pictured: John Cudia in Phantom of the Opera. Photo by Joan MarcusPlaywright: Music by Andrew Lloyd. Webber; lyrics by Charles Hart; book by Richard Stilgoe, based on the novel by Gaston Leroux At: Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W. Randolph . Phone: 312-902-1500; $28-$85. Runs through: Jan. 5
Usually by the third time a touring production trundles through town, you can see the edges starting to fray where the corners have been cut. Not so with the still ultra-opulent, mega-watt Phantom of the Opera, Andrew Lloyd Webber's ode to gothic excess.
With its one-ton tumbling light fixture, budget-busting sets and cartoon-thin adaptation of Gaston Leroux's turn-of-the-century romantic thriller, Phantom is a show critics—and plenty of others—love to hate. Mention Webber in an off-Loop storefront and you risk inciting a passionately righteous discourse how that crashing chandelier represents all that is pandering, stupid and soulless. The Phantom, as some tell it, is a leading the horsemen of the artistic apocalypse; the great Satan in the church of crass commercialism, a corruption of real art and a primary cause of the dumbing down if not downright decline of Western Civilization.
Call me three-chord shallow, but I've always loved the show. Haters probably won't believe that I also revel in Stoppard and the Shakespeare and have recklessly, joyously spent thousands of hard-earned dollars over the decades to bask in the glory of Shaw in Stratford and Beckett in Dublin and Moliere in the Phantom's hometown of Paris. But ding dang if I don't also thrill to bright, shiny objects that require minimal cerebral effort. I can live without Cats, and Starlight Express, but I digress.
Opening with a cadaverous auctioneer shilling Lot 666, ( a chandelier in pieces ) and closing in the echo of a thousand tri-note minor chords, The Phantom of the Opera is pure escapism, an opiate of hallucinatory spectacle. And say what you will about the subtle-as-an-acid-bath book, Webber's got a snappy shorthand when it comes to capturing certain universal elements of the Human Condition. Who among us, for example, has not had days that could only be defined by the hair-rending sentiment of 'We are ruined Andre, ruined!' And who has not fallen into the sort of stupefyingly ill-advised relationship that can only lead one to conclude that 'the Phantom of the Opera, he's there inside my mind'? No one, that's who.
John Cudia plays the tortured yet dashing Phantom in the current production. Sara Jean Ford is the looney-tunes ingénue Christine. D.C. Anderson is Andre, the clueless arts administrator. The chandelier still has 6,000 hypnotically sparkly beads. The masquerade ball that opens the second act still features a number of fantabulously costumed mannequins along side the real actors, but unless you're watching really closely, you can't tell which is which. The Phantom's is a gorgeous, indulgent world. Go ahead. Surrender to the infectious pop hooks of the music of the night.