STAGE REVIEW : ‘Phantom’ Dies of a Split Personality

The “Phantom of the Opera,” now playing at Copley Symphony Hall, is not a pretty sight. Nor is it majestic, inspiring or particularly funny. Ken Hill’s adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s Gothic horror novel is just an incongruous spoof, a send-up, a cute little play and little more.

The production’s attempts at comedy are troublesome considering that the title character, played by David Cleveland, is meant to be a treacherous rogue, a tortured soul with a disfigured face who seeks love and finds only rejection--hardly a springboard for comedy.

The production is troublesome on another front as well, as some audiences have confused Hill’s “original” production with Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s “Phantom,” the sell-out Broadway hit now playing in Los Angeles.

Hill directed as well as adapted the play, and his version is clever at times, but hardly deserves to be touring around the country. Many believe that this highly profitable production is riding the coattails of Webber’s extremely successful “Phantom.”

Judging from Thursday’s stale performance, the popularity of Hill’s “Phantom” must come from some outside source.

The premise of “The Phantom of the Opera” centers on the Phantom’s “haunting” presence in a Paris opera house. The play opens as the new opera manager, Richard (Robert Ousley), arrives at the opera house and begins to implement his authority. As Richard learns about the opera ghost’s demands, which include 20,000 francs a month and a personal box seat, he pledges to exorcise the demon’s authority. The Phantom responds with a rampage of murders until his demands are met.

Because the Phantom is in love with the chorus girl Christine Daae (Sylvia Rhyne), he insists that she sing the lead in the opera’s latest production. Then, when the Phantom discovers Christine has fallen in love with Raoul (Robert Jensen), he abducts her and forces her to marry him.

Director Hill hams up the proceedings, generating a handful of chuckles but never really gets his audience emotionally involved in the whole of the production. The multiple murders provide actors ample opportunity to deliver punch lines (“La Carlotta” is dead? Well, at least she’ll stop complaining about her sore throat . . .), but once the comic tone is set and the audience is conditioned to laugh at the death scenes, the play’s tone changes. Suddenly, Hill expects the audience to fear for the lives of the young lovers Raoul and Christine. Suddenly, murder becomes tragic rather than funny.

The production tries to to shift midstream from campy parody to sincere drama. The gears grind and the play sinks.

The show’s music, culled from operas by the likes of Verdi, Gounod, and Weber (not Webber) is pleasant but uninspiring, stiff and reserved rather than catchy.

Despite this, the quality of the singing remains high throughout. Soprano Sylvia Rhyne, in particular, shines during her two solos and during the show’s penultimate number, a duet with The Phantom, “Ne’er Forsake Me, Here Remain.”

The actors brush their performances with uniform broad strokes. Vince Trani’s portrayal of the temperamental tenor Faust succeeds hilariously, as does Carolyn Marcell’s depiction of the superstitious, foreboding Madame Giry. Wayne Hoffman, too, demonstrates a strong sense of character in depicting six different roles. Serena Soffer (Jammes) and Suzanne Grodner (La Carlotta) meet with less success in depicting their respective caricatures; both actors work hard for laughs without much response.

Cleveland’s Phantom is competent but unexciting. Acting behind a full-faced mask, Cleveland communicates the emotional anxiety of the character through evocative physical gestures and cleverly choreographed movement. But Cleveland struggles--and ultimately fails--to bring about the production’s sudden, unfortunate change of tone.

One cannot really blame Cleveland for his performance, however, since the problems are so fundamental to the production.

Hill must take the blame for initiating, adapting and directing this wholly uninteresting piece of theater.