The making of the Phantom of the Opera in Dubai

Gulf News

Read the full story here: https://bit.ly/2MiMPto  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos  Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  Jonathan Roxmouth on how he gets into the mindset of an iconic role  #PhantomOfTheOpera #theatre #Dubai

Transcript

00:00If they say to you, oh I never bothered looking at Crawford, they're lying.

00:04It's his role. I'm renting it from him at the moment but it's his role. It always will be.

00:11What's really exciting about this version is the show's been around for 32 years,

00:16okay, so it's been around as long as I've been alive. There are certain ways of doing

00:20things that were amazing in the 80s that, you know, were kind of cool in the 90s

00:26and were good in the 2000s and now that we're in the 2010s, it's just like,

00:30so they've updated it. Not that the show's ever been, but the technology available to us now

00:37means that they've added all sorts of technological advancements that keep the

00:41show state-of-the-art. A lot less hand cranking, everything is far more digitized, the scenes are

00:46slicker, they happen much faster now. Our chandelier is now the fastest, so I'm not going

00:55to tell you why that matters because some people don't know the show, but at the end of Act One

00:59there's something really cool that happens, but it's better with speed. The show, the first time

01:02we ran it, we've got lots of people in the cast who've done the show before and even they were

01:08going, I've never seen it look like that before or sound like this. We've got a new orchestration,

01:13that sounds incredible. We have a wonderful conductor, you know, it makes such a difference,

01:18a lot of shows are tracked now and we have a conductor conducting the orchestra right there.

01:22Everything is, as people know, Phantom. It's the original production, but just shiny. We went into

01:29rehearsal and for reasons that are not necessarily necessary to go into now, our Phantom got sick

01:36and we had our first preview and they came to me at the end of that first preview and they said,

01:42look, our Phantom's going to step out for a while, would you be interested in being the Phantom

01:47indefinitely? When I woke up, I was the Phantom and I went on and from that our Phantom left the

01:58production eventually. 32 years on Broadway means something. It has to, you know,

02:04you don't, musicals that get lucky don't run for 32 years. Musicals that mean something do

02:12and I think the answer is very simple. Phantom's become an heirloom that families pass down

02:17through generations. I was one of those kids. I got it as a, you know, when I was five or six,

02:22I got it as a gift that was passed down by my grandfather. The music is timeless. I think the

02:27fact that it's not set in a relatable time helps. It's far away from our reality, but it's passed

02:36on through generations. It's become part of theatrical initiation, I suppose. If you haven't

02:45seen a Broadway show, nine times out of ten, people take their kids to Phantom. Above that,

02:51it's a story about what makes us human in the first place. It's about love. Who doesn't have

02:57an opinion on that? Who hasn't been touched by that? Who hasn't experienced that or been denied

03:02that? People who don't know the story, who don't know anything, have the same reaction as the fans

03:07who've watched it from day one. That means something and it doesn't matter what language

03:12the show's in. That's what's so amazing. It doesn't matter. That means something. There's

03:19enough in this role that I could play this for 10 years and still never get it right.

03:24There's so many layers, there's so much there that you never get it 100% right in every performance.

03:31It's so addictive that you want to try again and get it right and then you have 96% and then you

03:36try again. My next dream role, please God, will be written for me when I meet the composer one day.

03:43I had two people that inspired me for different reasons. Number one, anybody who plays this role,

03:49if they say to you, oh, I never bothered looking at Crawford, they're lying. It's his role. I'm

03:55renting it from him at the moment, but it's his role. It always will be. So inevitably there are

04:00things about him that just come out in the music. Even if you just think of the first lines of music

04:06that Nighttime sharpens, everybody does it. It goes, Nighttime, that's Michael Crawford.

04:11It's written that way because of the way he did it. So you have to defer to that in some way.

04:16There will always be elements of Crawford in every phantom. I don't care what anybody says.

04:21The other person that inspired me was Leonard Bernstein, the conductor, because I'm obsessed

04:26with hands and he expresses music through his hands all the time. And there's a scene in the

04:32show where it's just my hands, everything else is covered up. I'm in a big cloak with a hood

04:37and that's all you have to express to the audience. And without realizing it,

04:42when I watched footage of myself later, when the director said, I just want to show you something,

04:47I was doing Bernstein without even realizing it. I was like, oh my gosh, it's so funny what comes

04:51to the surface. So consciously Crawford, subconsciously Leonard Bernstein. I think

04:57it would be easy to say, why shouldn't they? The reason why they shouldn't is they shouldn't give

05:03into the hype that's been around for 32 years. They shouldn't see what everybody else is talking

05:08about and they shouldn't come and sit in one of the most beautiful opera houses I've ever seen

05:13and watch one of the most perfect shows for this venue. Reasons they should? Very simple, it's Phantom of the Opera.

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