Chills, Thrills and Trapdoors

What would provide the most stimulating change of pace after Starlight Express's romance of the rails? For Andrew Lloyd Webber it was the sweep and dash of pure old-fashioned romance. He found it in French Novelist Gaston Leroux's 1910 thriller Le Fantome de l'Opera, long a standby for stage and screen adaptations (notably Lon Chaney's 1925 silent horror film). The version devised by Lloyd Webber and Librettist Richard Stilgoe dispensed with much of the novel's narrative superstructure to focus on two characters: the gruesomely disfigured genius who haunts the Paris Opera and the young Swedish soprano, Christine Daae, who is the object of his unholy affections.

As the principal lyricist, Lloyd Webber chose Charles Hart, 26, a novice who had only one previous, unperformed musical to his credit; in counterbalance, the composer tapped the veteran director Hal Prince, 59, who * had contributed so much to the success of Evita. Lloyd Webber composed the role of Christine with his wife Sarah Brightman's crystalline voice and fragile Pre-Raphaelite looks in mind. The trick was casting the Opera Ghost. His choice was British Actor Michael Crawford, 45, whom he had heard sing in the 1979 London show Flowers for Algernon and who had appeared in such films as A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and The Jokers. "The moment I saw him with Sarah at dinner for the first time, I knew there was no point in discussing the casting any further," remembers Lloyd Webber. "The way he hypnotized her with his view of what he thought the Phantom could be . . . I just tiptoed off and left them. I phoned Hal and said, 'It's cast.' "

Crawford, who had trained as a boy soprano under Composer Benjamin Britten, responded immediately to the Phantom's soaring tenor line. "I had only to hear the first eight or so bars to know that Phantom was something quite special," he says. "The score sent chills down my spine the first time I heard it, and still does. Andrew's got me singing from the bottom of my heart to the top hair on my head."

For a while last year, it appeared that Brightman might not be allowed to repeat her role in New York. Actors' Equity objected to her being cast in the Broadway production, rather than an American actress, on the ground that Brightman was not an international star. Lloyd Webber was furious. His implied threat of no-Sarah, no-Phantom eventually prevailed, but under an agreement with the union, Brightman will play Christine for only six months. To preserve her voice, she will appear in six of the eight weekly performances; American Patti Cohenour will sing the other two. (Crawford's contract is for nine months and all eight performances.) Brightman was philosophical about the compromise. "I would have been disappointed because I worked on that part for three years, and I created it," she said. "I might have disliked seeing another actress taking over all the things I worked out, but I would have gone on to the next thing. It's stupid getting annoyed in this business."

Like Cats and Starlight Express, though, Phantom is likely to prove "castproof," for much of its attraction lies in its spectacular coups de theatre inspired by Victorian stage machinery. Among the highlights: a boat gliding across a gloomy underground lake, and a chandelier that appears to crash onto the audience at the end of Act I. The multiple trapdoors that create many of the illusions -- there are 102 tiny ones to accommodate the candles that rise from the gloom to illuminate the Phantom's subterranean realm -- are all controlled by computer. Says Will Bowen, assistant production manager in London: "The gloss is Victorian, but it took high tech to make it look that way."