STAGE REVIEW : A Tame ‘Phantom’ in New York : There Are Few Moments When the Music Grasps the Magic

Contrary to expectations, the most exciting moment in “The Phantom of the Opera” is when the chandelier goes up .

The new Andrew Lloyd Webber/Harold Prince musical opens in a dark theater where an auction is being held. One of the shrouded items for sale is the ruined chandelier that 30 years ago plunged to this very stage, to the mad laughter of Someone in the flies--a catastrophe never completely explained.

The chandelier has been partly rewired and perhaps we would appreciate an idea of what it once looked like? The auctioneer pulls a string and the chandelier loses its shroud. It begins to glow; it begins to twinkle; it begins to move out over the audience under its own power . . . .

And we are into the world of the Paris Opera, circa 1870, with a bow to the technology that gave us the space-ship finale of “Cats.” The audience at the Majestic Theater laughs and applauds.

This is the kind of coup they came to see. If the show is so clever about getting the chandelier into place, wait until it falls!

The music is running now, and the first scene is promising. It is a spoof of a pompous Third Republic hack opera “Hannibal,” complete with dancing girls, bare-chested brutes with whips and a huge elephant on rollers. The audience further congratulates itself. Not only is “Phantom” going to be scary, it’s going to be fun.

On balance, it is not that much fun and not that scary. “Phantom” is a much more honorable and substantial musical than Lloyd Webber’s last two efforts, “Song and Dance” and the obnoxious “Starlight Express.” There’s a real attempt here to write for characters and to explore a serious theme.

Two serious themes, in fact. Not just the Beauty and the Beast motif that obviously underlines “The Phantom of the Opera,” but its more subtle suggestion that a dedicated young soprano (Sarah Brightman) can become a monster in her own right, enthralled to her need for perfection. It’s not a storytelling convenience that the phantom (Michael Crawford) is a master music teacher.

It’s easy to see what drew Lloyd Webber to the story, but one wishes that Stephen Sondheim had been drawn to it first. There aren’t many moments when Lloyd Webber’s music or Charles Hart’s lyrics grasp its dark unsettling magic.

The opera spoofing goes nicely, particularly when Judy Kaye is involved as the company’s senior soprano, who does not look favorably on younger talent--dedicated or not. In a clever, hectic sextet called “Prima Donna”--at least a sextet--Miss Kaye and her colleagues prove that opera, like politics, is war by other means.

Other sendups of grand opera have made this point, of course. What one was hoping for here was a show that would have its fun--rather like the Frank Langella version of “Dracula”--and then take you down to the underground lake where the monster lives.

“Phantom” does accomplish this scenically, with droves of lighted candles emerging like fingers through the black “water” as Crawford and Brightman glide on in a gondola, an image worthy of the great Lon Chaney silent film. (Maria Bjornson designed the whole show, with more costumes than the Met may have in storage.)

But Lloyd Webber’s score doesn’t have anything like this kind of mystery. It’s all tin as in Tin Pan Alley, even when it is laboring with leitmotifs and other opera-house devices. That is not to say that some of Lloyd Webber’s arias, duets and ensembles don’t make a big noise. But the patterns are so predictable that you’re tired of them before the aria is halfway through, not to mention the fourth time it is reprised.

Where a score in the operatic idiom should soar, this one keeps drooping into a kind of musical prose. That also fits Hart’s lyrics. When he can’t be clever on behalf of a character, or against him, he falls into banalities. That robs both the phantom and the soprano, Christine, of the size that the listener is aching to give them. The mythic element in this tale is very strong, yet we keep being bumped ashore on cliched rhymes and ta-ta-ta-tums. “Open up your mind/Let your fantasies unwind,”sings the phantom to Christine.

“Nothing can harm you/My words will warm and calm you,” counters Christine’s true love, Raoul (Steve Barton). Traditional opera lyrics may be just as stultifying but they’re usually in Italian.

