New York USA (Global News)_When the curtains come down on show No. 13,781 of The Phantom of the Opera, there will be a definite dimming of lights on Broadway, although the resounding applause reverberating throughout the Majestic theatre where it has run since opening night, will undeniably be deafening. 35 years later, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s poignant love story, which was due to close in November last year, but seeing a spike in tickets sales of over USD 2.2 million in just Thanksgiving week, decided to stay open until April 2023.
Putting the numbers in context, the Broadway show alone has been seen by 19.9 million people, grossed over USD 1.3 billion at the box office and employed 6,500 people including 400 actors and 27 full time musicians, some of who have been with the show since it opened in the late 1980s. This makes it the biggest employment generator in US theatre history.
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But besides the Majestic Theatre in New York, Phantom has played 14,500 shows in 77 cities in North America, continues to run at the West End in London and in Melbourne Australia. It has entertained over 145 million people worldwide in 41 countries, 13 cities in 17 languages. China has also jumped on the bandwagon of the musical’s popularity with a version in Mandarin scheduled to open this year, while award winning actor Antonio Banderas is currently working on a Spanish language production.
Having won over seventy major theatre awards including seven Tony Awards including the Best Musical and four Oliviers since its debut in 1988, the musical is based on Gaston Leroux’s horror novel of a phantom who haunts the stage of the Paris Opera and falls in love with the beautiful young soprano. The original cast was star studded and included Michael Crawford, Sarah Brightman, Steve Barton and David Firth, which is not to say that subsequent casts have not been amazing, each as good as the last.
But it’s the ‘lifers’ on the show who will miss that adrenaline rush they feel each night at the rise and fall of the curtain. Dresser Ron Blakley who has been the with the show since Day One, inspects costumes each night, uses his needle and thread for repair and places it back in readiness for the next night’s performance. And don’t forget that one ton chandelier which flies across the audience each night. Electrician Alan Lampel has tended to that chandelier, nicknamed Ruthie Two, for three decades.
In the orchestra pit are seven ‘lifers’, all of who have worked on the complex score and enjoyed every minute of it. As the curtains close in April, the members of the largest orchestra to play in a Broadway musical will be cloistered within that pit, unable to see the standing ovation that is bound to come, but they will definitely feel the infectious energy embracing each of them. And there will be tears – lots of them but it’s time to let the Phantom go off into the night!
