If you’ve been following us then you’ll already know a few things about us; we love musicals and good ‘ole Rock ‘n’ Roll. So what’s better than Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Rockpera The Phantom of the Opera? NOTHING. The Phantom is the longest running show on Broadway, surpassing ‘Cats’ on January 9th 2006 and if you’ve ever seen this on stage, you can clearly see why everyone’s love for it never dies. In celebration of its 25th anniversary, the London performance was videotaped and many of those in the know had the opportunity to watch it on screen in movie theatres around the world days later. 
We’ve never seen anything like this on screen before and thoroughly enjoyed how they presented it to viewers. At times it most certainly felt as if we were live at the Royal Albert Hall in London and not watching a live satellite feed. Though even in the comfort of a movie theatre, with a three hour run time every patron was thankful for the 20 minute intermission before the big finale. 
What really impressed us the most was the size of the principle cast for the Phantom, there was little to no room left on the stage when everyone came out to bow at the end. And what really made this memorable was how great the stage was, with mechanical moving sets and giant chandeliers. Putting the orchestra right on the stage as part of the set design instead of down below was a stroke of sheer genius. Seeing such a well put together production always puts us in a great mood and left us humming all evening long.
Every role was well cast, Sierra Boggess’ (Christine) voice perfectly complimented the strong, powerful vocals of Ramin Karimloo (The Phantom). Boggess’ superb acting kept us engrossed throughout while Karimloo stole the show with his haunting presence. Hadley Fraser (Raoul) rounded out the love triangle, holding his own and looking very pretty while doing so.
The bonus was at the end when Sir Andrew joined the cast on stage, bringing with him the original cast as well as all the previous Phantom’s (Peter Jöback, John Owen-Jones, Anthony Warlow and Colm Wilkinson), the original Phantom Michael Crawford and Sir Andrew's own ‘Angel of Music’, Sarah Brightman. Of course we can’t have this reunion of sorts without a performance of “The Phantom of the Opera” followed by “Music of the Night”. That made Veronica’s night, as witnessed when she clapped enthusiastically. 
If you missed this showing on Saturday, you’ll have to wait for the DVD/Blu-ray release so you can (not so) secretly possess it. No North American release date for the DVD has been set yet, but if you’re in the UK, you can have it as early as November 14th.
images from Google Images
No comments:
Post a Comment