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      Cabaret Mainstay 54 Below Enters a New Era: As a Nonprofit

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      The midtown venue’s owners hope to raise close to 20 percent of an annual budget approaching $10 million from supporters.After nearly 11 years in operation, one of New York City’s most high-profile cabaret venues has decided to transition from a commercial entity to a nonprofit. The owners of 54 Below, a popular forum for both Broadway stars and rising performers and composers, say they intend to raise close to 20 percent of an annual budget approaching $10 million from supporters, with sponsorships, multiyear donations and naming opportunities figuring into the new model.Richard Frankel, one of the owners, described the move as motivated by both economic challenges and artistic ambitions. “There’s no doubt it’s been a struggle, financially, combining the restaurant and theater businesses,” he said, adding that the club, which occupies the space below the 1970s nightlife fixture-turned-Broadway theater Studio 54, “puts on about 600 shows a year, which is insane. So we have a structure that’s not cheap.”Those shows have included performances by marquee names such as Patti LuPone, Kelli O’Hara and Brian Stokes Mitchell, as well as series and concerts spotlighting lesser-known artists and works. “Diversity has become very important to us, presenting new musicals and young performers, many of color,” Frankel said. “And we want to be able to pay them more and expand the audience, with artist subsidies and ticket subsidies. That can be very difficult, if not impossible, to do on a self-sustaining commercial basis.”Frankel noted that two of 54 Below’s competitors, Joe’s Pub and Dizzy’s Club, both enjoy the backing of nonprofit organizations: the Public Theater and Jazz at Lincoln Center. “We’ve been incredibly envious of them,” Frankel said.As a nonprofit, 54 Below will focus on raising money to offer discounted tickets and subsidize artists’ production costs, as well as continue livestreaming its performances.A newly formed board for 54 Below includes, in addition to Frankel and his fellow owners, names from the entertainment, business and nonprofit sectors, among them the actress and entrepreneur Brenda Braxton; Robert L. Dilenschneider, president and chief executive of the Dilenschneider Group, Inc; Stanley Richards, deputy chief executive of the Fortune Society; and Lucille Werlinich, chair of the Purchase College Foundation.54 Below opened in June 2012 and entered a partnership with the veteran performer and American songbook champion Michael Feinstein in 2015; that collaboration ended in July 2022, when Feinstein teamed up with Cafe Carlyle. Last June, 54 Below received an honor at the Tony Awards for excellence in the theater.“I’m expecting the funding sources to be generous, though I don’t know how many Santa Clauses there can be,” Frankel said. “But we’re committed to this, as a way for us to survive and thrive in the future.” More

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      Among Faceless Offices, a Theater Taking Risks

