There’s noth­ing like a show, and Phan­tom of the Opera is cer­tain­ly one of those. It’s the sec­ond longest run­ning musi­cal in the world so its a bit of a big deal for Welling­ton Musi­cal The­atre to land a sea­son here at the St James.

I’ve been lucky enough to see the pro­duc­tion a few times before (spot the musi­cal the­atre nerd) which means I went in with a few pre­con­ceived notions and expec­ta­tions . So for a bit of bal­ance I brought along a friend who’d nev­er been to a musi­cal before, had no idea of the sto­ry and for a bonus twist , eng­lish is her sec­ond lan­guage — (sneak peek — we walked away hap­py).

Lets begin with where this show is des­tined to fail or suc­ceed — with the Phan­tom him­self. We were both blown away by how Chris Crowe brought icon­ic trag­ic char­ac­ter to life. From the moment you hear his voice over the speak­ers you can feel the inten­si­ty and when he steps on stage he makes it work with every inch of his voice and body. With this role a per­former could eas­i­ly coast on belt­ing out the num­bers, but songs like ‘Music of the Night’ come to life when restraint is applied and Chris Crowe deliv­ered a stun­ning and assured per­for­mance on all fronts.

PhantomAndChristine

The stag­ing was real­ly inno­v­a­tive it was opu­lent where need­ed and we were both impressed. The cos­tumes had all the wow fac­tor you expect from this kind of show. This is a dream cho­rus who real­ly deliv­er, not a note out of tune and in the big num­bers like ‘Mas­quer­ade’  every­thing (stag­ing, sound, light­ing , cos­tumes, per­form­ers)  all came togeth­er per­fect­ly and I was trans­formed. I still have that song rolling around in my head, and I’ve not found any­thing on you tube to match the joy and excite­ment I had being there.

One prob­lem­at­ic thing was the sound, not the voic­es but how they were trans­mit­ted. Dur­ing songs like “Notes/Twisted Every Way” when you’ve got var­i­ous singers in tan­dem the indi­vid­ual per­for­mances were impos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish, and were over­pow­ered by the sound from the orches­tra. It felt like their mics were turned down & the orches­tra turned up — which is the oppo­site of how I like my musi­cals. For me its all about the stage per­form­ers — sor­ry orches­tra I know you put in just as much work —  I want to hear every sin­gle word from the stage and at most times we could so I’d put it down to a glitch on the night.

But we were gripped and She was on the edge of her seat and at the end so was I and we walked away hap­py. If the stand­ing ova­tion from the audi­ence was any­thing to go by so did every­one else. If you can, do go see Phan­tom its only on for 3 weeks and The St James is the per­fect venue for a big kick ass show and Phan­tom of The Opera is that. There is noth­ing quite live the­atre, and live musi­cal the­atre, done well like this pro­duc­tion was,  is some­thing you don’t want to miss, it’s Grand, it’s joy­ful and it’s a fun night out.