Apologies if you've touched on this, but what are your thoughts on the restaged tour? I was pleasantly surprised personally.
Hmm... I guess I was more unpleasantly surprised. (Like for the restaged UK tour, I thought, “Oh, it can’t be all that bad!” Wrong. And for the restaged US tour, it was, “Well, it’ll probably just be the same as the UK tour, maybe even improved on it!” Nope.)
To be fair, the current tour, whether by directorial or actor choice, has toned down some of the aspects that really drew my irritation, such as the “headache acting” in the UK tour and the overwhelming violence of the Phantom near the beginning of the US tour. They’ve also started bringing in some of the old US costumes, so at least some of the wardrobe does not look as cheap. The casts generally remain strong, and all these have sort of made me mellow on it. (Plus I’ve just become used to its existence.)
However, my chief complaints about the tour are really about how they tackle the themes and plot and characters, and those have generally not changed. So what I still find irking about the tour are as such:
The de-mystifying of the Phantom. IMO one of the most important arcs the Phantom takes is from an almost supernatural being, to a sad, lonely man; this not only shows why people might fear him, but ties neatly into his journey from seductive figure to obsessive murderer to a redeemed, but lonely, man. However, the tour removes that mystical aspect: instead of mysterious voices, we see the Phantom dressed up as a stagehand; instead of fireballs, he gets into a literal fistfight with Raoul; instead of singing ten feet off the ground in the ‘All I Ask of You Reprise’, he stands on a statue maybe a foot off the ground. The Phantom’s not a frightening figure with an aura of the magical anymore, he’s just a dude skulking around the roof.
Making characters very unsympathetic. In the replica musical, Christine’s conflict is more understandable, caught between the passionate, creative, but dangerous force that is the Phantom, and the safer, more acceptable love of Raoul. In the tour, the Phantom is made more violent (shouting at Christine when she did nothing to unmask him, staying upright instead of crawling towards her in STYDI, grabbing her by the hair or the neck, hurling her onto a bed in FL). Raoul is made much more aggressive; depending on the actor, he’ll practically shout his way through the musical. Heck, some of the scenes that should be the most intimate (MOTN, AIAOY, PONR) occur with the two characters standing at opposite ends of the stage, singing loudly to each other. At the end, you have to wonder what kind of choice Christine had at all and if either was a good one.
A more literal and “gritty” take on the story. Why have the Phantom blindfold Christine? Because otherwise the audiences might not get that the Phantom only wants her to hear his music and not see him! Why have Christine rip off a locket of her father during ‘Wishing’? Well, how else could the show tell us that Christine is putting aside her grief for him? And going for a more “realistic” and “gritty” take on Phantom is, IMO, not a good route to take. A lot of the appeal of the original was how highly romantic, emotionally charged, and almost fantastical it was, and tied nicely into the Phantom’s more magical aspect. But the tour removes all of that, and to me, the show suffers for it.
The feeling that much of this was made to facilitate LND. Why was Raoul made more aggressive. To show how he becomes the drunken gambler of LND! Why does Meg glare at Christine and make no move to comfort her after the Don Juan rehearsal? To foreshadow Meg’s rivalry of Christine in LND! Why is there a fistfight between the Phantom and Raoul? Probably to tie into their little brawl in LND! Why are aspects of the original being changed to fit better into the sequel? Because ALW and co. do not know how sequels work and cannot stop beating a dead horse, that’s why!
And unfortunately, a lot of these things remain unchanged in the tour, so even if some cosmetic changes are made, my issues with it remain. Though again, I’ve mellowed on it, if only because I’ve gotten used to it.
If you want even more detail on this, you can read my rather exhaustive review of the restaged UK tour or the restaged US tour.
