He’s here…. the Phantom of the Opera!

Phantom was pretty insane… The 2,700 seat theater was sold out and what we thought were 4th row tickets turned out to be front row… Apparently the first three rows were removed for the orchestra pit.  We sat completely front row center.  If I were to extend my right arm I would have been punching the conductor in the back of the head… and man I thought about it…  It was SWEET.

Proctor and Gamble Hall
at the Aronoff Center

The cast was rather star studded as it had Marie Danvers and Gary Mauer playing the roles of Christine and The Phantom… both of which starred in the Broadway version of the Phantom… in fact… 8 out of the 9 main characters were all with the Broadway company of this show at one point or another, and are now on the U.S. tour.

The chandelier dropped within about two feet of my head before it swung forward to the stage.  The pyrotechnics were rather hot…. literally…   The one scene where they are trying to trap the phantom by placing guards all around the theater landed a guard directly in front of Sarah.  She could have smacked him on the face…  He fired a gun (which was NOT expected) and it was rather loud being about 3 feet from our faces.

The only downsides to being that close were as follows:

1)  It was sometimes difficult to see things happening upstage as the stage was about a foot higher than our heads when seated.  This wasn’t much so it wasn’t a huge deal.

2)  The phantom sometimes had scenes in the rafters which were directly above us.  I could look up and see a light on the rafters with the occassional outstretched hand or a cape go whooshing by… but we missed some of that.  This too was pretty scarce so it wasn’t a big deal, though we feared to look up for the danger of actor spit in the eye.

3)  The conductor made this really annoying grunt noise and sniff each beat he detected…. While this was only audible in the quiet moments, it really took away from the mood and made us laugh a bit.   Still, what a story to remember…. the Meistro with his own techno show going on in his head at all times.

Overall it was a GREAT experience and we had a blast.  We’re going back in a few months to see Les Miserables.  That should be a riot too… at least that show our seats are in the front row of the first balcony.