Do you prefer Christine walking towards the phantom and making him back away during Final Lair or the new choreography where the phantom sort of shrivels and has his back turned towards Christine then Christine taps him on the shoulder.
I'm a little unsure which part specifically you're referring to, but I'm assuming it's after Christine has shielded Raoul and the Phantom then moves downstage before heading to his throne? The line that roughly corresponds to it is Raoul singing, "Why make her lie to you to save me?" followed by Christine singing, "Angel of Music, who deserves this?" Here are gifs of the first version you mention and the second:
If that is the case, then that's not actually new blocking you're referencing. The Phantom turning his back on Christine and then fleeing when Christine touches his shoulder (or simply reaches for him, depending on the actor, period, and location) was standard choreography on Broadway - I see it in videos going back as far as 1995, with a variation on it in 1989, as well as in the US tours as far back as 1992. The gif above is from a 2013 video, in fact.
The other blocking, where Christine walks towards the Phantom and makes him back off, was mainly used in the West End beginning in the 2000s (before that they remained fairly close to the Broadway blocking), though the West End being much more experimental, there are a billion variations on it: in the mid 2000s Christine was ramming herself between the Phantom and Raoul and literally pushing the Phantom away; later she would scare the Phantom off when he tried to attack Raoul. Here are some more gifs of that evolution:
Interestingly, this blocking was used in almost all the international replicas I saw (usually it is the opposite, international productions will follow Broadway blocking, not West End): I saw it in the original Vienna production, Antwerp, Mexico City, Madrid, both productions in Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, both Copenhagen revivals, and the World Tours from 2004-2009, 2012-2016, and 2019-2020.
Then there are variations upon those! For example, the Toronto and Scheveningen productions did not quite use either, but was closest to an early Broadway variation in which the Phantom just walks away without any action from Christine. Meanwhile, Hamburg used the Broadway blocking, but switched to the West End version for Stuttgart, Essen, Hamburg revival, and Oberhausen. The Japanese tour did something completely different where Christine begs for Raoul's life and the Phantom just smacks her aside. And in Moscow it feels like they started to combine both (Christine walks towards the Phantom while reaching for or touching him as he flees).
But it seems that post-COVID, there was a push to standardize the blocking between the flagship productions, so now the West End revival has discarded Christine making the Phantom back off and instead has her touching his shoulder, just as on Broadway when it reopened. That blocking has also shown up in the new US tour. However, it is not the standard elsewhere: the Korean tour, Chinese tour, and the current World Tour continue to use the blocking in which Christine forces the Phantom to back off.
As for my preference, I'm honestly fine with both. I like that they showcase different sides of Christine: one highlights her fierceness as she forces the Phantom away, the other is more representative of her compassion as she reaches out to him even when the Phantom is at his most terrible. Both aspects are important - Christine is both strong enough to stand up to the Phantom at this point in the story and she continues to sympathize with him - so I'd probably be more unhappy if one was nixed in favor of the other. And I'm also pleased that it continues to get reworked - when watching more recent videos of the World Tour, they also seem to be mixing both versions as they did in Moscow, with Christine both forcing the Phantom to run off but also trying to reach out for him. Best of both worlds!
gummygunk
theartofmadeline
kaledo-art
germansingergirl
origamiaround
baratheonpilled
ellievsbear
prguitarman
turnnoffyourmind
