[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming, or on demand, I'm grateful you are here. On today's show, we'll have a listening party with musician Audioasis and we'll talk about the new exhibit at the Whitney devoted to the work of indigenous artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. That is our plan, so let's lift the curtain on The Phantom of the Opera.

[MUSIC - Andrew Lloyd Webber: The Phantom of the Opera]

Alison: Broadway's longest-running production Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera went dark on Sunday. Its famous chandelier crashing to the stage for the last time at the Majestic Theater. After 35 years, 7 Tonys, and more than $1 billion in sales, the show has closed citing losses not recouped from the pandemic as well as the changing landscape of Broadway.

The show originally planned to close back in February, but unlike other shows that shutter due to waning profits and fade away quietly, the announcement actually brought a huge spike in sales delaying the closure by two months. Sunday's show opened only to invited guests and a few lucky lottery winners. It also included past actors of the production. Creator Andrew Lloyd Webber was there and famous fans like Lin-Manuel Miranda and Glenn Close.

New York Times theater reporter Michael Paulson was there as well and has been covering the show's closure. He's interviewed fans including someone who has seen Phantom 140 times. Michael joined us now to talk about the show's impact, legacy, and its enduring popularity. Michael, welcome back as always.

Michael: Hi, how're you doing?

Alison: Doing great. Listeners, are you fans of Phantom? How many times have you seen the show? What are your favorite songs or moments from the show? Perhaps you're an actor or a musician or someone in the theater who has worked onstage or backstage or in the pit, we would love to hear your Phantom stories.

Give us a call, 212- 433-9692, 212-433-WNYC, or you can hit us up on social media @AllOfItWNYC, that's both Twitter and Instagram, as we say, farewell to Phantom of the Opera. Farewell for now, we should say. Michael, you were in attendance at the last dance on Sunday. Can you describe the atmosphere?

Michael: Yes, it was kind of wild.

Alison: [chuckles]

Michael: They started with a red carpet on the sidewalk on West 44th Street where they invited both members of the current cast and alumni of all the casts that came before to pose for photographs and talk to the media about how they were feeling about this moment. The street, both sides of West 44th Street were just lined with fans, some of them in fairly elaborate costumes.

There was a guy dressed in full-on Red Death, which is the costume that the Phantom Wears in the masquerade scene. There was somebody dressed as the chandelier, and of course, there were a lot of Phantoms taking pictures, cheering, hoping to get tickets. The show itself was electric. The crowd was super excited, gave entrance applause to not only everyone, but everything, including the monkey music box.

It's a symbol of the show, of course, the chandelier itself, the first sight of the Phantom and Christine rowing in this gondola across the underground lake to his lair. It was a pretty ecstatic night that ended with speeches from Andrew Lloyd Weber, who of course is the composer, and Cameron Mackintosh, the producer. Most of the members of the creative team have passed away, but they showed pictures of them.

They invited all the living alumni to come up. They showed pictures of everyone who had ever played The Phantom or Christine, and then they showered the audience with gold and silver confetti and gave the chandelier its own bow. They lowered it halfway back over the audience so people could applaud it.

Alison: [laughs]

Michael: Then everyone retired to the Metropolitan Club where there was this massive elaborate party that went on into the wee hours.

Alison: How was the closure addressed from stage?

Michael: Look, I've spent a lot of time around the show over the last few weeks talking to people, and I think there's a mix of emotions that attach to it. I think, of course, people are sad and wistful and nostalgic, but also there's a level of realism about this. I think the show's been running for a really long time. Some chapters of its history have been bumpy. It was not doing great last year and the closing was announced last September, so it's been coming.

I think everyone also recognizes that theater changes and that the departure of one show creates an opportunity for another one to come in. As you mentioned in the intro, the show's been doing unbelievably well over the last few months. It's now the best-selling show on Broadway, so they're going out on a real high. They've been playing to full houses that are super psyched. That's a great way to exit, so I think people are feeling good about what they've accomplished.

Alison: Let's talk to Jules calling in from Green Point. Hi, Jules, thanks for calling All Of It. You're on the air.

