The Phantom Of the Opera at DPAC - October 8-19th
A New Chandelier
By Cameron Mackintosh
Over the last 30 years, Phantom has become the most phenomenal success of all time, breaking box office records worldwide in countless sell-out productions. Since 1986, only the original version has been presented around the world (with the exception of Poland and Hungary which were non-replica productions) and its brilliant design by Maria Bjrnson has become synonymous with Andrew's sensational score. Just before Maria died at a tragically early age she and I had started discussing a different set design, one that would do more to contrast the Phantom's darker backstage world with that of the traditional opera world onstage.
Andrew agreed with my proposal, that it was time to give Phantom a fresh look, so in 2008 I approached theatre and opera designer Paul Brown to see if he was interested in taking over the baton from Maria to bring his own style and vision to our notion. It turned out that Maria had a special place in Paul's life as at the beginning of his career he had been a young assistant to her at the Royal Opera House. The result of Paul's long-developed ideas for this project is a new version of Phantom that uses a more visceral dramatic approach to create a visual feast, giving audiences the chance to see their favourite musical all over again through new eyes.
Putting together the rest of the new creative team for this Phantom, following in the footsteps of Hal Prince and Gillian Lynne, was a daunting but invigorating task. Joining Paul Brown, my choice of director was always going to be Laurence Connor who I first met when he became the Associate Director on the London production of Phantom. Since then he has directed acclaimed versions of Miss Saigon and Oliver!, and co-directed the hugely successful new production of Les Misrables. He also recently staged the triumphant 25th Anniversary production of Phantom at the Royal Albert Hall. As Choreographer, we both wanted to work with Matthew Bourne's talented protg, Scott Ambler, who I had first worked with on My Fair Lady a few years ago. To light the show we are lucky enough to have one of the world's greatest lighting designers, Paule Constable, and to create the sound the incomparable Mick Potter. Maria still remains at the heart of the new Phantom with her glorious costumes, some of which are designs found in her archive that she created for the original and were never used.
For the American production we have been able to build on our British success and fine-tune some of the staging, including making the famous chandelier even more spectacular. We all believe that you will fall in love with the music of the night all over again, as the Phantom is reborn for the 21st Century.
Tickets still remain for The Spectacular New Production of The Phantom of the Opera at DPAC October 8-19th. Please click here.
