Yeston/Kopit Phantom

Discuss the Y/K Phantom musical here.
I recently saw another production of this musical and loved it. Everything was perfect about. The Christine (Sarah Bermudez) was better than what I imagined Christine to be.

Looks like there's a production currently on at a dinner theatre in Colorado: clicky.

Can't say I like the whole "told with more passion and emotion than the Lloyd Webber version". I can understand why they're doing that, but I think it backfires by making them look like they have an inferiority complex. Reminds me of the press puffs on the back of the DVD for the Rosen/Schierhorn version starring David Staller. I also find it frankly ridiculous when versions such as Y/K's claim to be more faithful to the novel than ALW's (although they haven't done it in this case)...since that really is not true at all.

Review of said production here.

Scorp wrote:I can understand why they're doing that, but I think it backfires by making them look like they have an inferiority complex.

They really seem to go out of their way to bring that up. Then again, you'd be surprised how many people I talk to who have seen regional productions of the Y/K Phantom and insisted they had seen ALW's Phantom that night.

R.

I don't know. I'd love to hear a really good production. I love some of the songs - Home, You Are Music, Phantom Fugue (which actually isn't a fugue), and especially My True Love, My Mother Bore Me and You Are My Own. Ok, so I actually like a lot of the songs. But I find a lot of the rest of it far too campy, and I really don't like the Christine on the original soundtrack's singing! Way too bright and chirpy! The one thing I do love about this version though is that it's so much more strongly E/C than the others I've heard!

I love this musical too (1990 miniseries are based on it).
The end is sooo touching and sad!
Ladyghost.

An acquaintance of mine made this tribute to Y&K's Phantom, which has nice, rare pictures of the Finnish version.
(Don't worry, it's in English)

http://www.kennetti.fi/phantom.html

I just thought I'd give this version a small shout out. Here's a fun little ALW link between the two:



Sorry that the quality is so awful, but it's a scan of a photocopy. Enjoy

If Really Useful find out, oh boy they'll sue...

Sadly, I noticed the coincidental "Sandra Joseph" before I noticed the ALW mask.

Loettchen wrote:Sadly, I noticed the coincidental "Sandra Joseph" before I noticed the ALW mask.

You are NOT the only one!

Paula74 wrote:

Loettchen wrote:Sadly, I noticed the coincidental "Sandra Joseph" before I noticed the ALW mask.

You are NOT the only one!

Me too!

R.

Loettchen wrote:Sadly, I noticed the coincidental "Sandra Joseph" before I noticed the ALW mask.

That's actually the connection that I was referring to I think that RUG is pobably too late to sue them. The ad is from 1995. The drawing is rather shoddy anyway.

I noticed the Sandra Joseph thing first, but then noticed the mask and RUG-ALERT alarm bells started ringing in my head...

So many of the non-ALW versions use RUG copyrighted stuff to promote themselves; it's almost like an attempt to fool the not-too-discerning public. That's how those awful German versions sell. The Moss/Raschen version's logo features Gerard and Emmy in the background, and it seems every city it plays, the local papers get letters of complaint by readers who said they had gone in expecting to hear ALW and come out really confused...

The only version I can think of that hasn't effectively stolen stuff from the ALW version in its marketing is Ken Hill's (which is the only other stage version of Phantom I personally care for).

Scorp wrote:
So many of the non-ALW versions use RUG copyrighted stuff to promote themselves; it's almost like an attempt to fool the not-too-discerning public. That's how those awful German versions sell. The Moss/Raschen version's logo features Gerard and Emmy in the background, and it seems every city it plays, the local papers get letters of complaint by readers who said they had gone in expecting to hear ALW and come out really confused...

I follow up with this remark by saying when I took German in college two years ago, one of the 'workbook examples' tickets for musicals in Germany was THAT version of Phantom. I remember looking at it in slight disgust because they were copies of actual flyers in Germany and there were two shoddy looking people posing like they were performing Music of the Night.

