Tape 202: Processing The Phantom Of The Opera

The Time Has Come

Some of you may know that I’m currently working on a new show about The Phantom Of The Opera (playing at the Pleasance in London this Saturday, and in Leicester next Friday!) As the show began to take shape, it became pretty clear that if I was serious about making this, I needed to go and see Phantom again for the first time in eighteen years, to make sure my understanding of the show was still roughly accurate. It turns out, watching it with someone who did not become obsessed with it in their teens does cause some of the show’s more troubling undercurrents to become more apparent. One of the things I find very odd about Phantom is the fact that it essentially glorifies and celebrates an abusive incel, but the audience doesn’t really seem to mind. Yes, he is the villain, but I’m not 100% sure that all of the show’s obsessive fans think that way. I found a video of the bit of the show where Christine rips the Phantom’s mask off and the top comment read:

“The only reason she did this was because if she had stared into this man’s eyes for one minute longer, she knew she would have jumped into his arms forever,” and lots of people had replied saying “This is correct.” One brave soul had dared to reply with “This guy is an abusive murderer and this relationship is not romantic” and had been shouted down by dozens of people saying “Not everything has to be woke, you know.” Yes, the Phantom doesn’t “win” in the end, but he is also granted a moment of, essentially, transcendence and gets to have the last bow in the curtain call despite the fact that Christine is the lead and he is a total bastard.

So, I’ve decided to process my adult revisionist reading of my all-time favourite musical by retelling the story here in as plain a sense as possible, in the hope I can get to the bottom of it. Strap in:

The Phantom of the Opera tells the story of a man called Erik (not named in the show, had to google the book). Erik had the misfortune to be born with a disturbing facial deformity whereby exactly half of his face looks like a skull. To add insult to injury, his hair is also very thin and wispy and he has a big hole in the side of his head where you can see his actual brain. The most frustrating thing about Erik’s deformity is that his jawline and the left-hand side of his face are actually those of a very classically handsome man, but nobody ever focuses on those bits because they’re all distracted by the fact that his brain is fully out. At some point he devises an ingenious system of covering up his deformity with a mask and wig so that he can pass in polite society as a dapper, charming and enigmatic fancyman, but it’s unclear when he did this. Later in the show he complains of being “Hounded out by everyone, met with hatred everywhere, no kind word from anyone, no compassion anywhere.” I find it hard to believe that people would have reacted to him like this if when they met him he’d been wearing the mask and singing one of his lovely songs, so presumably he only came up with the mask thing AFTER enduring years of public revulsion that led to him developing a major pathology about it. How galling! To go through all that and only after it’s driven you completely insane to think “Oh hang on, I could just wear a mask and wig.” Mind you, I’m really thrown by the whole “visible brain” thing. To me, the only way Erik can even be alive is if the interior of the mask had some kind of salve-like properties that disinfected and sealed the wound, but this would require the mask to have been designed in his infancy. I think you’re just not supposed to think too much about this stuff, because none of the characters mention it.

What we ARE told is that Erik was exhibited in a travelling circus as some sort of deformed freak with a preternatural talent as a scholar, musician, composer, magician, architect and inventor. This sounds to me like a really muddled, unfocused act to have at a circus. If I go to see “The hideous monster with the voice of an angel,” that’s a clear bit. I know what I’m getting into. Similarly, if I’m going to see “The hideous monster who’s really good at inventing things,” that’s also something I can wrap my head around. But if I walk into a tent and am greeted by a guy whose face looks like a skull who sings me a song, then shows me an invention of his, then shows me some architectural plans he’s drawn up, don’t blame me if I leave that tent feeling confused. “What even was that?”, I’d say. Perhaps some of the “hatred” Erik complains about was just constructive criticism from people trying to help him hone his act.