Lloyd Webber’s score is also rife with the usual borrowings, those from Puccini being not inappropriate in this case perhaps. But there’s a really offensive one in the opening phrase of the phantom’s socko seduction number, “The Music of the Night.” It doesn’t take a master tune detective to identify the strain as Lerner and Loewe’s “Come to Me, Bend to Me,” from “Brigadoon.”

Perhaps this is meant as a tribute to the late Alan Jay Lerner, who did some preliminary work on the show with Lloyd Webber. The libretto would have been clearer if he had been able to stay with the project. The present one, by Webber and Richard Stilgoe, leaves the disinterested viewer wondering, for instance, why nobody asks the ballet mistress where the phantom lives, since she keeps bringing in threatening notes from him.

It is a fairly important point with all Paris in a dither about the strange occurrences at the opera. Leila Martin, however, plays the ballet mistress so formidably that it could be that everybody is too scared to ask her.

Divorced from some of the boring things he has to say, Crawford’s phantom is also impressive. We see that he truly does adore Christine, not just as a beautiful young woman, but as the embodiment of the Spirit of Music, sacred to him--more sacred than to those counting up the house in the offices above.

This phantom kills with reluctance, only when there is no other way to make his point. What he most wants in the world is to be left alone, with his bride and his art.

Without quite siding with Crawford’s phantom, we can see his point. It’s a soulful and sympathetic characterization, yet still a kinky one. Crawford truly enjoys making people dance to his tune--it is his revenge for having been born with a face like that. If Crawford doesn’t make us forget Lon Chaney, he does make us forget Claude Rains.

Brightman doesn’t make Christine any more interesting than the libretto does. Brightman, who is married to the composer, is beautiful, and she has the range for the songs. But there is nothing indispensable about her performance, as was argued when Lloyd Webber wanted to bring her to Broadway over the objections of American Equity. She is, however, a definite boon to the local mascara industry.

Harold Prince’s cast is big and well-drilled, and there’s a masquerade number on the steps of the Paris Opera where they look like a cast of thousands. (Half of the party is composed of dummies.)

To the eye, the show is as opulent and decadent as expected: all swooping drapery and erotic gold statues, plus that sensational underground grotto. (What time is the next swan?)

But when the famous chandelier comes unhooked, it only wafts down. Frankly, we were expecting it to plummet. “Phantom” will run for a good long time, but Broadway scalpers may not be getting $250 a seat for it all winter.

‘THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA’ A musical at the Majestic Theater, Broadway. Produced by Cameron Mackintosh and The Really Useful Theatre Company Inc. Music Andrew Lloyd Webber. Lyrics Charles Hart. Additional lyrics Richard Stilgoe. Book Stilgoe and Lloyd Webber. Director Harold Prince. Production design Maria Bjornson. Lighting Andrew Bridge. Sound Martin Levan. Musical supervision and direction David Caddick. Orchestration David Cullen and Lloyd Webber. Musical staging and choreography Gillian Lynne. Cast Michael Crawford, Sarah Brightman, Steve Barton, Judy Kaye, Cris Groenendaal, Nicholas Wyman, Leila Martin, David Romano, Elisa Heinsohn, Peter Kevoian, Richard Warren Pugh, Jeff Keller, Kenneth Waller, Philip Steele, George Lee Andrews, Luis Perez, Barry McNabb, Charles Rule, Olga Talyn, William Scott Brown, Candace Rogers-Adler, Mary Leigh Stahl, Rebecca Luker, Beth McVey, Jan Horvath, Irene Che, Nicole Fosse, Lisa Lockwood, Lori MacPherson, Dodie Pettit, Katherine Ulissey, Denny Berry, Frank Mastone and Alba Quezada. Plays Mondays-Saturdays at 8 p.m., with Saturday matinees at 2 p.m. Tickets $30-$50. 247 W. 44th Street, New York (212) 239-6290.