Carousel Chronicle Winter 1993-1994
News from America's Largest Professional Dinner Theatre

Akron, OH

The Carousel Yeston/Kopit Phantom originally scheduled to close January 16, 1994, has been extended due to phantastic advance ticket sales.

Is breathtaking and seductive musical legend, Kopit and Yeston's Phantom is chilling dramatic, and bittersweet. Selling out 54 weeks in Chicago, Phantom has enjoyed similar success in cities across the country.

Praise of this new Phantom, NBC Tv calling it a Must see., Chicago Tribune, StunningSumptuous, (WBBM) and Spectavular (WGN-tv

Haunted phantom struggles to life Chronicle 1992
by Steven Winn, Chronicle staff Critic

When the San Jose Civic Light Opera (CLO) brass cchose Kopit/Yeston's Phantom fo open the 1992-1993 Season the company managers to a calculated risk. For one thing they were undertaking a show, on limited technical rehearsal time, that requiredelaborate scenic and special effects to protray a haunted 19th Paris Opera House from stage to dressing rooms, and coruscating chandelier to dank subterranean dungeons, but in addition they were braving comparions with a gushy megahit musical version of the Leroux novel, --Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera" that many audience members were bound to have seen or heard, or heard about in the last four years.

What CLO brass could not possibly have guessed, however, was just how spooked their production would be, when it opened on Tuesday at the Center for the Performing Arts, 3 days after the postponed local premiere, technical problems continued to plague the show. the lighting board malfunctioned, several scenic drops seemed to have wills of their own. K&Y sympathetic portrait was'nt getting help from the musical theater gods.

Technical glitches were of secondary interest to the much larger crisis of this "Phantom" that emerged last week when the female lead, Eileen McNamara was injured, with no understudy in place, and no other actrss who played the role elsewhere available on short notice. the vocally and dramatically demanding part of Christine Daae, went to 22 year old chorus member, who had learned the part on her own and was making her first appearance of any kind on a professional stage,the debut of Kimberly Breault filled a "42nd St." kind of legend of chorus girl turning star overnight, the UCLA theater grad turned in a competent and sometimes winning performance, while her expressions and gestures often seemed rote and mechanical, Breault possessed a promising vocal technique.,

In one High Point, the Bistro scene, that consitutes Christine's coming out party as a singer, Breault tossed off some fluid coloratura ornaments, then hopped on a table arms outflung, to receive the adulation of her onstage and actual audience, when her voice loses a certain nasal, reedy edge, most notable in duet with Kim Strauss' Phantom, (The sweet sighing intervals of "You are Music" Breault lets attractive and potent tone flow.

Breault lives in San Fransico, works as a waitress at New Joe's to supplement her income, in an art imatates life role

In Phantom, Discovered as a novice singer by (George Phillip Saunders as Count Phillipe de Chandon) when silver haired, Gerard Carriere(Jack Ritschel) is ousted from his position as director of the Paris Opera, the diva, La Carlotta (Lynn Elderedge as an amusingly florid battleship with a gunmetal ear. and her toadying husband, (George Maguire) take over, offended above all is the Phantom ,(Mr. Kim Strauss) who possesses exquisite musicallity and a self deprecating sense of humor, "Her Voice" He says of Carlotta, "Is worse than my face."

Unlike Webber's Phantom of the opera, we never encounter the deformed face behind the mask, instead we see the phantoms past, flashback to his birth and his troubled and lonely adolescence. David Pohle plays the phantom as a young man.

Emotional climax comes from the 11th hour reconcilliation with his father, whose identity is unfolded in the show. Staged by director Dianna Shuster, Set by Ken Holamon,

Strauss has appeared here as American in Chess, Strauss sings with conviction throughout, He wears one mask after anouther plucking them from an armoire that rolls on and offstage part of a steady flow of furniture from the wings,

In the end Strauss' quivering air of neediness with Christine whom he dares touch and with a father he finally joins in song"You are My song" leaves the character nakedly exposed.

