cover Christine, performing in the ensemble as part of the chorus and as a Confidante.

Freya Eliza Perrins will be 2nd cover Christine, performing in the ensemble as part of the chorus and also being 1st cover Confidante.

The next stops for the tour are Sofia - Bulgaria, Lisbon - Portugal, Basel - Switzerland, Antwerp - Belgium & Prague - Czechia. Dates listed below.

2024

София, България - 29 август - 5 септември

Lisboa, Portugal - 15 a 27 de outubro

Basel (Bâle/Basilea) , Schweiz (Suisse/Svizzera) - 6. November - 22. Dezember (6 novembre - 22 décembre/6 novembre - 22 dicembre)

2025

Antwerpen (Anvers), België (Belgique) - 6 februari - 2 maart (6 février - 2 mars)

Praha, Česko - 19. až 27. března

Pictures: Georgia Wilkinson (Katesyourmate), Bridget Costello (michaelshelford), Maria Conneely (kimhardyphotography), Freya Eliza Perrins (andybrown.photography) & Daniel George-Wright instagrams

Headshot credits in brackets

[night-unfurls-its-splendour]

Thoughts on point of no return (czech republic version?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHGsDzPFfyU

Okay first of all I cannot stress how very much I, like, never get asks. I've now had three in as many days and I'm still wrapping my head around that, but thank you for asking, Anon