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      The New Diorama in London is placing bets on small troupes, inviting them onto its stage and giving them help to thrive. With two shows now in the West End, its gambles are paying off.Regent’s Place, a business quarter in the Euston district of central London, isn’t a likely location for a theater. Many of the buildings there are the offices of global corporations. The glass-fronted New Diorama could easily be mistaken for one.Since it opened in 2010, the New Diorama, an 80-seat studio theater, has gained a reputation as an incubator of new talent. It presents an innovative program of work by emerging theater companies and offers the artists who work there a level of creative support that’s rare for a venue of its size, with free rehearsal space, interest-free loans and help finding funding from other sources.The theater has nurtured the careers of many small troupes, and, in some cases, its support has been transformative. This season, two shows that originated at the New Diorama are playing on the West End: “Operation Mincemeat,” a comedy musical by the collective SplitLip, and “For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy,” a piece exploring Black masculinity and mental health, created by Ryan Calais Cameron. That show, which premiered in 2021, went from the New Diorama to a run at the Royal Court Theater, before a commercial producer snapped it up.“Operation Mincemeat,” a comedy musical about British spies in World War II, began at the New Diorama and is now playing in the West End.Alex Harvey-BrownDavid Byrne, the New Diorama’s artistic director, said in an interview that it was “a theater that would support companies and collaborative work in the way that a new writing theater would support writers.”Byrne added that he always tells artists who work at the New Diorama: “We need you to ask for things that you need. And we will try to provide them.”Cameron, whose show is running at the Apollo Theater through May 7, first came to the New Diorama’s attention in 2018, when he and his company, Nouveau Riche, won the theater’s Edinburgh Untapped Award. That prize gave the young director the funding to take an earlier show, “Queens of Sheba,” to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In an interview, Cameron recalled Byrne telling him that the New Diorama’s support didn’t end with the award: It was the start of a relationship. “He really seemed like he cared about the longevity of myself and the company,” Cameron said.Then, in 2021, when many British theaters were rebounding from pandemic-related lockdowns with low-risk solo shows, Cameron went to Byrne with his proposal for “For Black Boys,” a dance-theater piece for six performers. Cameron said the theater agreed to program the show after a meeting that lasted just eight minutes.The cast of “For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy,” performing at the New Diorama in 2021. Ali Wright“New Diorama was the only venue in London willing to take that kind of risk on an artist still relatively new to the mainstream,” Cameron said.Zoe Roberts, a SplitLip member whose previous company, Kill the Beast, also received support from the New Diorama, described the theater’s decision to work with her troupe as “a leap of faith,” because SplitLip had never produced a musical before. (“Operation Mincemeat” is at the Fortune Theater through July 8.)“They held our hands through the entire thing,” Roberts said in an interview. “They’re in their office running the theater, while also helping to produce our show, and even running around with a drill fixing bits of our set, because we didn’t have someone to do that,” she said.One of the key things the New Diorama provides the artists it works with is financial assistance — and not just while they’re developing a show for its stage. In 2016, the theater started offering interest-free loans for companies who had already worked there, to offset the costs of venue hire or taking work to the Edinburgh Fringe. Roberts likened the New Diorama to “the kindest bank in the world.”Its annual budget is around $1.5 million: It receives a small subsidy from the British government, and raises the rest through philanthropy, corporate sponsorship and ticket sales. Byrne makes the New Diorama’s income go further by negotiating deals with local businesses, including hotels to host visiting troupes from outside London and a local restaurant that delivers free post-show pizzas.The New Diorama was “a theater that would support companies and collaborative work in the way that a new writing theater would support writers,” said its artistic director, David Byrne.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesOne of the biggest barriers that small theater companies face, Byrne said, is the cost of rehearsal space, which in London can be up to $60 an hour. So in 2017 the New Diorama made a deal with British Land, the property developer that owns the land that the theater stands on, to take over part of a nearby vacant building. Companies working with the New Diorama could use it as a free rehearsal space.That program was a test run for N.D.T. Broadgate, a temporary artist development complex in an empty central London office space that opened in 2021 and closed last year. N.D.T. Broadgate was also a collaboration with British Land, which again gave over the vacant real estate at no charge. Theater companies from across Britain could apply to use the space free, with the spots filled via lottery.N.D.T. Broadgate featured 16 rehearsal spaces, as well as a design studio. According to an independent report on the project commissioned by British Land and the theater, 724 small theater companies used the resources, creating 250 new shows. Cameron was one of the artists who benefited, creating a studio for Black artists within the space. “It was a kind of utopia,” he said.Byrne said that many British theater companies were struggling to get back on their feet after enforced closures during the pandemic, and that the rising cost of living had only amplified their problems. “Everyone we talked to was exhausted,” he said. Last year, he and the New Diorama’s executive director, Will Young, decided to close the theater for a season and focus on rejuvenation instead. “We wanted to send a signal that it’s all right not to continue growing,” Byrne said.“For Black Boys” cast members in a rehearsal at N.D.T. Broadgate, a temporary creative development complex that the New Diorama ran in an empty central London office space.Guy J. SandersEven though it was closed, the New Diorama continued paying artists to develop new work. It put out an open call for ensembles around Britain and received over 500 responses, Young said.The theater reopened earlier this year with “After the Act,” a musical developed during this period by the multimedia performance company Breach Theater, about the legacy of Section 28, a government policy that banned the promotion of homosexuality in British schools in the 1980s and 90s. According to the New Diorama, “After the Act” is its best-selling show to date.Not being as reliant on public funds as some organizations “means we can take really calculated swings that often pay off,” Byrne said.“It’s about pushing that creative ambition as much as possible,” he added. The New Diorama is about encouraging artists to run with their ideas, to take risks and know that “we’ve got you,” Byrne said. “You have a safety net.” More

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      With Cheers and Tears, ‘Phantom of the Opera’ Ends Record Broadway Run

