The New Man Behind the Mask : Robert Guillaume replaces Michael Crawford Tuesday in ‘Phantom of the Opera.’ Can he make the part his own?

“You’d be surprised at the responses I get from people when I tell them I’m playing the phantom of the opera,” Robert Guillaume says, laughing’Well, what are you gonna do in it? Tell jokes? Are you gonna make it a comedy?’ People think it’s Benson who’ll be doing it.”

No, it won’t be TV’s butler-turned-lieutenant-governor playing the deformed, mad, lovesick composer in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit musical. Starting Tuesday, it will be Guillaume, a veteran stage actor with an operatically trained voice, who will start wearing the mask at the Ahmanson Theatre. The show’s original star, Michael Crawford, gives his final performance today.

“We cast Robert Guillaume because we auditioned countless people and he, by far, displayed the most authority and elegance,” director Harold Prince said in a statement released through the show’s publicity office. “He has a lovely voice and a great command and understanding of the role. He has an intellect; he looks like a man who could write symphonies and operas and design buildings.”

Guillaume is having a quick lunch at one of Broadway’s casual hangouts just before starting that day’s rehearsal with Prince. He’s clearly, and quietly, thrilled. And take a look at this guy. How can he be 62?

“This will have nothing to do with what I’m known for,” he says. “It’s the first time I’ve ever done a role that’s so distant from who I think I am.”

It’s been a long path to the Ahmanson.

A year after his manager called “Phantom” producer Cameron Mackintosh in January, 1989, to say he was interested in the role, Guillaume finally auditioned with the ballad “Music of the Night,” once in Los Angeles and twice in New York.

“The third time was when I felt maybe it will happen,” says Guillaume. “Either they wanted me, or they were wasting an awful lot of time.” But there was never a moment when he was sure he’d clinched it. “I always feel like I don’t do as well as I would like to, and when I get a part, I always feel like they were bamboozled enough to buy it,” he says.

The schedule’s been pretty crazy since he was told he got the part the last week in March. Within days, Guillaume began two weeks of rehearsal with production supervisor Mitchell Lemsky and stage manager David Rubinstein in Los Angeles. He came here to work with Prince, who couldn’t go to Los Angeles because he’s rehearsing a new musical version of “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”

Experience tells Guillaume that five weeks of preparation aren’t enough to perfect a role this complicated, he says.

“I know right now that my performance on May 1 won’t be definitive, because this part grows and grows and grows, and your command gets better.”

He’ll have plenty of time to settle into it--he’s signed on for the rest of 1990 and the show has an open-ended run. But he also has a job making the part his own, since Crawford won just about every award possible for his performance.

“I certainly wouldn’t be trying to convince anyone of any comparison between Michael and myself,” he says. “I don’t think I’m competing with anyone.” His preparation includes “immersing in the psychological drama inside the person, by going behind the words, the music, the events, into some extreme beauty and some madness. This guy has a slippery hold on sanity, so everything looks very romantic.”

Playing the Phantom will require a whole different action technique than he’s used to, since no one will see his eyes and face. The way he uses his hands and body will be especially important, Guillaume says, plus “you have to carry a lot of emotional characterization in your voice. It has to be very clear.”

Born in St. Louis, Guillaume studied voice at Washington University there, then went on to a scholarship at the Aspen Music Festival. He spent 17 years on and off Broadway in New York, and was nominated for a Tony for his portrayal of Nathan Detroit in the 1976 revival of “Guys and Dolls.” He also starred in “Purlie” and “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.”

After the theater, Guillaume played Benson Duvois from 1977 to 1986, first on “Soap” and then on his own show, and won two Emmy Awards. Next, he took to the nightclub circuit playing Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Atlantic City, and made theatrical films, like “Lean on Me,” and made-for-TV movies.

“I’ve never stopped taking singing lessons,” Guillaume says. “I was planning to do concerts before this came up.”

Physically and vocally, “Phantom” is a demanding show. “I think a television show is a snap compared to this,” he says.

“On a sitcom, you live a fairly normal life. Four days a week, it almost corresponds to a 9-to-5 gig, and the one day you tape you may go until 11 at night, but you don’t get in until 1 in the afternoon. Most of the technical aspects are on somebody else’s shoulders, and all you have to do is put your body in front of the camera and make whatever you’re doing plausible.”

