Spreading His ‘Wings’

“What am I doing after this tour?” says Michael Crawford. “I’ll probably be in a rest home!”

Given the energy level of the singer, who is indelibly identified with the title role in “The Phantom of the Opera,” that’s unlikely. But there’s no denying that Crawford has taken on a rigorous assignment in his current concert tour, which includes appearances Friday at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre and Sunday at the Hollywood Bowl.

Crawford’s diverse program includes songs from “Phantom” and several other Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals, traditional numbers, standards and tunes from his current inspirational album, “On Eagle’s Wings.” The 35-city tour involves a major production effort--virtually a complete stage show--which is set up and taken down for each of the programs. The tour runs through July.

“The trucks, the lights and sound, the amount of people that it takes to make it work is incredible,” Crawford says. “And the schedule is intense. On any given day, I go to the theater at 3 in the afternoon to start warming up. Then the guys come in to set up the rigging and the lights. Then the choir arrives at about 4:30 to start rehearsing at 5, with the orchestra coming afterward to do a complete sound check.

“They usually play the overture for the sound check while I’m sitting out in the middle of the theater, listening. And that’s usually when the tingles come on, and the hairs come up on the back of my neck, and I think, ‘This is going to be my concert!’ ”

It’s not exactly the same experience Crawford had doing eight performances a week in his record run as the Phantom, in which he played the role in three cities--London, New York and Los Angeles. (The worldwide sales of the original cast album, released in 1987, now exceed 12 million copies.) And it’s been several years, several tours, a few hit recordings and one other major show since he actually performed in a “Phantom” production.

That other show, “EFX,” an expensive, technologically complex production that opened in 1995 at the MGM Grand Theatre in Las Vegas, turned out to be a physical disaster for Crawford. A hip injury suffered early in the show’s run caused severe pain for most of the 600-plus performances Crawford played. And the result--aside from some ongoing litigation--was a successful operation for a hip joint replacement.

“It was a very unpleasant experience,” says Crawford, 56. “But I’m fine now, although I don’t expect to be doing any demanding physical roles any time soon.”

Born Michael Patrick Dumble-Smith in Salisbury, England, Crawford found his stage name on a biscuit box. He was already a well-established English actor and singer long before “Phantom.” Starting out as a boy soprano, he performed in composer Benjamin Britten’s “Let’s Make an Opera” and went on to hundreds of radio and television appearances, as well as roles in films such as “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and “How I Won the War.” In the ‘70s and ‘80s, he starred in two major London musicals, “Billy” and “Barnum,” before his career-defining 1986 opening in “Phantom.”

Feature film prospects for the enormously successful musical have been surfacing on and off for years. The latest rumors identify John Travolta and Antonio Banderas as potential film Phantoms.

Crawford responds to the reports, and to the presumably decreasing possibility that he will have a shot at the role, with a shrug.

“What is to be will be, is all I can say,” he notes. “It’s not in my hands. It’s something I would love to do, but if it doesn’t pass my way, at least I had the chance to create the man, and that was more than anyone could ask for. And in all honesty, if I was producing the picture and had someone who was a four-star box-office draw, and they could sing the part, I would have to cast them in the part.”

Reminded that Julie Andrews experienced a similar fate when Audrey Hepburn was cast as Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady,” lip-syncing to vocal tracks provided by singer Marni Nixon, Crawford simply chuckles.

“Well, you know,” he says, “Julie went on to do ‘The Sound of Music’ after being dropped from ‘My Fair Lady,’ so maybe I’ve got something like that in my future. And, if they cast somebody who can’t sing the Phantom, I’ll be happy to even sing it for them.”

BE THERE

Michael Crawford, Friday at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine, 8 p.m. $35-$125. (714) 855-4515. Also Sunday at the Hollywood Bowl, $23-$128, 7:30 p.m. (213) 850-2000.