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      The show’s record-breaking 35-year Broadway run came to an end on Sunday night. Its famous chandelier got a bow, and its composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, spoke after its emotional final performance.“The Phantom of the Opera” concluded the longest run in Broadway history Sunday night with a glittery final performance at which even the production’s signature chandelier, which had just crashed onto the stage of the Majestic Theater for the 13,981st time, got its own curtain call.The invitation-only crowd was filled with Broadway lovers, including actors who had performed in the show over its 35-year run, as well as numerous other artists (including Lin-Manuel Miranda and Glenn Close) and fans who won a special ticket lottery. Some dressed in Phantom regalia; one man came dressed in the character’s sumptuous Red Death costume.The final performance, which ran from 5:22 to 7:56 p.m., was interrupted repeatedly by applause, not only for the main actors, but also for beloved props, including a monkey music box, and scenic elements such as a gondola being rowed through a candelabra-adorned underground lake. After the final curtain, the stagehands who made the show’s elaborate spectacle happen night after night, were invited onstage for a resounding round of applause.“It’s just amazing, really, what has happened,” the composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, who wrote the show’s soaring score, said after the final curtain, as he dedicated the performance to his son Nicholas, who died three weeks ago.Lloyd Webber spoke alongside his longtime collaborator and the show’s lead producer, Cameron Mackintosh. They invited alumni of the original Broadway production to join them onstage, and projected onto the theater’s back wall pictures of deceased members of the original creative team, including its director, Hal Prince, as well as every actor who played the two lead roles (the Phantom as well as Christine, the young soprano who is his obsession).Andrew Lloyd Webber, center left, with Cameron Mackintosh during the curtain speech at the Majestic Theater after the final performance of the musical “Phantom of the Opera.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesToward the end of the evening, Mackintosh acknowledged the one-ton chandelier, which was lowered from the ceiling to a round of applause, and the crowd was showered with gold and silver metallic confetti, some of which dangled in ribbons from the chandelier.Hours before the curtain, fans gathered across the street, waving and taking pictures and hoping somehow to score a spare ticket. Among them was Lexie Luhrs, 25, of Washington, in a Phantom get-up: black cape, homemade mask, plus fedora, vest and bow tie, as well as mask earrings and a mask necklace. “I’m here to celebrate the show that means so much to us,” Luhrs said.On Broadway “Phantom” was, obviously, enormously successful, playing to 20 million people and grossing $1.36 billion since its opening in January 1988. And the show has become an international phenomenon, playing in 17 languages in 45 countries and grossing more than $6 billion globally. But the Broadway run ultimately succumbed to the twin effects of inflation and dwindled tourism following the coronavirus pandemic shutdown.Carlton Moe, obscured, hugs Raquel Suarez Groen before they go on the red carpet. They are both cast members in the musicalSara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt closed on an unexpectedly high note — and not just the high E that Christine sings in the title song. As soon as the closing was announced last September, sales spiked, as those who already loved the musical flocked to see it, and procrastinators realized it could be their last chance; the original February closing date was delayed by two months to accommodate demand, and the show has once again become the highest-grossing on Broadway, playing to exuberant audiences, enjoying a burnished reputation, and bringing in more than $3 million a week.“For a show to go out this triumphantly is almost unheard-of,” said Mackintosh.Jaime Samson at the theater in a Red Death costume he made himself.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAfter the final performance, the show’s company and its alumni gathered for an invitation-only celebration at the Metropolitan Club, with the show’s iconic mask projected onto a wall next to a marble staircase.The show, with music by Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Charles Hart, is still running in London, where the orchestra size was cut and the set was altered during the pandemic shutdown to reduce running costs, and it is also currently running in the Czech Republic, Japan, South Korea and Sweden. New productions are scheduled to open in China next month, in Italy in July and in Spain in October.And will it ever return to New York? “Of course, at some point,” Mackintosh said in an interview. “But it is time for the show to have a rest.” More

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      Book Review: ‘Chita: A Memoir,’ by Chita Rivera with Patrick Pacheco