Jules: Hi. Oh my gosh, I got to see The Phantom in 2006 and it was so memorable. Even leading up to it was super memorable because it was my then boyfriend, now husband and my first fancy date. It was for my birthday and he was in his best suit. He took the G train to come pick me up, and with him brought my birthday present which was a microwave because my dorm didn't have a microwave.

[laughter]

Jules: He was caught in a thunderstorm and called me from the [unintelligible 00:07:13] and stop on the G holding a microwave, didn't want to tell me about the microwave. He was like, "I'm going to be a little late, but be ready and I'll get to you." I just think it's so funny. That's so New York and perfect, and I can never think of the Phantom of the Opera or microwaves ever the same. We've had a great show and our first fancy dinner and all that. It's just amazing about New York and all the experiences and all the layers that go into an experience. It's never just the one thing.

Alison: Jules, that is so beautifully put. Thank you for calling in with that both romantic and hilarious story. Listeners, are you a fan of Phantom? How many times have you seen the show? Maybe you have a memorable story about going to see Phantom of the Opera. Or perhaps you're a musician or someone who works in the theater who worked on Phantom during its run, it's a 35-year run, we'd like to hear your stories as well. 212-433-WNYC, 212- 433-9692, social medias @AllOfItWNYC.

We're discussing the closing and the legacy of Phantom of the Opera with New York Times theater reporter Michael Paulson. The main reason cited for the closing was financial. You interviewed producer Cameron Mackintosh back in September when the closing was announced. You talked to him about money, and he quoted some staggering numbers about how much they have to net to make a profit on this show. What was making Phantom of the Opera financially unsustainable in 2023?

Michael: Look, Broadway's a really hard environment, but Phantom had some special challenges. It's a very big show. It has a very large orchestra, a very large cast, and a somewhat complicated set. It was really expensive to run, so that means you need to make more money to pay the cost to stay afloat each week. Also because of the length of its run, was super dependent on tourism and had a pretty heavy and steady diet of global tourists, tourists from outside the United States before the pandemic.

When Broadway reopened after the pandemic closing, international tourism remained very low. It still hasn't fully recovered and costs were going up even further. There were some costs associated with Covid public health precautions, but also as you're aware, we're living in an inflationary environment. The show is costing like $100,000 more every week just to run. Prices were not going up, you know, the prices of tickets. The show was losing money more weeks than it was making money, and that's an unsustainable formula. Cameron Mackintosh, the lead producer decided it was time to pull the plug.

Alison: Let's talk about when the show debuted. The climate, what was happening on Broadway? Just give us a sense of what the theater landscape was like when Phantom debuted in '88.

Michael: It's just such a different era. I want to take you back first to the '70s when New York was really in fiscal crisis. There were a lot of concerns about crime in Times Square and beyond. There were a lot of people moving outside New York and theaters were empty a lot of the time. Some of them were closing by the early '80s. In 1982, there was something called The Great Theater Massacre, in which five Time Square theaters were actually bulldozed to make way for a hotel.

I think there were a lot of questions about the future of Broadway. At the same time, there was this phenomenon called the British Invasion, which was this handful of shows coming in from the UK, many of them with scores by Andrew Lloyd Webber. They were attracting big crowds that were very dependent on spectacle.

They were big in every sense of the word, musically, narratively, and visually. Phantom was the crowning moment of that wave. It was the biggest and the most elaborate. Of course, the most iconic aspect of Phantom is this chandelier that is suspended over the audience for most of the first act and then crashes onto the stage at the end.

It was a big spectacle. It's gothic. Everything about it is heightened and it really moved people, but it arrived at a time when, as I say, Broadway was a little bit teetering. Over the course of its life, Broadway's fortunes have really reversed so that now there's a lot of musical performance on television and in film. The industry of Broadway has become extraordinarily successful, and Phantom is the bridge between the era when musical theater seemed to be dying to the era when it seems like it's ubiquitous.

Alison: Let's talk to Julia calling in from Ridge, New York. Hi, Julia. Thank you for calling.

Julia: Hey. Oh, thanks. How's it going?