Anyway, at some point he runs away from the circus, and this is where I think there’s a big leap in the story in terms of logic. Having run away, Erik - get this - builds a secret lair for himself under the Paris Opera House and starts pretending to be a ghost who lives in the building. This is just such a wild swing for the fences. We know he’s a talented architect, so I get that he can build a lair, but the fact that it has a big underground lake in it is crazy. Somehow I don’t believe that he built this lake himself - I can’t imagine him digging it down there and going “Well naturally I want there to be a big lake.” But I also find it hard to believe that there was already a massive underground lake beneath the Paris Opera House that the architects and staff didn’t know about.

After installing himself in the vaults of the theatre, Erik manages to make exactly one (1) friend/ally in the form of ballet mistress Madame Giry, who seems to be basically on his side throughout, for reasons unknown. He starts leaving adorable little notes around the place instructing the theatre manager to pay him 20,000 francs a month - roughly equivalent to an annual salary of a little over a million pounds today - and for some reason, the manager agrees. It’s implied that if he’s not paid then “bad things” will happen, and a couple of characters are seen spreading rumours about him killing people with his magical lasso (such a low-status modus operandi). However, it’s also implied that the events of the show, including the two actual murders that occur, represent major and unprecedented escalations in his relationship with the theatre, so it’s not clear why the initial arrangement is agreed upon. I can only assume that the manager kept finding these notes and then Madame Giry went “You’d better pay that ghost, he told me that if you don’t he’s going to kill people with his magic rope” and the manager just went “Ok” rather than sensing that this might be a massive scam, or that there might be a mentally unwell unhoused person living in the theatre who needed to be engaged with formally to help him find more suitable accommodation.

Having sorted himself a place to live and an income, Erik gets busy. He presumably comes up with this mask-and-wig thing around now (he starts wearing a mask that enables him to pass in polite society AFTER becoming a recluse? What?) and he sets about two of his favourite hobbies, writing music and inventing things. Some of the things he invents over this period include - a big portcullis that can go up and down when he gestures at it (ok, I guess), a cane that can shoot fireballs (neat!), a network of speaking tubes that enable him to throw his voice around the theatre (quite fun), a rigged-up throne-and-cloak combo that enables him to sit on the throne, cover himself with the cloak and disappear through a trapdoor while the cloak retains the shape of his body (weirdly specific thing to invent) and a two-way mirror that enables him to spy on the girls’ dressing rooms (creepy! Can’t Madame Giry just smuggle him in a copy of Nuts or something? Did they have Nuts in Paris in 1910? I guess it would’ve been called Les Nuts).

One day, while Erik is perving on the chorus girls, he notices that one of them, Christine, is A. smokin’ hot, and B. believes in some total guff about a being called “The Angel of Music” that her dad told her about. Clearly bollocks, but Erik knows an opportunity to score when he sees one! (He presumably overheard her telling one of the other chorus girls about this before one of them went “Wait, what’s that noise? Is someone wanking behind that mirror?” and then Madame Giry told them they were imagining things and should practice their dancing).

Christine’s dad dies, and Erik shoots his shot. He introduces himself to her via his speaking tubes, and presumably the conversation goes something like this:

Erik - Hello! I’m the Angel of Music.

Christine - What, that magical spirit my dad used to tell me about?

Erik - That’s the one! I’m going to give you some music lessons to make your singing better.

Christine - Oh, do you not like my singing?

Erik - No, I do, I do, I just think I can help you to be really good.

Christine - Ok. Are you anything to do with that weird ghost that lives in the building and can appear anywhere in it and throw his voice around?

Erik - Nope, that’s a completely different person. Now do you want me to teach you singing or not?

Christine - Yeah alright. It could be a nice way to feel close to my dead dad, I guess.

Erik - That’s what I was thinking, it’s what he would’ve wanted.

Christine - Yeah. You could be a sort of replacement father figure to me now he’s gone.

Erik - Yeah. Or husband.

Christine - What?

Erik - Maybe our relationship could be more sort of romantic, actually. And we could get married.

Christine - Right. Why would I get married to a magic angel that reminds me of my dad?

Erik - Let’s start with some scales!

