The Phantom of the Opera may be the most deeply uncool musical out there, but there’s a reason it’s been running for 35 years and that’s the tunes. Andrew Lloyd Webber has a true pop sensibility, ladling on the hooks. There are reprises and motifs everywhere, and even similar melodies in two of the big songs. Essentially, never take the unexpected route when the note you want to hear is right there.
That famous descending organ riff and its synth-rock bass may scream 1980s camp, but this is a show committed to bombast, the grisly gothic tale of the murderous phantom menacing a 19th-century Paris theatre unashamedly embraces high drama, backed by a wall of sound when Lloyd Webber’s more dense writing contrasts with the hit melodies.
Winning formulas, of course, still need a refresh, so post-pandemic the show has returned with a new cast. Lucy St Louis (who played Diana Ross in Motown the Musical) is an enchanting Christine, the object of the Phantom’s obsession. She’s beatific, her tone bright with no harsh glare, all delicate vibrato, fine control and escalating power.
As the Phantom, Killian Donnelly (a former Jean Valjean in Les Mis) finds a range of colours from a whisper to a roar. He handles a tricky role, a stalker and kidnapper who is also an alternative romantic lead. He’s a Frankenstein’s monster, sinister yet vulnerable, whose eyes “both threaten and adore” and who tells Christine “fear can turn to love”. No room to interrogate his status as an abusive incel here, just a good yarn. Rhys Whitfield plays Christine’s more trad love interest, the dashing Raoul. 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.
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. But the late Maria Björnson’s maximalist designs, from vivid masquerade ball to Degas-style ballet dancers, set the tone for old-school fantasy. Go big or go home, as they say.
• Booking at Her Majesty’s theatre, London, until 13 February.
