Word: phantomed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...copyright on Gaston Leroux's 1911 thriller The Phantom of the Opera expired this year, plans were announced for no fewer than three competing musical adaptations. The flurry of interest was perplexing. Leroux's tale, part horror melodrama, part bodice-ripping gothic, seemed too grim and kinky for a musical. The central character is, after all, not only hideously ugly but an extortionist, kidnaper, incendiary and megalomaniac -- and the heroine must at least halfway fall in love with...
...winners of the race to stage a Phantom in a major commercial setting, Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and Director Harold Prince, have proved the shrewdness of their unlikely impulse. Within two days after the $3 million spectacular opened in London's West End this month, the box office was virtually sold out until early 1987. Webber and Prince have daringly envisioned Phantom not as Grand Guignol but as an opportunity to turn the musical back toward what they term romance. Ironically, Lloyd Webber (Evita) and Prince (Sweeney Todd) have been leaders in the movement to push musicals beyond traditional...
...often said of Lloyd Webber's musicals that the show is the star, and of Prince's stagings that the director is the star. Both dicta might apply to Phantom, which is opulently costumed, lushly scored, full of spectacular stage pictures and chockablock with pastiches of 19th century warhorse opera. But in the midst of all the mechanics there are 2 1/2 performances that achieve some emotional depth. Michael Crawford commands the stage as the Phantom, bringing complete conviction to such fantasies as a midair descent on a chariot of gilded cherubs and a boating trip on a subterranean lake...
Guerrillas brought the Phantom down with a shoulder-fired Soviet Strella missile at 4:25 p.m., 35 minutes after the onset of Israel's 13th air attack into Lebanon this year, a police spokesman said. He withheld his name in keeping with government regulations...
Israel's military command still had not commented hours later either on the 40-minute attack on Palestinian targets or the loss of the U.S.-built Phantom...