Takarazuka's Flower Troupe is scheduled to do another staging of this later on in the year, though who knows how much the situation in Japan is going to affect things...

~LCD

I like this version too but not in all points of the story. But I like the music and songs.
I have the original cast and CD and DVD from Takarazuka Group.
They tell the story in a strange way. The costumes are great.

I have actually seen the Yeston/Kopit Phantom twice at a dinner theater in the Twin Cities (Minnesota). I absolutely LOVED their adaptation and adore the mini-series movie that came out in the early 90's. Their version actually gives most of the characters more depth. But I will have to say that I still love ALW's POTO better. :-) However, if anyone ever gets the chance, go see "Phantom." Good music and story!!

Devon wrote:I have actually seen the Yeston/Kopit Phantom twice at a dinner theater in the Twin Cities (Minnesota). I absolutely LOVED their adaptation and adore the mini-series movie that came out in the early 90's. Their version actually gives most of the characters more depth. But I will have to say that I still love ALW's POTO better. :-) However, if anyone ever gets the chance, go see "Phantom." Good music and story!!

I wish I could see it here. But there are only other (bad) variations of the story.
I like Kopit& Yeston. As well the movie. I have only the Takarazuka DVDs and CDs.
And the original CD.

I was going through some newspaper archives for some completely unrelated researched and realized that this version played in my area two different times in the early 90s and I never even knew it. Phooey.

Also, I found an interesting piece about ANOTHER Phantom version that was commissioned for Albany's Capital Repertory Theatre and performed about a year or so before ALW's version opened on Broadway. I'm very curious about this!

TheFinnishPhantom wrote:An acquaintance of mine made this tribute to Y&K's Phantom, which has nice, rare pictures of the Finnish version.
(Don't worry, it's in English)

http://www.kennetti.fi/phantom.html

I like your site, thank you!
Why doesn´t anyone play it here in Vienna or Hungary? Why?

I wish there would be a complete english CD. With Robert Cuccioli...

^ how cool is it that this "Phantom" actually rides the chandelier to the stage! At least thats what the pic looks like, I believe that was Maria's original intent as well.

StrangerThanUDreamt wrote:^ how cool is it that this "Phantom" actually rides the chandelier to the stage! At least thats what the pic looks like, I believe that was Maria's original intent as well.

Yeah, he did ride it to the stage.

The original intention was to put on a production of the ALW show, but the problems started when it became clear that it must be a replica production. They raised the money to mount a replica one, but ultimately decided to opt for this musical for creative freedom. The rest of the budget was used to renovate the theatre. I also suspect that the Stockholm production was too close geographically.

I don´t like it when Christine looks older than the Phantom. I´ve seen many photos about different productions.
I don´t like them all. Some looks good, some costumes, some of his masks...

I want to see a good production of this version! I don´t understand why all will show in the US but not elsewhere...

There's a production of Yeston/ Kopit's Phantom running from the 14th - 31st May 2013 at Ye Olde Rose and Crown Theatre, London. Cast is ongoing at the minute but I'm sure details will be released soon. Incase anyone is interested!

starryeyed wrote:There's a production of Yeston/ Kopit's Phantom running from the 14th - 31st May 2013 at Ye Olde Rose and Crown Theatre, London. Cast is ongoing at the minute but I'm sure details will be released soon. Incase anyone is interested!

I was thinking of going but I suspect it's going to be fairly dreadful. I don't like what I know of this version either so far from the cast recording, although 'You are music' is pretty nice.

starryeyed wrote:There's a production of Yeston/ Kopit's Phantom running from the 14th - 31st May 2013 at Ye Olde Rose and Crown Theatre, London. Cast is ongoing at the minute but I'm sure details will be released soon. Incase anyone is interested!

I've already booked my ticket. It'll be my first time seeing Y/K, and I'm pretty excited.