With a burst of confetti, balloons and streamers — plus an emotional appearance by the musical’s original star — Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera set a theatrical record night, becoming the longest-running show in Broadway history.
The occasion on Monday, performance number 7 486, was also marked by a striking curtain call. A sinuous white feline — from Cats, the Lloyd Webber musical that was replaced at the top of the long-run throne — danced with the current Phantom, Howard McGillin, before bidding farewell to the stage.
The passing of the torch was met with rousing cheers as was the appearance of Michael Crawford, who opened Phantom in New York on January 26 1988.
”They say you never forget the first time, and it was 18 years ago tonight that many of us on this stage … first walked forward and presented our first preview of Phantom of the Opera on Broadway,” a visibly moved Crawford said after the actors in the current production took their bows. ”And the other first time is tonight. I actually saw the show for the very first time. It’s as magical out front as it is back here.”
Lloyd Webber also appeared moved. ”I’ve got to say, I don’t think I have ever been more nervous in my life. I’m totally overwhelmed,” the composer of the show’s lushly romantic music said.
Many of the other actors who have appeared in the musical during its nearly 18-year run also took bows, as did producer Cameron Mackintosh, director Harold Prince and choreographer Gillian Lynne.
In an interview last week, Lloyd Webber, whose other megahits include Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, was at a loss to explain the phenomenal success of Phantom, saying with a laugh: ”If I really knew, I would do it again.
”I think there isn’t another musical that has been written in the last two decades or so, which has a plot that is so escapist, that allows high romance to happen.”
Mackintosh, the show’s savvy producer, agreed.
”The musical is a kind of beauty-and-the-beast story. It appeals to everyone because it is about an impossible love, which I think many of us have had,” Mackintosh said. ”The whole framework or design of the show is that you are sucked into this mythical world below the opera house and yet shown something where we can feel the same emotions as one can feel in normal life.”
Mackintosh is now in the enviable position of having the three longest-running shows in Broadway history: Cats, which closed after 7 485 performances, in second place, and Les Misérables, which shut in May 2003 after 6 680 performances, in third.
All have been enormously profitable, but the money made by Phantom has been staggering. Its worldwide box-office gross — the show is still running in London, too — has gone past $3,2-billion. More than 80-million people around the world have seen the musical, which has been presented in two dozen countries.
New York grosses have been nearly $600-million, with the show seen by nearly 11-million theatergoers at the Majestic. New York has had 11 different Phantoms, starting with Crawford, who originated the role in the London production in October 1986.
Both Lloyd Webber and Mackintosh are wary about predicting how long the musical will run.
A new generation has been turned on to Phantom through the release of the movie version and then the DVD, according to Mackintosh. Both have given the musical new life at the box office.
And now, is there life after Phantom for the two men?
Mackintosh is busy with several other projects, including co-presenting the Broadway hit Avenue Q in London, where the musical will open in June. And in the fall, Mackintosh and Disney will produce the stage version of Mary Poppins in New York at Disney’s New Amsterdam Theatre. An opening is set for November 16.
Lloyd Webber plans to put on his producing hat, too. He may have a hand in producing the first recording for a young American singer, 14-year-old Andrea Ross.
Then there is an upcoming London revival of Evita, directed by Michael Grandage, that Lloyd Webber said is ”going to be more Latin than the original”. Auditions are down to three actresses for the title character, he revealed — with a decision to be made after he returns to London from the Phantom festivities.
Besides producing a revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music, planned for next October at the London Palladium, the composer is reading three projects right now that may find their way to the stage, but he declined to elaborate.
”I don’t want to rush into writing something for the sake of it. Having written 14 musicals now, you don’t want to make the 15th something you’re doing because you feel you have to,” Lloyd Webber said. — Sapa-AP