STAGE REVIEW : A ‘Phantom’ Without a Heart

Some of you may recall the strange affair of “The Phantom of the Opera,” a mystery never fully explained. How a sumptuous, but rather pokey, musical could sweep the field in London, New York and, now, Los Angeles on the strength of one image--a little ivory mask.

Clever marketing doesn’t totally explain the phenomenon. Nor does the fact that Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the score, or that Michael Crawford is the star. “Phantom” has been a hit since the day it was announced. It is simply a show that people want to see. As Lady Bracknell used to say, the very title has vibrations.

A haunted opera house. A shadowy figure in the flies. A beautiful, mesmerized soprano. Monsieur, this is as far as I dare go. Monster, prepare to meet thy fate! Christine, over here!

Delicious. And we got it all at the Ahmanson on Wednesday night, plus the underground grotto, plus the “plunging” chandelier (a fairly slow plunge), plus a lot of opera jokes. There was plenty to take in. But did we care?

Clearly we were supposed to. “Phantom” has a lot of fun sending up the junk operas of 100 years ago, with their prop elephants and pudgy tenors. (The show opens with a funny rehearsal of “Hannibal Crossing the Alps,” by “Chalumeau,” a big favorite at the Opera Populaire.)

But “Phantom” is perfectly serious about its phantom, whom Michael Crawford plays even more quietly and intensely at the Ahmanson than he did on Broadway.

Like most mythical monsters, this is a figure in torment. Not only does he pine for the touch of the beautiful young soprano, Christine (Dale Kristien), he wants to hear some real music upstairs, as opposed to the kind of junk that the current management of the Opera Populaire is putting out.

It’s as if Quasimodo in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” were a scandalized Jansenist priest. Our Phantom really does see himself as “The Angel of Music.” And Christine, his pupil, has a serious problem distinguishing between him and her adored late father. The Phantom also whispers to her darker side, the side that doesn’t want people, only a career.

This is dank, yeasty stuff--underground stuff that music can get at, if it goes deep enough. Faced with a similar challenge in “Sweeney Todd,” Stephen Sondheim got at

some of it. Lloyd Webber simply doesn’t have the tools or, perhaps, the persistence.

The technical tools are there. Lloyd Webber can write an ensemble number with the best of them--or in this musical context, the worst of them. But when it’s time for the Phantom or Christine to ravish us with a musical line, we get a tune that might serve to bring on Tom Jones at Las Vegas (“Past the Point of No Return”), or a knockoff of Lerner and Loewe (“The Music of the Night”).

The orchestration will huff and puff to say: This is fraught with emotion, react to it. But the inner ear knows that it’s dealing with elevator music, and deeper caverns aren’t reached. It is tum-te-tum-te-tum time, not unlike the days of Chalumeau at the Opera Populaire. “Phantom” would get four stars from any restaurant critic in the business for its “presentation.” But it is serving Campbell’s Tomato Soup.

As for the rest of the presentation--scrupulously managed by director Harold Prince--no one could accuse Michael Crawford of giving a canned performance. Crawford’s crepuscular voice and his lynx-like moves do stir sympathy for our poor benighted Phantom, and you have to respond to his commitment as a performer--he couldn’t give more to this part if it were written by Dante.

Crawford’s Phantom combines size and intimacy in a way that only a very experienced musical theater performer could achieve. He comes close to us, and yet he brings off the grand gesture. The final renunciation scene is especially well-judged. Almost, he makes us believe.

Dale Kristien plays his beloved morsel, Christine. (At some performances the role will be played by Mary D’Arcy.) Even when her music simpers, this Christine doesn’t--an improvement over the Broadway Christine. Reece Holland plays the Phantom’s competitor, Raoul, in the manner of Russ Tamblyn, and it is not an improvement.

The spoofing of the Opera Populaire goes very well, with Leigh Munro as the temperamental diva, Carlotta, and Norman Large and Calvin Remsberg as those cynical keepers of the cash box, Monsieur Andre and Monsieur Firmin. Barbara Lang is the stiff-backed ballet mistress, Madame Giry, who keeps bringing in notes from the Phantom, without anyone wondering where she gets those notes.

Don’t examine the libretto too closely. (It’s credited to Richard Stilgoe and Lloyd Webber, and it actually gets quite a lot accomplished, for all its incidental foolishness.) But the accouterments will reward your closest inspection. Maria Bjornson’s sets and costumes evoke a suffocatingly ornate period without seeming silly, and Andrew Bridge’s low-keyed lighting suggests all kinds of dark things moving behind the gilt and the plush.

Prince’s staging is impeccable, and the great set pieces flow like a film, perhaps to the extent that we wish the show were a film, so we could really go to the roof of the Paris Opera. It’s an evening that will fascinate anybody who likes to see how things fit together. But in the end, this “Phantom” suggests the story of the Emperor’s Nightingale--beautifully jewelled, exquisitely sung and without a heart.

Plays Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. with matinees Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays at 2. Runs indefinitely. Tickets $32.50-50. 135 N. Grand Ave. (800) 762-7666. ‘THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA’

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, at the Ahmanson Theatre. Presented by Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson. Produced by Cameron Mackintosh and the Really Useful Theatre Company. Music Lloyd Webber. Lyrics Charles Hart. Additional lyrics Richard Stilgoe. Book Richard Stilgoe and Lloyd Webber. Production design Maria Bjornson. Lighting Andrew Bridge. Sound Martin Levan. Musical director Roger Cantrell. Musical supervision David Caddick. Production supervisor Mitchell Lemsky. Orchestrations David Cullen and Lloyd Webber. Casting Johnson-Liff & Zerman. General manager Alan Wasser. Musical staging and choreography Gillian Lynne. Director Harold Prince. With Michael Crawford, Dale Kristien, Reece Holland, Leigh Munroe, Norman Large, Calvin Remsberg, Barbara Lang, Gualtiero Negrini, Elisabeth Stringer, D.C. Anderson, Richard Gould, Sean Smith, Gary Marshal, Gene Brundage, Kris Pruet, Jeffrey Amsden, James Hogan, Carlo Thomas, Patrice Pickering, Maurizio Corbino, Candace Rogers-Adler, Gail Land Hart, Jani Neuman, Rio Hibler-Kerr, Rebecca Eichenberger, Leslie-Noriko Beadles, Madelyn Berdes, Rebeca Gorostiza, Mary Alyce Laubacher, Sylvia Rico, Kate Solmssen, Irene Cho, Karen Benjamin, Joseph Dellger, Brad Scott, Mary D’Arcy.