Ultimately, Erik kidnaps Christine and threatens to murder Raoul unless Christine agrees to marry Erik. He falls in love with (read: becomes obsessed with) the ballet dancer Christine Daae and, over the course of the story gives her singing lessons, threatens the theatre managers until they give her the best operatic roles, and harasses Christine's love interest Raoul. 2.3 Chaoslord/Twisted Freaking Cycle PathĮrik is a disfigured musical genius who lives in the cellars of the Palais Garnier opera house in 1881.Go big or go home, as they say.īooking at Her Majesty’s theatre, London, until 13 February. But the late Maria Björnson’s maximalist designs, from vivid masquerade ball to Degas-style ballet dancers, set the tone for old-school fantasy. The show has a dedication to analogue theatrical effects, from trapdoors and smoke to a skull-topped cane shooting fireballs, and, sure, there’s something hokey about the Phantom playing gondolier in the boat to his subterranean lair. There’s a bit of Hugh Grant about him (the edgier real-life Grant, rather than foppish film version) and he’s rich-voiced in the soaringly romantic All I Ask of You. Rhys Whitfield plays Christine’s more trad love interest, the dashing Raoul. No room to interrogate his status as an abusive incel here, just a good yarn. He’s a Frankenstein’s monster, sinister yet vulnerable, whose eyes “both threaten and adore” and who tells Christine “fear can turn to love”. He handles a tricky role, a stalker and kidnapper who is also an alternative romantic lead. She’s beatific, her tone bright with no harsh glare, all delicate vibrato, fine control and escalating power.Īs the Phantom, Killian Donnelly (a former Jean Valjean in Les Mis) finds a range of colours from a whisper to a roar.
Lucy St Louis (who played Diana Ross in Motown the Musical) is an enchanting Christine, the object of the Phantom’s obsession. Winning formulas, of course, still need a refresh, so post-pandemic the show has returned with a new cast. Lucy St Louis and Killian Donnelly in The Phantom of the Opera.
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