But with the complicated effects of “Phantom,” it will be a whole different story. “Now you talk about fear! There’s a whole lot of machinery in this show, and I don’t know what the margin of error is. I want to make sure that part of my head doesn’t go the other way or my nose doesn’t snap off as I fall through the trap door. I had a couple of nightmares about that,” he admits.

There’s a strange juggling act going on here--calmness, no need to banter for an interview, and he says he’s learned “you can’t work with fear.” But he talks about fear over and over again--for example, how he feels at the end of the first act when the Phantom lets the fabled chandelier drop while standing on a narrow ledge at the top of the golden proscenium arch that re-creates the Paris Opera.

“You want to make sure you step verrrry carefully,” Guillaume says. “You don’t want to wear any slick-soled periwinkles up there.”

And the first time he flew up into the rococo angel sculpture that hovers over center stage, it was a lot scarier than he thought it would be. “It sways as you go up,” he says, and with glazed eyes, he rocks slowly, side to side, front to back.

The process of putting on the layers of makeup will take about an hour. “That’s going to be a real challenge--singing through all this mess,” Guillaume says.

The makeup is not interchangeable between actors. It has to fit like a second skin. Even the Phantom’s signature mask will be uniquely molded to fit him. To create layers of latex and wigs, makeup artists Barry R.Koper, Tiffany Hicks and Geino Acevedo took a rubbery mold of Guillaume’s head, neck and shoulders, and he had to sit still for 90 minutes while it hardened.

“I must say that if I’d known about all this before, I’d have stayed at the Post Office,” he deadpanned. Mailman, candy cook, accountant and Army clerk are just some of the jobs Guillaume has held, and he studied business administration in college before turning to opera.

Now he’s part of a small international army of performers to take on the Phantom. In addition to Los Angeles, “The Phantom of the Opera” is currently playing in London, New York, Tokyo, Toronto, Stockholm and Vienna. It’s also scheduled to open this year in Budapest, Hamburg and Melbourne, and the American touring company will open in Chicago in June. In addition, there is the upcoming film version being planned by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Beyond the fact that he’s stepping into a hit, Guillaume says winning the role represents a dream he’s always had of being cast for a part regardless of race.

Dale Kristien, who is white, will continue to play Christine, the object of the Phantom’s desires; the fact that Guillaume is black is not considered an issue by the producers, the director or Guillaume.

“I will be searching for those things that transcend color,” says Guillaume. “Color has nothing to do with this.”

That wasn’t the case with “The Robert Guillaume Show,” a 1989 mid-season replacement for ABC, where he was co-creator and executive co-producer. Guillaume’s character, a divorced marriage counselor, had a romantic relationship with his white receptionist, played by Wendy Phillips.

Did the black/white issue influence the show’s chances for renewal? “I’m sure in some sense it did,” he replies, “but so what? Shows get taken off for all kinds of reasons, most of which seem pretty bizarre to the people involved.”

The fact that he shakes off rejection and cancellations seems to be part of what he calls being “practical-minded.”

“I’ve always refused to see myself as other people see me, especially when the way they see me is derogatory. I go with opinions of myself which are positive, and when I encounter those which aren’t, I don’t pay much attention to them. And that’s not whistling in the dark. That’s actually the best way I’ve found to live my life.”

Guillaume gets in a cab with his visitor to head downtown to 890 Broadway, where most of the big musicals in New York rehearse, and where director Prince is waiting for him.

“This is sort of a second life,” he says. Guillaume remarried four years ago, and he and his wife, Donna, have a 16-month-old daughter. “The baby is a joy,” he says. “You become acutely aware of how fragile life is, of vulnerability.”

And what about his older children?

“Oh yeah,” he says, and looks away. So much for personal questions.

The cab stops at a light, and a stranger sticks his head in the window. “Hey, Benson!” he calls. Guillaume sits up straight and laughs.

“Hey, how’re you doin’?” he asks the stranger. It upsets other actors, he knows, to still be closely associated with a character, “but it doesn’t worry me,” he says. “It simply means that I might have been successful in the part.”

For right now, he isn’t looking beyond the end of the run of “Phantom,” but Longridge Enterprises, his production company, will continue to develop projects for him. “I still see this whole process in the theater as continual growth, up until the time you cash in your chips,” he says. “ ‘Phantom’ is not where I want to stop.”

Guillaume then steps out of the cab, goes into the lobby at 890 Broadway, gets in line with unknown actors and gypsies, and waits for the ancient elevator that will take him up to rehearsal.