Erik starts secretly teaching Christine via his speaking tubes and she becomes a really great singer. All of this happens before the show begins, and you have to piece it together out of the information you’re given here and there. As the show itself gets underway, the theatre manager who had been so compliant up til now is replaced by two new theatre managers who go “You want us to pay 20,000 francs a month to a ghost who lives in the building? No way, that sounds absolutely crazy, we’re running a business here.” However, they do agree to let Christine sing the lead in tonight’s opera after the opera house’s resident prima donna, Carlotta, quits in outrage due to some scenery nearly falling on her. “These things keep happening!” she shouts as she leaves. This means Erik’s big plan to help Christine develop her career has involved him sneaking around the lighting rig trying to drop things on Carlotta’s head, like Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the Roadrunner. Given that he had a direct line to the theatre manager who blindly agreed to pay him a regular millionaire’s stipend for no reason whatsoever, there must have been an easier way to discuss Christine’s career opportunities, but hey, the guy’s gotta have some fun in his life.

Christine is a big hit, but - disaster - her childhood sweetheart Raoul is in the audience and turns up at her dressing room insisting on taking her to dinner. “Oh no, I can’t, I have a lesson booked in with the disembodied Angel who teaches me music,” she pleads. “Err, ok,” says Raoul, “but I insist!” This is the first instance of Christine being essentially a prop who is moved around and told what to do by the men in the play. Despite being ostensibly the lead, we never really find out anything about who she is or what she wants. Raoul says “I won’t take no for an answer!” and goes to book a table or something, and then Erik goes “Who the fuck was that?”

Christine’s starting to get fed up of all this disembodied voice stuff, and asks the Angel to show himself, so Erik switches off his two-way mirror thing and reveals himself. He looks great! What was he so afraid of this whole time? As he leads her down to his lair, he and Christine sing a banging synth-rock number (presumably he had been teaching this to her? “Ok, Christine, so today we’re going to work on this song “The Phantom of the Opera”, which we’ll sing together if you ever meet the Phantom of the Opera.” “Sure, ok, it looks great. What’s this bit that goes “My power over you grows stronger yet?”” “Don’t worry about that bit.”)

Arriving in his lair, Erik decides he enjoyed singing a song with her so much that he sings another one, just by himself this time, about how music is really great (Durr, she already knows this, she’s literally an opera singer). He gets a bit carried away, and towards the end of the song he shows Christine a mannequin he’s made of her wearing a wedding dress. Christine is a bit weirded out by this and faints. Erik is just like “Oh, she’s fainted,” puts a blanket on her and then goes back to his organ to do some more composing. The guy’s a total workaholic and needs to learn how to chill out.

When Christine wakes up, she goes up to Erik and takes his mask off, which is admittedly a really weird and rude thing to do, but then he’s already outed himself as a weird perv by this point, so I think she can do what she likes. Erik is PISSED about it. “What the fuck did you do that for, you stupid bitch?” he shouts. Then he remembers that he brought her here because he wants to marry her, and tries to dial things back a bit. “Fear can turn to love,” he says, hopefully. Christine doesn’t respond to this, so after standing there awkwardly for a bit, he just goes “Ok, let’s get you back to the theatre.” The whole thing is one of the most excruciating first dates I’ve ever seen, it’s like something out of Peep Show.

Back at the theatre, Erik leaves a bunch more notes about how Christine has to play the lead in all the operas from now on and Carlotta can just play, I dunno, Servant With Tray Number 2, but these two new theatre managers are like “Absolutely fuck this ghost guy, I’m obviously not taking instructions from him.” Carlotta ends up playing the lead that night (why did she come back? One day of not having things nearly fall on her head and she’s forgotten everything about how much she hates working here), but Erik gets really pissy about it and starts interrupting the show, going “What the hell is this? I wanted Christine to play the lead!” like an unfunny Statler and Waldorf.

Carlotta calls him a toad, and he goes “Maybe YOU are the toad!” and then when she tries to sing she starts croaking like a toad. This is a really weird bit of the show, as it’s the only bit that implies that Erik can actually do magic. Maybe he slipped something in her drink earlier that would fuck up her voice and make her sound like a toad? But then SHE was the one who said the word “toad” first, so he must’ve been watching the whole show thinking “God, I hope she calls me a toad at some point or this trick I’ve got planned is going to look completely random.” Erik then starts doing some shadow puppetry stuff behind the set where he runs around doing spooky silhouettes, which is frankly ridiculous. Also, couldn’t anyone from the theatre just look behind the set at this point and see him fucking around with a big lamp and go “Oh, there he is”? Then he hangs a man live onstage, which as I said is a huge escalation.