I'm not super familiar with the international shows, although I've been meaning to familiarize myself. This seems like a fun way to start!

~~~

Ho baby this is something else.

Not a fan of this Aminta costume, just saying. It's more Carmen than Don Juan.

Gonna say, although this smacks very much of the restaged tour version, I think this is done much better.

I don't hate the table slides

Yyyyyoink

What I do hate is whatever this is. This bicycle thing.

Holy cow he's knocking the furniture over.

I actually really like this. Especially when she scoots closer.

Overall, I think the original choreo is perfect. I love the slow-moving hands in the original, I love Aminta's choreography, how this is very much what an inexperienced peasant girl thinks is sexy, so it's really very cute, and its disarming because of that. It doesn't need to be made more sexy. It usually just comes out more cheesy. This isn't bad though. It's got a lot of fun stuff in it.

[glassprism]

What goes into the decision behind running a replica vs. non-replica POTO? Does it boil down to costs or contracts or is it related to artistic license? And even when they run non-replica, it still says ALW's Phantom, so how much still has to run true to his original?

For the decision-making, it just depends on the production! There are some versions that could probably afford to do the replica production, but choose not to because they want to explore other interpretations or because they have always done non-replicas. For example, musicals in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Finland have traditionally always done non-replicas, so when they put Phantom on, it's no different. Within this category too are other reasons - for example, several of these productions are also in repertoire theaters, meaning they have multiple different shows cycling in the same theater across the year, so it's also about using the space wisely.

For other productions, yes, cost is a big reason. This is more the case in countries where musical theater is not as established, such as Italy, Norway, or Greece; here, it's easier to not have to pay the licensing costs or production to put on the replica and just make a version that is cheaper and likely to recoup the money back. But that doesn't mean artistry or creative license is not a factor, and creators of productions on a lower budget have still talked about how they wanted the opportunity to reinterpret the material.

As for the second question, the show has to use the same music, story, and lyrics (with some leeway for translations) as the replica, but the sets, costumes, choreography, and blocking can change. If you look at any non-replica of ALW's, they are still playing the same music, singing the same songs, and following the same general story; it's just the visuals and the blocking that changes, and even the latter has to stay within the boundaries of the story (no Christine going back to the Phantom at the end, for example). If everything changes, then you're not a non-replica, you're just a totally different version, e.g. the Ken Hill version, the Yeston/Kopit version.

Not that that's stopped some high school productions from trying to insert their new and improved lines.

[adridoesstuff]

For the musical ask: 5, 9, 12?

5. Did you see any live musicals this year? What did you think of them?

Yep! I saw Czech PotO in April one last time before it closed, Czech Elisabeth 4 times before it closed (and I managed to see all the dernieres), Rebecca in Vienna in September, and then I went on a spree in Pilsen, seeing Billy Elliot and Sweeney Todd in October and Fun Home and Something Rotten in December.

And I'm happy to say that I loved all these shows. I think Elisabeth left me with the strongest memories, but I wept like an idiot during Billy Elliot. I think the weakest of the musicals I saw in 2023 would be PotO, just because I managed to get Marian Vojtko as the Phantom and let's just say I wasn't really a fan of him.

9. Are there any musicals that you���ve changed your opinion on this year, either positively or negatively?

I don't think there's been a drastic change of judgement towards any musicals the past year, it's just that I've moved away from English-language ones to primarily German ones. So I feel like me and a lot of musicals I used to be obsessed with a few years back have just grown apart.

12. Did you get into any musicals for the first time this year? Did they meet your expectations?

Yes! DJKT is truly making me expand my musical theatre knowledge, because all of the shows I saw from them (except from Elisabeth and Sweeney Todd), I didn't know before I saw them in Pilsen and they are continuing to expand my horizons, since they managed to get me to listen to JCS.

As for meeting expectations, I went into some of these shows completely blind (Fun Home) and for some, I only knew the soundtracks (Billy Elliot and Something Rotten) and I was very pleasantly surprised every time.

I also got into TdV and Rebecca this year (with me loving TdV so much that I'm currently working on a Sarah cosplay) and they very much met my expectations

[noppan]

This might actually be my favourite photo from the Czech production...

From the official Facebook of the production.

Photo by Marie Baránková.

[marleneoftheopera]

The Rooftop scene in Prague, with Natalie Grossova, Michal Bragagnolo, and likely Marian Vojtko.

[operafantomet]

I’m curious, what is the reason a production will give a Christine actress a blonde/different colored wig? I know smaller productions often have a blonde Christine (I think at least) but like- London for example, I thought they had a few Christine’s with a blonde wig, I assumed because the actress was a blonde but I swear there were some blonde Christine’s that also had a dark wig as well. Is there any reason for this? Or is it just random?

I the earliest days of POTO there was a will to adapt the 'Degas' wig to whoever played Christine and Meg. Whereas all three original Christines in West End followed the Sarah Brightmanesque look with big brown curls, they did feature Patti Cohenour on Broadway with a much lighter brown wig, to adapt to her colouring. It wasn't blonde, but it was a light auburn / reddish brown:

For the original Toronto production they also changed Susan Cuthberg's wig from brown to blonde during her run, making her the first blonde ALW Christine out there. This too was due to it being closer to her own colouring:

Equally, Janet Devenish started out with a very red Meg wig in West End. Later in her run it was changed to a blonder one. It's the blonde look that's stuck on Meg, but interestingly she was a redhead first!

A final example from early POTO days is that original Australian Meg, Sharon Millerchip, started out as a blonde, but it was decided that a brunette wig looked better on her. Once again to adapt to the actress' natural colourings.

But later in the 1990s the general formula stuck. Christine as a brunette, Meg as a blonde. A handful of Christines in West End was featured with auburn wig to match their own colouring, and one or two Megs got a brown wig, but they were definitely the exception rather than the rule. Especially in the US and the World Tour the Christines has worn a general dark brown wig completely unrelated to what hair colour they have in real life. This is what is generally done for the replica production, as the design indicates brown curls, but with some exceptions here and there.

With the first ever non-replica production, in Hungary 2003, their Christines partly wore their own hair, braided, with extensions in the back. This meant that a variety of colours has been seen there: Vanilla blonde, darker blonde, auburn, brunette. Here's barbara Fonyo (auburn), Renata Krassy (blonde) and Andrea Maho (brunette):

The non-replica productions that followed chose different strategies:

The 2008 Polish production emulated the 2004 movie, with curly brown wigs

The 2013 Restaged Tour did a less curly, general brown wig

The 2014 Estonian production featured their Christines with their actual hair colour (one brunette, one blonde)

The 2014 Czech production stuck fairly close to the original design, with long brown curly wigs,

The 2015 Finnish/Swedish production tried out different shades of red; first strawberry blonde, then flaming red.

The 2015 Romanian production and later Norwegian/Greek/Tour version went blonde. The Romanian production featured the actress' own hair, while the others has done wigs. But there's been different shades of blonde, different lengths and different curls. Gaston Leroux has been mentioned as inspiration.

The 2017 Serbian production also featured their Christine with their respective hair, which gave one blonde and one brunette.

Ditto for the 2019 Bulgarian production, ranging from light brown to black hair.

The 2020 Swedish production first went red for Christine. I have read they thought it was never done before and that's why they wanted to try it out (but as seen above, the Finnish/Swedish production beat them to it). When a new principal Christine was cast they gave her a blonde wig, to better match her colouring.

The 2022 Sydney Harbour production did fairly classic brown curly wigs.

The 2023 new Romanian production also feature Christine with her own hair - like the original Romanian production, and incidentally the same actress. But it looks like there's a bit of extensions going on as well.

Last, but not least, the 2023 Mediterranean production premiering in Italy did somewhere between honey blonde and auburn.

So in large, a non-brown Christine wig seems to be a way of adapting the hair to the actress - whether a wig is in use or not. In some cases it's also a way of actively differentiate the look from Maria Bjørnson's original design (as well as the iconic Mary Philbin look).

In replica production the 'wildest' things they did in the 1990s and early 2000s was auburn Christine wigs, and primarily in West End. But in the later 2000s more variations started to appear. The very light brown wigs of Janine Kitzen in Stuttgart and Robyn North in West End comes to mind, and Anne Görner's fairly redhead wig. Then Harriet Jones' first auburn red wig in West End, and them going all blonde on Emmi Christensson. Again the overall strategy seems to be to match the actress' own colours and the wig. Left: Anne Görner in Essen, and right: Emmi Christensson in West End.

In recent years there's also been a will to adapt the texture of the curls. From recent West End examples there is Lucy St Louis, Beatrice Penny-Touré, Paige Blankson and Chumisa Dornford-May with afro-textured hair. Ditto for Emilie Kouatchou on Broadway. Here's Lucy St Louis with Killian Donnelly:

And then the recent wig change for Eve Shanu-Wilson in West End, which is meant to closer reflect on her heritage. Though the Phantom historian in me also thinks it brilliantly reflects on the 1990s West End wigs, so I'm doubly happy...

So yeah. Usually the variations in wig colour and curls is due to a will to reflect on who the actress is and how she looks in real life. But the wig is of course also a tool to create a certain look for a certain role. Which means that every wig is an interpretation, and a negotiation between wanted look and the many possibilities for adaption.

[webbysmuse]

Natálie Grossová, Radim Schwab and Tomáš Vaněk singing a bit of “Final Lair” during a dress rehearsal.

[andrewlloydwebber]

What do you think of the new Italian/Spanish POTO?

I know initially I didn't care for the Italian production at all really, but I think it has grown on me with the Spain publicity, although I still wish both countries had done the replica in the native language. I still believe some of the choices are ridiculous (shirtless Final Lair Raoul, Phantom with a jet pack, suicidal All I Ask of You, unimaginative Masquerade choreography, tiny flaming chandelier, Phantom swinging back and forth like Tarzan, Firmin in drag) but some of the costumes are really beautiful in a low key way and the rotating drum set is cool and reminds me of Schikaneder, although it does seem kind of cramped. I also love the mirrored show curtain. But seriously, no wedding dress in the Final Lair? What do all these non replicas have against it??? Only the Czech, Estonian, and Bulgarian productions have any sort of costume change for this scene.