It’s Not <i> That</i> ‘Phantom,’ but It’s Turning a Tidy Profit

He’s a first-rate musician with a few character flaws. For one thing, he’s a disfigured killer living in a sewer under the Paris Opera House. No wonder Christine, a beautiful young singer, shows some trepidation at his advances.

Christine may hesitate all she wants, but audiences can’t seem to get enough of “Phantom of the Opera,” in a variety of incarnations of the original Gaston Leroux novel.

Now headed for Symphony Hall, Tuesday through Dec. 31, is a musical version of “Phantom” adapted by Ken Hill. It is not the Andrew Lloyd Webber version, which has been selling out its Broadway house and the Ahmanson in Los Angeles.

But local rock promoter Bill Silva, who is producing the Hill version as his first theatrical venture, has high hopes for a sellout in the 2,257-seat Symphony Hall. And the numbers do look promising.

That’s in spite of going up against Webber’s “Starlight Express,” which is also generating strong sales as it readies itself for its San Diego debut at the Civic Theatre on Dec. 27-31.

The financial success of Hill’s “Phantom” seems to come as a welcome surprise to everyone involved with it, including Jonathan Reinis, an independent theater owner and producer who bought the American rights.

“People now are congratulating me on my vision,” Reinis said from his office in San Francisco. “And I didn’t know. I expected it to be successful, but I just didn’t know it would turn out to be the most successful thing I’ve ever done. It made 20% of its profit here (at Reinis’ Theatre-on-the-Square in San Francisco), and on the road it’s doubled its investment of $1 million.”

Hill, who first produced his show in London as a modest $1-million spoof of the romantic plot and opera music (for which he wrote new lyrics), once hoped Webber would want to join forces with him. Instead, Webber saw it and went out on his own, creating the hugely successful $8-million “Phantom” with his own score and spectacular special effects.

That seemed to wash up Hill’s “Phantom” for the time being. When Reinis bought the American rights to the Hill musical, he initially had trouble finding bookings through legitimate theatrical producers, who told him they wanted Webber’s “Phantom” to anchor their seasons and didn’t want to risk offending Webber and his producer Cameron Mackintosh by booking Hill’s version.

“Normally, if a show is as successful as this one was (in San Francisco), you would have thought the normal distributors would make offers, and it didn’t happen,” Reinis said. “We had a hard time until Variety started publishing the grosses, and then we had 30 to 40 places booked. We had trouble getting a theater in Pittsburgh, which we now have done.”

That theater, the Syria Mosque, which presents the work in January, is better known for presenting singing acts such as Jimmy Buffett than it is for musical theater, but unconventional houses and promoters have been the rule rather than the exception for Hill’s “Phantom.”

The presentation by Silva, a rock promoter, in Symphony Hall--he has already presented the work in Fresno and Las Vegas--is the norm for this tour, which has struck a new partnership between theater and music. And a very profitable partnership it’s been.

The tour recouped its $1-million cost in a record eight weeks by averaging $125,000 a week. Variety reported that, from its opening at Washington’s Warner Theater in September to the week ending Oct. 22, the Hill version has grossed $3,488,452, for a weekly average of $436,000.

Some critics have attacked Hill’s “Phantom” for riding on the coattails of Webber’s version. The Boston Globe wrote a series of 11 articles lambasting the Hill producers for confusing the public by referring to the show as “the original London stage musical” (which it was) even though it carries a disclaimer saying it is not the Webber production.

Reinis doesn’t deny being helped by the popularity of the Webber version, but he points out that the “Phantom” story has an independent appeal that predated Webber’s play and continues in still other versions.

“Clearly Phantom-mania is sweeping the nation,” he said. “Even on Sunday mornings, my kids turn on the TV and there’s ‘Phantom of the Smurfs.’ This is the story of Beauty and the Beast, and I think it’s something everyone has been fascinated by. People say our success comes from Andrew Lloyd Webber, but the father of the musical is Ken Hill. He was the first to do it as a musical.”

Well, at least he was the first to do it as a stage musical. Film director Brian de Palma transformed it into a rock opera movie called “Phantom of the Paradise” in 1974. That was just one in a stream of movies that began with Lon Chaney in the 1926 “Phantom,” followed by the 1943 version with Claude Rains and the 1962 movie with Herbert Lom. Maximilian Schell starred in a 1983 TV “Phantom.” In November, a movie version opened with Freddy Krueger. A miniseries written by Arthur Kopit is scheduled for NBC next year, with Burt Lancaster as the Phantom’s father.

Hill’s “Phantom” is also undoubtedly helped by its modest budget ($140,000 a week in expenses) and its hit-and-run touring style. While Webber’s “Phantom” is a mammoth undertaking that announced earlier this month that it will go to just a handful of cities next year for long runs (39 weeks at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago with extended runs in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Washington, Atlanta, Denver, Detroit, Philadelphia and Boston), Hill’s version already has plans to truck merrily along through 1990-91 with one- to two-week stops in each venue. And Hill’s version is more appealing than ever to cities like San Diego that now know they can forget about getting the Webber spectacular.

The question of whether Hill’s “Phantom” is successful because it is riding on Webber’s coattails or whether “Phantom” is a theme for our time is an important one to rock producers like Silva, who have only just gotten their feet wet with this theatrical event and are considering other projects. Reinis’ next project is Hill’s “Curse of the Werewolf,” a musical howl. Hill presented the piece in London a few years ago. Will Silva present it here? First he wants to survey his audience.

“Normally, when I’m doing a rock show, if the group is doing multiple nights in Philadelphia and Boston, we often have difficulty selling one show in the (San Diego) Sports Arena,” Silva said. “By contrast, the theater audience has been so responsive that it’s definitely piqued our interest in finding more things for this audience. We plan to do a lot of research and surveying. We’re looking at a number of different projects, and we want to know what people heard about this one and what tickled their fancy.”