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.