Alison: Good.

Julia: I just wanted to say that when I was young, my parents took me to see Phantom. I was from Mississippi and I had never seen anything like that before. It totally inspired my love for theater. I had taken my eight-year-old son to a couple of Broadway shows. I heard Phantom was closing. I was like, "Oh my God, we have to go." I went in December and we saw it, and he just ate it up like a kid eating chocolate cake. It was amazing. We had to go see it again before it closed, so we just went and saw it again just a couple of weekends ago.

We saw it on a Saturday night. The crowd was electric and it was one of just the best performances, and he was so sad at the end like, "I'm never going to see it again. This is the last time we'll get to see it." I said, "No, they're going to have a revival, don't worry." He's been singing the music in our house ever since. It totally inspired a real love for theater, I think in my son as well. It's amazing.

Alison: What a great story. Julia, thank you so much for calling in. It's interesting. If you read the initial reviews, Frank Rich in The Times. The reviews were mixed. He did not love the acting but acknowledged the wow factor that you were talking about.

He wrote, "It may be possible to have a terrible time at Phantom of the Opera, but you'll have to work at it. Only a terminal prig would let the avalanche of pre-opening publicity poison his enjoyment of this show, which usually wants nothing more than to shower the audience with fantasy and fun, and which often succeeds at any price." Two questions. What is the pre-opening publicity poison that he references?

Michael: There was an enormous amount of hype about the show as it was coming in. It had already opened in London two years earlier. It was a big success there. It had the biggest advanced sale of any show on Broadway, meaning it had sold a huge number of tickets the night before tickets went on sale on Broadway. People were camped out in front of the theater waiting in line to get tickets. Andrew Lloyd Webber was on the cover of TIME Magazine. There was a huge amount of buildup. I think there was a question about can it live up to it. Of course for a lot of people, it did.

I want to reflect on what the last caller said. I've been talking to a lot of fans over the last few weeks, and because the show's been running so long, that multi-generational aspect has happened a lot. I heard from a lot of people who saw it as kids and then brought their own kids, or in some cases grandkids, and really treasure that ability to pass along the enthusiasm that they once felt to a next generation of potential admirers.

Alison: Let's listen to a clip of Music of the Night, one of the big hits from the show, and this is when The Phantom uses his musical prowess to put his love interest Christine under his spell.

[MUSIC - Andrew Lloyd Webber: Music of the Night]

Alison: Michael, we've talked about the spectacle, we've talked about the hype. When you think about the score of this show, why was the score so important to its success?

Michael: Phantom as the title suggests, has its roots in opera. What Andrew Lloyd Webber does is he combines the sounds of opera with this overlay of rock. He finds a way to make this art form that's both admired and a little bit inaccessible a little bit closer to pop music. The music is soaring and sweepy, arguably it's bombastic and people just ate it up. I think it moves people in a way that sometimes critics have a hard time relating to, but that audience is delighted.

Alison: Michael Paulson is my guest as we're discussing the closing of Phantom of the Opera. He is The New York Times theater reporter. He's been doing a lot of reporting about the closing of the show. We're also taking calls from you listeners. We want to hear your Phantom of the Opera stories, 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692. We'll have more with Michael and more of your calls after a quick break. This is All Of It.

[music]

This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart, and we are saying goodbye to Phantom of the Opera. The longest-running show on Broadway closed this past weekend. My guest is New York Times theater reporter Michael Paulson, who's been covering the story. You're my guest as well. Ibrahim has been holding, he's calling from Teaneck, New Jersey. Ibrahim, thank you for calling in.

Ibrahim: Hey, Alison. How are you?

Alison: Great. Tell us your story.

Ibrahim: In 2004 my fourth-grade class took a trip to see The Phantom of the Opera. We were supposed to go to Dorney Park, but unfortunately, we didn't get enough people to sign the permission slips, so they took us to New York. Honestly, that trip changed my life for the better. I've never experienced something like that, especially in New York City.

The show was absolutely amazing. Being 10 years old and just experiencing something so magical like that is something that you just can't experience. I didn't even know the world exists after eight o'clock. We left the Broadway show and it was so breathtaking. I got home and I told my mom everything that happened and I fell in love with Broadway ever since then.

