My Phandom Renaissance

[kitewithfish]

The Background

So, I don't normally think of myself as A Phan, aka, a devotee of Phantom of the Opera. Mostly because I fall in and out of the source material, and I don't really engage in the fandom at all. Except as a reader, it's mostly something I am dip in and out of.

I've read the original novel by Leroux, and listened to the Lloyd Weber recording, and seen the 2004 movie, and read at least two of the "sequel" novels (tho god only knows which ones the public library spat out at me for my request back in 2005!) (EDIT: It definitely seems like one was Susan Kay's 1990 novel, Phantom, and I almost certainly got that recommendation by reading Gevaisa's fics.) 

But the thing was, the older I got, the less I liked the main drive of most of the fan works - pairing Erik and Christine together, assuming the events of the movie was your starting point, felt just... a bit weird? I don't judge anyone who likes it, and I've read a lot of fic trying to find an angle that would work for me. Because I see the relationship, and the attraction, and it still just somehow got to feel more and more like trying to fit Christine's experience into a box labeled "Romance" when a lot of it was a better fit for a box labeled "Horror." People are allowed to like what they like, and after a while, I found I wasn't liking Phantom well enough to find a settled place for the work in my heart. It's still compelling and interesting. But I just never feel quite comfortable with it. 

The Turn

A while ago, tho, I got to see a truly wonderful amateur production by a small and casual group (staged in a living room!) that blew the top of my head off. The director for this performance was a woman, and the cast is largely women (including some playing male roles - my friend was an excellent M. Firmin. Their Phantom was a dude, and Asian.), and their Christine was a longtime member of the group - and they all agreed the tone for their production of the  musical was that of a young singer being manipulated and threatened by a stalker. Their Christine was adamant about it - the star of the show is Christine, a young woman trying to handle her mysterious voice teacher murdering people, which is a big fucking deal.

Their production really helped me pull out the tensions I felt towards the Lloyd Weber musical - there's just a lot of push to see Erik's actions sympathetically in that musical, and some productions make the mistake of allowing Christine's experience of fear and confusion and mistrust to become sidelined to favor Erik's viewpoint. And I had a lot more interest in seeing the chemistry between Erik and Christine once I saw a production of the Lloyd Weber musical that actually made sure to center Christine as a person, making choices in a shitty situation that Erik put her in. That worked for me, in a way that the movie production of the musical just didn't. 

This actually makes me want to see the stage version, which I wasn't sure I wanted to spend money on before I saw this incredibly great and low budget production. 

This is all prologue. 

The New Twist

Because I had a recent return to interest in Lloyd Weber's musical, I clicked on a certain video on Youtube on Saturday morning.

I am a big fan of Lyndsay Ellis, who has been doing film criticism vlogs since before Youtube existed. Ellis is smart and well educated and funny as shit. Also, she's a big Phan. She has a really fun series called "Loose Canon," and the Phantom episodes (two!) cover the history of the story before the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical and after. Both here: Before Broadway and After .

So, through Ellis , I discovered that there was a separate musical! From 1991, there was another musical, in a more operetta style, that adapted the story from the LeRoux's novel with a significantly more genteel Erik.

From Wikipedia - "Phantom is a musical with music and lyrics by Maury Yeston and a book by Arthur Kopit. Based on Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera, the musical was first presented in Houston, Texas in 1991. Although it has never appeared on Broadway and has been overshadowed by the success of the 1986 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Yeston and Kopit's Phantom has received over 1,000 productions."  There are several productions on Youtube, filmed from various stage musicals. Obviously, it did not achieve the success of Lloyd Weber's musical, but it seems quite charming from what I'm able to find. (In tone, what I have seen feels bit like A Little Night Music - it's very European and choral and it feels like it wants to be in Paris in a particular time period.) 

AND! There was a nonmusical production of the storyline of Yeston's Phantom made into a two-episode miniseries, starring Charles Dance as Erik. It's on Youtube (just google, I don't want to get any links taken down) but Charles Dance basically swans around in opera dress and a full face mask being snide about Carlotta and charming Christine and it's a delight. None of the music from the Yeston production makes it into this miniseries - the performances are all drawn from classic opera, including Faust, Norma, and a bunch of others as references that I didn't recognize. Christine is occasionally a bit thin in terms of character towards the beginning of the series, which I think is a reflection of her musical performance's work not being quite adapted properly to the all-dialogue miniseries, but she also clearly makes decisions and determinations on her own. Her involvement with Erik is unconventional, and he's definitely lying to her at the start, but at the end she's making choices on her own with the full information, and it's just.... it's nice! It's nice that I don't have to make excuses for Erik being stalkery! There so much less of that!  

Yeston talked about his version of Erik being significantly less horrific -  "The story could be somewhat changed.... [The Phantom] would be a Quasimodo character, an Elephant Man. Don't all of us feel, despite outward imperfections, that deep inside we're good? And that is a character you cry for.

And while I have yet to have a chance to actually read thru the libretto, and I'm still working on finding a performance of Yeston's Phantom that I can watch (other than Youtube, which does have a couple), I'm just feeling interested and excited for this adaptation of the novel in a way I haven't for a while. I have not found any fic yet, because of course I haven't. But I'm just feeling engaged and energetic about these characters in a new way, and I just wanted to get out there and share that New Fandom Energy.