Pandemonium ensues, and Christine and Raoul run up to the roof and decide to get married. This kind of comes out of nowhere, they’ve had one conversation in the last 15 years or something, but hey, he’s not constructed a mannequin of her in a wedding dress, so he’s the less creepy option on the table right now. Erik has actually been hiding behind a statue on the roof listening to all this, wearing a fedora - of course he wears a fedora, it’s such an on-point bit of costume design that this guy would wear a fedora. “I gave you my music, made your song take wing! He was bound to love you when he heard you sing!” he wails. Stupid Erik! He was trying to make her into his perfect bride, but he accidentally made her so hot that other people became attracted to her too! People who behave normally, or more normally than Erik at least. Such a disappointing development for him.

Erik marches right back down to the theatre and tries to drop a chandelier on Christine’s head, because this is his go-to move when he’s pissed off with someone. (Note that he drops the chandelier during the final curtain call of the opera he just interrupted, which means they continued the performance even though someone was hanged live onstage halfway through. These days, that would be a show stop). Somehow, this comes to be his defining act in the entire saga - at the start of the show this old auctioneer in the future says “This is the very chandelier that figures in the famous disaster” as though the chandelier bit is the pinnacle of the whole affair, but let’s not forget, he also just hanged a guy.

There is now a time jump of six months, and everything’s great at the Opera House again. They’ve not heard from Erik in ages because he’s off sulking and the shows are selling really well because everybody’s going “We should go to this theatre, a guy got hanged there and a chandelier nearly landed on someone’s head!” and for some reason this has made the place a sensation, rather than utterly decimating their business as you’d assume. The two manager dudes plan a grand masquerade ball to celebrate how well everything’s going. A word of advice - if one of your staff got murdered by a guy who famously wears a mask and you don’t want to ever have to deal with that guy again, do not throw a masked ball! He is obviously going to want to come to that! Erik turns up looking absolutely sick in this kickass Red Death costume, and reveals that he’s been writing an opera this whole time, and he wants them to put it on and cast Christine as the lead. This shtick is just getting quite boring now, but they start rehearsing it anyway and rehearsals are disrupted when the piano starts playing by itself. If it were me, I would just sigh at this point. “Wow, cool, you made the piano play by itself,” I’d say in a bored monotone. “Look, mate, you asked us to rehearse this opera of yours, and now you’re fucking up the rehearsals, can you just give it a rest for five minutes?”

Raoul is hatching a plan to trap and capture the Phantom, but Christine is feeling conflicted about it - after all, he does remind her of her dead dad. She goes to her dad’s grave and sings a song about him, then it turns out Erik has been hiding on top of her dad’s tomb. “Am I not even allowed to visit my dad’s grave without having to deal with your bullshit?” she ought to say but doesn’t. Erik is still clearly getting quite confused about this whole dad/husband thing, and hasn’t considered that literally emerging from her dad’s grave is not going to help with the issue of her seeing him as more of a paternal figure than a romantic one. Raoul turns up so that the men can argue about what’s best for the woman for a bit, and Erik tries to win the argument by whipping out his fire-cane and shooting fireballs at Raoul. I actually think this is a moral victory for Raoul, who manages to leave the graveyard with his dignity intact.

When the Opera House is finally ready to stage Erik’s opera, he secretly hangs the lead actor backstage with his magic lasso (this is also wearing thin), and takes his place instead so that he can sing the big number with Christine. In another excruciating turn of events, it turns out the entire opera is about the two of them banging, and he has organised this whole thing just so that he can stand behind her and cup her boob and sing “What raging fire shall flood the soul, what rich desire unlocks its door, what sweet seduction lies before us?” He probably sings the whole thing with an erection, but he’s cleverly decided the costume for this bit is a billowing robe, just in case. If I were Christine, I would be dying of embarrassment at this point. Lo and behold, she clearly is getting a bit fed up of this now, because at the climax of the song she whips his mask off and goes “Look at this gross weirdo!” Erik is absolutely fumiliated (fuming as a result of being humiliated), so abducts her and takes her down to his lair again.