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      Her new memoir finds the 90-year-old singer-dancer hungry for acclaim, but generous to others on her way to getting it.CHITA: A Memoir, by Chita Rivera with Patrick PachecoHow did Chita Rivera feel when she saw Rita Moreno, another actress of Puerto Rican descent, in the movie role of Anita that Rivera had originated on Broadway in “West Side Story”?“How dare she?” she recalls thinking in “Chita,” her playful and history-rich memoir. “That is my dress, that is my earring!” The truth is she was already kicking it up with Dick Van Dyke on Broadway in “Bye Bye Birdie” at the time. So she got over it. Then, when that show became a movie, Janet Leigh took Rivera’s part of Rosie, even after Rivera killed with “Spanish Rose,” her stereotype-bashing number, on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” (Look it up on YouTube, you won’t be sorry.)Years later the steamy role of Velma Kelly that she originated in “Chicago” for Bob Fosse went to Catherine Zeta-Jones, who won an Oscar for it. “She’s the perfect choice,” she responded when Rob Marshall, its director, checked in.Cutthroat as the acting game may be, and even harder for talent with Hispanic names long before J. Lo, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Rosie Perez and Daphne Rubin-Vega hit the scene, Rivera comes off as thirsty for recognition — but not bloodthirsty — despite the urgings of her colleagues Gwen Verdon, Fred Ebb and others to up her diva game.She occasionally takes a satisfying swipe (Paul Lynde gets a dressing-down for being nasty and so does John Lennon, of all people, when she appeared with the Beatles in 1964). But most everyone else gets a pass, including Tony Mordente, her first husband, a dancer whom she met in “West Side Story”; Lisa Mordente, their daughter; and the many loves of her life that she recalls with generosity — the restaurateur Joe Allen and Sammy Davis Jr., among them.“There’s nothing wrong with ambition,” Davis once told her. It took some time for Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero to understand that. A tomboy born in 1933 and raised in Washington, D.C., by a poised mother of mixed ancestry who worked for the Defense Department and a dapper Puerto Rican musician father who died when she was little, Rivera got a scholarship to the School of American Ballet when she was 16. She moved in with relatives in the Bronx and describes a heady time of bodegas, subways, public school and intimidating ballet instructors. Overcoming her fear of singing, she got into the national tour of “Call Me Madam” with Elaine Stritch, then on Broadway in “Guys and Dolls” and “Can-Can,” starring Verdon. With “West Side Story,” her career took off.Broadway-loving readers will appreciate the play-by-play (pun intended) of this fizzy book, written in collaboration with Patrick Pacheco, a theater-savvy journalist and TV host. It doesn’t take much to make the pages fly when you have a scene of Stritch in rehearsals with Rivera, “blowing” on the Scotch in her coffee cup, or a pre-rehab Liza Minnelli playing her daughter in “The Rink.” Essentially a good girl, despite her insistence that she has a fire-breathing alter ego, Dolores (who occasionally makes herself heard in the book), at 90, this national icon doesn’t seem to want to burn many bridges. If roles or songs were taken from her and given to others, all for the best. She doesn’t get too political either, although she does unload about what it means to play Latina characters “subjected to racist taunts,” and on her defining early role as a street-sassy Puerto Rican. When Rivera was suggested for “1491,” one of his lesser-known shows, Meredith Willson, who wrote “The Music Man,” asked, “Doesn’t she speak with an accent?” She allows that while she bumped into ethnic stereotypes, the theater world was more relaxed than Hollywood. “I wanted to be considered for a range of roles and for the most part I succeeded,” she writes.One role she never played, this upbeat memoir makes clear — the victim.Bob Morris is a frequent contributor to The Times and the author of “Assisted Loving” and “Bobby Wonderful.”CHITA: A Memoir | By Chita Rivera with Patrick Pacheco | Illustrated | 320 pp. | Harper One | $27.99 More

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      The Phantom of the Opera Is Here, Inside The Times

