Hamster of the Opera @hamsteroftheopera - Tumblr Blog

It's been almost a year since Phantom closed on Broadway, and I miss these folks.

rjdaae

I still can’t believe that nothing was planned for last night. That no one in the marketing team, or PR, or whatever wing of RUG is responsible for such things, seemed to have taken notice of the fact that the last public show would be something of significance. That the house would be full of everyone who wanted so badly to be there on Sunday, but we’re willing to take what they could get, just to press themselves as closely as possible to that moment. There was never going to be much space for the actual final, with the huge number of alumni and friends they needed to accomodate, but our ‘public final’ felt like the kind of performance that should be crowned with its own encore, or a guest appearance, or even just a few words spoken in acknowledgment over the PA system. I mean, it’s Red Bucket season—if they had just done the usual BC/EFA speech, and also thrown in a “thanks for 35 years”, I think people would have been happy. But there was nothing planned. No big surprise. The curtain dropped, and that was it.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter though. Because our love for Phantom was never about VIPs or special galas that 99% of phans could never afford to attend. It was about the connection that forms between people and a thing they love—between a cast and their show, and the audience who come to cheer for them every night, on every inhabited continent. I’ve been reading a lot of articles this week that reference the “magic of ALW” or similar garbage as the reason for Phantom’s longevity. In the end, *I* think the reason PotO has endured is because it is a show whose central theme is deep and universal. We all love; we have all felt unloved; and last night, the Majestic theatre was packed with 1700 deprived of an outlet to express their intense love for one musical.

The curtain fell, and the orchestra finished the exit music, and nothing. After years of backhanded statements and actions towards the phans who supported them, it felt less like a negligent omission and more as if the higher ups had made a conscious decision to ignore us one last time. They didn’t see us, but they never do. You know who did see us, though? The performers and crew.

From the very beginning of last night’s show, it was clear that the cast understood. They were holding out notes and adding little flourishes and acting their hearts out as if it *had* been a finale performance. We cheered them on in a way that an audience can only do when they know it’s their last chance to do it. The way the newspaper reports described the repeated mid-show applause during the earliest days of Phantom on Broadway, when the sense of pure wonderment was fresh and new. I doubt there were more than a handful of people in the theatre last night who hadn’t seen the show multiple times, but for us that wonderment never faded.

The curtain fell on the final public performance of Phantom Broadway, and nothing happened. There was no closure. No inkling that our shared grief and high emotion were anything more than a collective delusion. And it became immediately apparent that none of us knew what to do with ourselves. And that none of us were ready to leave. So we did the only thing we could: we stayed, and we kept clapping.

After a few minutes, the curtain reopened, and the tech guys came out to lower the chandelier back to the stage. We cheered, and clapped, and chanted, “ONE MORE TIME!” The leader of the crew gave us a couple of commands to yell, to ‘help’ Ruthie II. Then that was done. But we still didn’t leave.

The audience of the final public performance stayed there, telling and cheering and clapping our hearts out for just shy of half of hour. We stayed until the cast members began to pop out of the wings, already changed into their street clothes and lacking mics, shouting kind words back into the audience and taking photos of US. Until Nehal Joshi came forward and thanked us, (and told us as kindly as possible that the cleaning crews needed to get home to their families). And then after one last cheer, we left, knowing that we had been part of something truly special. Something more special than anything that could happen in the performance that is about to begin tonight.

We didn’t need Cammack, or ALW, or Michael Crawford, or anyone else to make last night special. Because none of them were ever what made Phantom special. Phantom is about more than that. Phantom is about the feeling that we all shared last night. Like any good performance of Phantom, what made last night special was the collaboration between a cast, crew, and audience who all deeply cared.

I’m standing at the edge of the red carpet right now, and can genuinely say that I am not jealous of the people currently walking into the theatre. Because I wouldn’t have traded last night’s experience for a hundred tickets to the closing.

#phantom of the opera

royalavera

Reviving this blog just because.

#phanart

mxbuster

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

New chapter! Nearing the end but not quite there yet.

#i love this phic!

exeggcute

one of my favorite this american life segments of late is about the people who played orchestra pit for phantom of the opera on broadway and how, like, a sizeable majority of them had literally been playing the show since it opened in 1988 (on broadway. I know it opened in 86 on the west end, you random pedants, but I am specifically talking about broadway musicians) because their contracts stipulated that they'd have jobs throughout the show's entire run... but nobody anticipated that phantom would become the longest-running broadway show of all time.

and none of these people wanted to walk away from a guaranteed job, so very few of them ever quit. they just kept doing the same show eight nights a week... for twenty or thirty years... and by the time it finally closed last year most of these musicians (who had been working together for DECADES) hated each other and really really fucking loathed phantom. I can't stop thinking about it. it's indescribably hellish to imagine but also the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life.

exeggcute

can you imagine.

mrsgurgle

Episode 721 for those of you who need this in your life: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/721/the-walls-close-in

wheel-of-fish

Everything I was asked to gif.

Kelly Mathieson, Josh Piterman & Alistair So (London, 2019)

baruyon

A commission for alvadee :3

#phanart #sad :(

boxfivetrades

Leonardo Neiva

muirin007

Now I have tasted her sweet soul to the core

All other depths are shallow…

-Endymion, Keats

#phanart #forehead kisses

infamouslydorky

I still think about how there was a Wishbone version of Phantom of the Opera and he was Raoul.

Bonus, because you know it happened:

No, Wishbone did not attack Erik. Erik let them go like in the book but Raoul has the attitude to fight everyone anyway so meh.

#high quality content #wishbone rocked

cowardtranslation

this is the BEST graveyard scene

#wheeee

fifthcellar

Reblog with how long you’ve been in phandom

Partially inspired by a convo I had the other day, and I’m curious.

Personally, I’ve loved POTO for about 11 years but didn’t join the Tumblr phandom until a year ago.

(I watched the 2004 movie 2010, saw LV production sometime 2011-2012, read fanfic around 2014, discovered RAH and LND dvd 2015 ish, saw it on Bway 2016, listened to RAH again around 2018, kinda forgot about POTO until 2020 when I joined Tumblr).

emotionalmotionsicknessxx

Ive liked poto for like 15 years, saw it on Broadway and west end in college, hate-read phantom of Manhattan in HS, then kind of fell off into other things.

Joined the phandom this year when my hate for LND spurred me to get into phic writing!!

pagesofangels

Six years!

hamsteroftheopera

Phan for 18 years, only recently joined phandom via tumblr. All that time I never realized, for whatever reason, that there was a fan community that liked it as much as I did - but I’m glad I’m here now!

#i'm a dummy sometimes