When he gets there, he’s not messing around. He forces her to put the wedding dress on so he can marry her right there and then.

“I’ve been very nice about this!” he says.

“No you haven’t,” Christine replies. “You basically pretended to be my dad, then you took me on one really weird date where you showed me your horrible wank-mannequin, then you hanged two of my friends, then you wrote a play about wanting to fuck me. This has all been really, really horrible.” Raoul turns up so he and Erik can argue about what’s best for Christine again, and this time Erik tries to hang him with his fucking stupid rope. Eventually, he just gives Christine a really simple choice.

“Marry me or this guy gets hanged,” he says. Christine is like “Well, he did take me on a date, guess I’d better put out” and kisses him, and then Erik feels like a total bellend. Imagine getting the kiss you wanted from the girl of your dreams, then turning around and seeing her boyfriend struggling in your magic noose, and then remembering about the other two guys you murdered in order to make this happen. You’d feel a total dick. Mortified, Erik tells them both to leave and they go “Yeah, fine with us” and run away. An angry mob is now descending to his lair planning on killing him, so Erik belts out one last tune. “I really shat the bed on this whole thing!” he sings, and then he literally disappears, making good use of his patented “In case of emergency, sit on throne and cover yourself with cloak” device. Stupidly, he forgets his mask, meaning wherever he ends up next he’s just going to be met by people going “Urgh, yuck,” which is exactly what caused all this trouble in the first place.

If we are to believe the reviled sequel Love Never Dies (mad thing to call a sequel to this show, and proof that Andrew Lloyd Webber isn’t too clued-up on concepts like “coercive control”), he goes and sets up a funfair on Coney Island and continues to obsess over Christine for the rest of his life, but I don’t think that’s considered canon.

All in all, I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Ten out of ten, no notes.

A Quick Plug - I mean, if you wanna see what I make out of any of this, do feel free to come down to one of the WIPs of Joz Norris Is Hugh Jackman Is The Phantom Of The Opera in London or Leicester.

A Cool New Thing In Comedy - Following on from the above, next weekend the good folks at Liebenspeil have programmed such an amazing weekend of comedy in Leicester for the festival. Siblings, Lil Wenker, Jonathan Oldfield, Kit Sullivan, Jessica Barton, Luke Rollason, Stepdads, Sean Morley and more! Get along to as many of them as you can if you’re in town.

What’s Made Me Laugh The Most - I think a bit in The Apprentice where one of the teams got lost in an abandoned building site being barked at by dogs while trying to find a shop that sold shrimp paste. I love The Apprentice so much, it’s reliably one of the funniest things on TV.

Book Of The Week - I’m currently reading The Year Of Living Danishly by Helen Russell, which is a guide to what it’s like living in Denmark, the happiest place in the world. Does what it says on the tin!

Album Of The Week - Lateralus by Tool. This is ok, but sometimes I find American prog a bit cringe. There’s not enough whimsy for my liking. British prog is all like “The nylon princess combed her hair and asked not why of the goblin’s stare,” and then American prog is mostly “Cut my muscle burn my brain this bitch is driving me insane.” I know what I prefer.

Film Of The Week - Is This Thing On? This is my favourite film I’ve seen in years. I went in with such low expectations because I often find films about stand-up are quite bad, but it’s such a breath of fresh air. It’s a proper film about real people and real relationships and it’s funny and heartbreaking and really, really lovely. I implore everyone to go and see it.

That’s all for this week! If you enjoyed this, feel free to send it to a friend or encourage others to subscribe. Take care of yourselves,

Joz xx

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PPS Thanks to the lovely audience in Norwich this weekend, you were great. Here’s me looking knackered and deranged: