Mark and I were very excited to go to the Hale Center Theater this last Thursday to watch “The Phantom of the Opera”
What we got was something we didn’t expect!

The show started out with a beginning I was not familiar with, along with music that sounded WAY to cheerful and upbeat to be part of Phantom of the Opera!
But I thought…. “Well, maybe its a different beginning then I’ve ever seen.”
It reminded me a little of the beginning of Beauty and the Beast where all the people in the town are singing and dancing and Bell is prancing around singing merrily. ( just to give you an idea of how it started)

Now one thing to understand was I’ve never seen a Play of this done, just the movie, and I’ve listened to the music Hundreds of times, but this….was WAY different! In EVERY way it was different! Infact I had a hard time finding ANY similarities to the original!

The first time Phantom came on stage for his first scene, instead of getting this Dark, mystical, musical genious, that has lived under the Opera house most his life,…instead we saw a whining tantruming man dressed in the Phantom’s costume, complaining and stressing over the fact that the management of the Opera house had just changed! He was actually throwing a tantrum! (Can you actually imagine what that must have looked like?) I couldn’t believe it!
I thought…. We’ve got to be at the wrong play! But no… we weren’t!

The ONLY similarities from this version of the play and the real version of Phantom of the Opera was the names of some of the characters, note I said SOME, NOT all!
There wasnt even a Raul character. There was some other guy that took that role, with another name, and he seemed to have a reputation as a “ladies man” or something.

The character of the Phantom acted jittery, nervous, and immature. At least it did compared to the image of the Phantom we had in our head from the original music, and movie.

So, that was the negative end of it. The positive side of it was that the singers themselves were VERY talented! Wonderful Voices, Great acting skills, and a couple of the scenes I found myself actually feeling emotionally involved.
Most the scenes though I found cheesy, some even comical!
On that note, I MUST spoil part of the plot to this new version (if you wanna be surprised don’t read on)
So, the Phantom has been shot, and this man who has been his friend through out the play, finally confesses something…. he starts in operatic drama “I am your Father”. At this point I expected to hear Luke Skywalker to Scream out: “Noooooooooooooo!”
But the Phantom gets up and says “I guess I always knew!”

It was like, daytime drama meets Phantom of the Opera, directed by Gorge Lucus!
(Ooooh Harsh!) hehe

So, to say the Very least, it was NOT what we went in expecting, but the talented people involved did a MARVELOUS job!

I think if they had some way of advertising that it was not the original Phantom I would not have gone in expecting it, I might have even liked it!
Its like, when you take a drink expecting juice, and you get milk!
Your first reaction is “Blech Yuck, what the….” But after a while you figure out what it is, and its ok, but still not what you expected.

The Booklet we got when we walked in even had a picture in it that had a picture from the cover of the movie ‘The Phantom of the Opera.’ So there was nothing to even give us a hint that it was different. Except under cast names, we didn’t recognize most the character names, and didn’t see others that should have been there, like Raul.

Anyway, so if you like the Clasical version, DONT go see it!!!
If you like variations…try it out.