Alison: Thank you so much for calling in. What a lovely call. Michael, you had some chance to interview fans, as they say with P-H-A-N-S, phans. Tell us about some of the stories that really stuck with you.

Michael: It's amazing the relationship that people have with this show. Of course, there are repeat attenders. There are people who have seen it many, many, many times. One guy I talked to had seen it 150 times. I talked to this woman who had grown up in China and had encountered the show via a video that she found at a video rental store. Had never seen it in person until she moved here in 2021 as a grad student, and had since managed to see it 55 times in a year and a half. There was a week where she saw every single performance.

There are people who have Phantom tattoos all over the place, including one woman who had tattooed the address of the Majestic Theater onto her midriff. That's the theater where Phantom is playing.

Alison: Wow.

Michael: There are also these globe trotters, these people. Phantom is a part of the theatrical industrial complex. It's like a global phenomenon now played in a million places, I think it's 17 different languages and 44 countries. I talked to this guy in Italy. He's in his 60s and he spends all of his time traveling around seeing it in every country where he can. He just delights in the little differences between productions and performances. People are really passionate about it.

Of course, there are all these online forums in which they talk about what's going, what they love and what they hate, and how they feel about different understudies and what the news is about this and that. Right now they're very excited about Trieste which is this city in Italy where the first production in Italy is going to take place this summer. It's going to have a Canadian performer named Ramin Karimloo starring, who a lot of people know, who's going to be great, and he's going to be standing on top of a flaming chandelier.

Alison: Oh, wow.

Michael: All eyes are looking in that direction, but Phantom, it sort of never stops. Next month, the first Mandarin language production is opening in Shanghai and Antonio Banderas is overseeing the creation of a new production in Spanish that's going to start in Spain this fall.

Alison: Let's talk to Albert calling in from Rockville Center, New York. Hi, Albert, thanks for calling all of it. Hi, Albert, are you there?

Albert: Yes, I am.

Alison: Go for it. You're on the air.

Albert: Can you hear me?

Alison: Yes, I can. You're on the air.

Albert: Oh, okay. As I was telling the person I am speaking to, I know the complete score of Phantom but in German because I had friends who were in the Hamburg cast. I had friends who were in the Vienna cast. I saw it numerous times when it was playing in those cities, but for some reason, I never got around to seeing it here in New York, and I'm from New York.

Alison: Wait, Albert, can you sing a line in German?

Albert: Oh, God. [laughs] All I know is like [sings in German]

[laughter]

Albert: Instead of Masquerade, it's Maskenball.

Alison: [laughs] Albert, thank you so much for calling in. We actually have someone very important to the show who has called in. Jenny is calling in from Tappan, New York. Jenny, thank you so much for calling in. Tell us about your association with Phantom of the Opera.

Jenny: Well, how wonderful. Thank you for having me on. I have been with the New York production for 33 years, plus I've also worked on the Raul Company, the Christine Company, the Music Box Company, and the Las Vegas sit-down production. My job has been to build all the hand props, so anything that one of the actors carries across the stage or if they pick it up off of a table, that was my job to produce.

Obviously, things were not purchasable on Amazon or anywhere locally, so I had to travel into the way back machine and fabricate virtually all those things that you see from Madame Giry's staff, and of course, Christine Daaés dressing room, which is all gold leafed by hand by me and other artisans. The Il Muto bed, the pillows the chairs that are used, all of these things are fabricated by artisans, craftspeople, designers, and props people who are given maybe notes.

Sometimes they're giving drawings, sometimes they're not given drawings, but most often they'll say, "Okay, we need something that works on the desk, on the manager's desk, et cetera." All these different props, I'd say maybe I made 170 different pieces in each production.

Alison: [claps] I'm just going to give you a round of applause for Jenny and all of the folks behind the scenes. Jenny, thank you for calling in. I'm so glad, Michael, we were able to get Jenny on the air because we really do have to remember how many people it takes to put on a show of this magnitude.

Michael: Absolutely. Also fun to hear about her longevity. I think there were about 20 people who had worked on the show for its entire lifetime, all 35 years. I met a stagehand who was the sixth member of her family to work on the show. These were really good jobs that lasted in an industry where very little lasts. Also, it was fun. And the other thing we should note about what Jenny said is the show had incredible detail to its set and its costumes and its props. That was one of the things that made it special.

Alison: Let's talk to Laura, calling in from Staten Island. Hi, Laura, you have quite a story.

Laura: Hi, yes. In 1990, I was sworn in as a judge of the civil court in New York. On the day of my swearing-in, my daughter, who was then 11, her class was going to see Phantom, but she chose to come to my swearing-in. I told her I would take her to Phantom and I did the next year. The two of us sat up in the balcony. At the end of the show where everyone's just crying because they've fallen in love with Phantom, I had one tissue and we tore it in half, and the two of us split the tissue to mop up our tears.

Alison: Laura, that is a terrific story. Thank you so much for calling in. I do want to pick up on something Laura said. She said she went in 1990 and the musical started in 1988. Some of the earlier reviews refer to -- let's just put it, some of the ways the people wrote about seduction probably wouldn't fly now as one of the current female reviewers from The New York Times called it, "It's a rape apology with a fog machine." They loved the show, but there was that element to the show. When you think about the content, would it get the green light today?

Michael: I think the gender dynamics would be handled differently. The Phantom is such an interesting and complicated main character. I was really struck when I was talking to fans with how many people identify with him. This is a guy who, over the course of the show, kills two people. He's a stalker. He kidnaps Christine twice. He's predatory but also ostracized.

I think people feel for him because he's shut out of society by his disfigurement, he's isolated and alone, but he also does a lot of terrible things. I think he's a complicated character. I think his relationship to Christine if the show were written today, would be shaped in different ways.

Alison: Let's talk to Scott, who has been with the show for a long time. Hi Scott. Thanks for calling in.

Scott: Hi, how are you? I'm glad to be here. I love your show.

Alison: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Tell us about your work.

Scott: I've been in the production for over 20 years and I'm what's called a swing. Well, I'm not anymore, but I was what's called a swing, which is a performer, a member of the company who is not on stage every night, but we have to know a lot of different roles. I knew 12 ensemble tracks, which was different actors' parts, and then two principal roles. When anyone was out for any reason, then I would go on for them.

Alison: Swings are heroes. I think we all learned that during COVID. Swings are true heroes. Can you tell us what was special about being part of this show Phantom of the Opera?

Scott: Part of it was this. There are no other shows like this, certainly anymore. The grandness of it, the enormity of the set and the lushness of the orchestrations, the size of the orchestra, that music, to be able to sing that music every night was really incredible. Also, there's the business side of it, which is when you got cash on Phantom, there was a sense of, [sighs] "Don't need to look for another job for a while."

[laughter]

Scott: There was that. It was a lot. There was a lot of really wonderful things about being in the show.

Alison: Scott, what's your last name if I may ask?

Scott: Sure. Mikita, M-I-K-I-T-A.

Alison: [claps] Round of applause for Scott Mikita and all the swings out there. Scott, thank you for calling in. Michael, before we let you go Andrew Lloyd Webber has gone through very difficult times. His 43-year-old son died of stomach cancer in late March, just three weeks ago, and I know that he spoke about him. Is there any sense of what he might want to do next, or is he going to take time in his 70s to relax? Did he mention anything? Do you know anything? Got to scoop for us?

Michael: There's no sign that he's slowing down. He has another musical now running on Broadway called Bad Cinderella. There's a revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat that's kicking around. There was just an announcement that it's going to be adapted for film. I think he loves composing and he loves theater. I think he also hopes that Phantom will come back in some fashion in New York in the not-too-distant future. I think you're right, it's been a rough spring for him, but I think he's going to keep going.

Alison: Michael Paulson is The New York Times theater reporter. Thank you, Michael, for sharing your reporting, and thanks to all of our terrific callers who called in. This was a lot of fun.

Michael: Thank you.

 

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