‘Phantom-fever’ grips Broadway

Press, 29 January 1988, Page 6

‘Phantom-fever’ grips Broadway

NZPA-Reuter New York Andrew Lloyd Webber’s London hit “Phantom of the Opera” opened in New York on Tuesday night to generally rave reviews after setting a Broadway record of SUSIB million ($27 million) in advance ticket sales. Celebrities were out in force for opening night to see the SUS 6 million ($9 million) production that arrived in New York amid a barrage of publicity. Tickets are sold out until November and touts

are getting up to SUSI7S ($264) for a SUSSO ($75) The “New York Post” critic, Clive Barnes, gave a one-word description of the show: “Phantastic.” The “New York Times” critic, Frank Rich, although reserved about many aspects of the show, including what he called banal lyrics, said: “It may be possible to have a terrible time at ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ but you’ll have to work at it. Barnes called the

show’s star, the British actor, Michael Crawford, a “new Broadway star of the greatest magnitude ... gorgeously spectral and suavely romantic as (the) disfigured Phantom”. Barnes added: “He and it are really terrific. Don’t believe the knockers. They will be there, because with expectations as elevated as these, nothing short of the Second Coming, or at the very least Oklahoma! will satisfy some.” Howard Kissel, the

critic for the “Daily News,” called it spectacular entertainment, “visually the most impressive of British musicals. Perhaps the most old-fashioned thing about it is it’s a love story, something Broadway has not seen for quite a while”. Kissel called the musical fable about the masked man who haunts the Paris Opera House “a longing look back at the stagecraft, the sense of wonder, theatre had a century ago”.