The Phantom of The Phantom of the Opera

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I cannot blame you if you recoil in fear from musical theater. You have a point. You may be grappling with the phantom of The Phantom of the Opera, a nasty specter who haunts Broadway, seeds doubt, and makes you believe all musicals are as bad as his namesake.

When, after thirty-five years and 13,973 performances, that atrocious spectacle at long last closed this past Sunday, I said, “Good riddance.” If deserving shows by Sondheim and exciting new talents couldn’t make bank, then the phantom deserved to die long ago. 

As both a fan of and apologist for the genre, I admit that musicals can be contrived, corny, and commercial. Few had these characteristics in spades as did Phantom. Along with Cats and Starlight Express, also inflicted on us by Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber, it is Exhibit A of just how atrocious musicals can be. 

Phantom was a stubborn relic of '80s excess, a melodramatic miasma that gave all musical theater a bad name. Act 1’s coup de théâtre -- the crashing of a one-ton chandelier into the audience -- belonged in a funhouse. 

The plot revolved around a half-masked, misunderstood operatic stalker who paraded around a subterranean Parisian lake on a gondola. The misunderstood phantom cast his spell because he just wanted to be loved.

Sing once again with me, our strange duet
My power over you grows stronger yet
And though you turn from me to glance behind
The Phantom of the Opera is there
Inside your mind.

Yes -- the phantom of the opera is there inside your mind, dissuading you from ever attending another musical. 

But to duck out of all musicals because of one errant chandelier is to miss out on much. Musicals don’t just involve lovesick phantoms, singing cats, or characters breaking into song every time the plot advances. The best ones knock our socks off. 

When Fräulein Sally Bowles defiantly sings of life being a cabaret in one of the greatest of all 11 o’clock numbers, or when the gambler Nicely Nicely Johnson gets on that boat to heaven and brings his dice along, we are in for something transcendent. 

I was raised to love musicals. My dad used to sing songs from Cabaret and Guys and Dolls to us at bedtime. This does not keep me from being critical. For instance, I have the audacity to assert that the second act of Hamilton is mostly a slog.

Getting Joe to come around to musical theater has been a bit of a project. He may never have suffered through Phantom, but I still believe the phantom of The Phantom of the Opera was there inside his mind.

In defiance of the phantom, Joe loved the current Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd. Embracing Sondheim shows superior taste.

I leave you with this thought: if you don’t like musicals, ask yourself if it might have anything to do with Phantom. Now that it is gone, the chandelier is staying aloft and it is once again safe to go back into Broadway theaters.