HERE COMES ‘PHANTOM OF THE OPERA’

“The Phantom of the Opera” has proved a natural for the movies, all the way back to Lon Chaney’s spooky silent-screen version in 1925. But it took Andrew Lloyd Webber to see Gaston Leroux’s novel as a musical.

Webber’s “Phantom” opened last week in London, staged by his old collaborator Harold Prince, and starring Michael Crawford as the tragically disfigured ghoul who creeps around backstage at the Paris Opera House, occasionally knocking off a soprano.

The reviews suggest that this “Phantom” will be flying across the sea to America as soon as can be arranged.

“An evening that restores sex and romance to the modern musical, with a full quota of pulsating melodramatic tension,” wrote Michael Coveney in the Financial Times.

“It has everything a first-rate musical drama should have--heart, wit, simpatico characters and, not least, tunes you can whistle on the way out,” wrote Variety’s London correspondent.

Much praise went to Lloyd Webber’s romantic score; to Maria Bjornson’s lavish design; to Prince’s hyperdramatic staging (particularly the moment when the opera house chandelier comes crashing down); to Crawford’s scary-but-sympathetic hero, and to Sarah Brightman’s performance as the soprano who plays Beauty to Crawford’s Beast.

Brightman is Mrs. Andrew Lloyd Webber, and there were apparently some eyebrows raised about her being cast in this role. “It ought to end now,” wrote UPI’s Gregory Jensen. “She has that star quality that attracts the eye at all times, and her cultured soprano moves easily between rock and operatic idioms.”

There was also relief that the show felt like a human story, not like a libretto for automata, in the way of Webber’s last hit, “Starlight Express.”

“I think we have had enough of technology,” Prince said. “I felt ready for a romantic theatrical experience, full of heady music. We’re not doing a potboiler here. This is intelligent material.”

Coincidentally, Webber’s “Cats” is about to leave the L.A. Shubert.

The Shubert Organization’s Bernard Jacobs confirmed on Friday that “Cats” will close at the Shubert Jan. 4, just shy of its second birthday there. (It opened Jan. 12, 1985.)

Jacobs said that the show is only doing about 60% of capacity business, where 80% or more is required to keep “Cats” earning its keep. Surprisingly, he also said that “Cats” has lost money in Los Angeles, despite its long run.

Its successor? “We’re feverishly looking for one,” he said, not sounding too feverish. “We don’t like to see that house dark. It will have to be a musical--the house is too big for plays.”

How about “The Phantom of the Opera”?

QUOTE OF THE WEEK. Eugene O’Neill, quoted in the program for “A Touch of the Poet” at the Melrose Theatre: “The only success is in failure. Any man who has a big enough dream must be a failure and must accept this as one of the conditions of being alive.”