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      As Broadway’s longest-running show headed to a close on Sunday after more than 35 years, New York Times employees shared their memories.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.I turned to the internet a week before heading to London for the first time in the summer of 2016:“Must-dos in London,” I intrepidly typed into the search box. Alongside going to Buckingham Palace and drinking tea was “See ‘Phantom of the Opera’ in the West End.”Intrigued, I found a music video of the actors who originated the lead roles, Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman, singing “The Music of the Night” — and proceeded to play it at least 50 times a day for a week straight. (Three days in, I managed to tear myself away for long enough to watch a bootleg recording of the full production online.)My obsession only deepened when I saw the show live for the first time at Her Majesty’s Theater in London that summer, where the show had its world premiere in 1986. After a night spent dreaming of papier-mâché musical boxes in the shape of barrel organs, I returned to the box office the next day to get tickets to see the show again a few weeks later. I’ve since seen it three more times in New York, including the 35th anniversary celebration last year, as well as hundreds of other shows — a theatrical obsession for which I have “Phantom” to thank.But there will be no 40th anniversary party — at least, not in New York. The show, the longest-running in Broadway history, announced last September that it would close, citing high costs and a drop-off in audiences since the pandemic. The last Broadway performance is Sunday.Michael Paulson, the theater reporter for The New York Times, recently spent time with six devoted “Phans,” among them a man who said he had seen the show 140 times, a woman who has the address of the Majestic Theater tattooed on her midriff and a man who regularly attends shows in a mask and fedora. They shared what the show has meant to them.As it turns out, a number of Times staff members also have connections to the musical. In the accounts below, Times theater lovers reflect on their bonds with “Phantom,” including backstage tours, a post-9/11 viewing and knowing the show’s female lead. Their stories have been edited.Jordan Cohen, executive director, corporate communications“Phantom” was the first Broadway show my family and I saw after 9/11. I was 12, and I remember feeling anxious to be in Times Square. But seeing the show made me hopeful and reminded me that New York is the greatest city in the world where a production like “Phantom” can happen eight times a week, even after a tragedy. It was also one of the first shows I saw when Broadway reopened after the pandemic. The audience clapped and gave a standing ovation when the chandelier was raised.Peter Blair, editor, Flexible Editing deskWhen I was a copy editor with hours that revolved around print deadlines, I commuted to and from work in the evenings alongside people who also worked odd hours (think custodians, bartenders, nurses). One fellow commuter I got to know happened to be a stagehand for “Phantom.” Six years ago, when I told him I was taking one of my daughters to see the show for the first time, he invited the two of us backstage for a private tour before the performance. It was an experience we’ll never forget.Sherry Gao, senior engineering manager“Phantom” was the first Broadway show I saw, when a group of friends and I made a trip to New York during my freshman year at M.I.T. We didn’t have a lot of money and had to cram five of us in a hotel room, but we hit the TKTS ticket booth and ended up getting tickets to “Phantom.” Now I live in Boston, but I make sure to see a show every time I’m in New York.Robbie Magat, event and sponsorship managerIn the summer of 2016, a family friend, Ali Ewoldt, made history as the first actress of color to play Christine on Broadway. We were especially proud to see a Filipina mark this milestone. Ali took us backstage to her dressing room and gave us a full tour of the iconic set. I was surprised at how heavy her dresses were on the rack!Christine Zhang, visual editing resident, GraphicsI’m almost certain my parents named me after the female protagonist of “The Phantom of the Opera.” Like many immigrants, we adopted Americanized first names in the mid-1990s shortly after settling in the United States. My dad told me that he and my mom chose their own names out of a list of American names for “no special reason.” They had a list for me, too, and for a long time I never thought twice about my name being Christine. Until I remembered my parents’ love for the music of “Phantom.”They had gotten a tape of the “Phantom” cast recording in China. Long before we watched the Broadway show, we memorized the songs on long car rides, where we did our best to interpret the plot (mostly correctly) and took part in family karaoke sessions belting out “The Music of the Night.” When they decided to find a name for me, Christine — the name featured most prominently in the lyrics of the show — rose to the top of the list. The musical was “one of the things that put this name in our minds,” my dad said.Debra Kamin, reporter, Real EstateI saw “Phantom” for the first time when I was in the second grade, during a trip to Toronto with my parents and my sister. At the close of the first act, as the chandelier fell, I was so terrified that I dove under the seat in front of me. After the show, hoping to prevent nightmares, my father took me to the stage door and requested to see the Phantom himself, Colm Wilkinson.My father, a major Broadway buff, had seen Mr. Wilkinson play Jean Valjean in “Les Misérables,” and so he slipped him a note that said, “Mr. Wilkinson, if you keep up this ‘Phantom’ act, Javert will never find you!” Mr. Wilkinson was charmed, invited us backstage and showed me how all the props and costumes created make-believe on the stage. That night, not only did I not have a single nightmare, but my love of the theater was born. More

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      ‘Phantom of the Opera’ Fans Mourn the Record-Breaking Show’s End

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      “The Phantom of the Opera,” the longest running show in Broadway history, will give its final performance on Sunday, bringing its glittering chandelier crashing down on the stage of the Majestic Theater for the 13,981st and final time.Its success was powered by all kinds of engines, perhaps none more striking than the group of die-hard patrons who call themselves Phans. They come from all over the world, drawn by its soaring Andrew Lloyd Webber score and Gothic love story, and have devoted themselves to the show, seeing it as often as possible, of course, but also collecting memorabilia, dressing up as characters, and conversing about it online.Frank Radice, a Long Island call center operator, proposed to his wife at a “Phantom” installation inside a Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, and Tracy O’Neill of Connecticut used the show’s “All I Ask of You” as her wedding song. Elizabeth Dellario, a New York City tech worker, named her cats Christine and Erik after characters in the show. Erin Castro, a Los Angeles office assistant, makes Lego figurines of the cast. Katie Yelinek, a Pennsylvania librarian who has seen it 69 times, said, “I can honestly say I’ve shaped my adult life around going to see Phantom.”So many Phans. Meet six:Body ArtAlice DychesAlice Dyches, a singer-songwriter who fell for “Phantom” while growing up in South Carolina, expresses her love for the show with tattoos. Lucia Buricelli for The New York TimesPlenty of Phans have “Phantom” tattoos, but Alice Dyches has gotten specific with hers. Inked on her wrist are the first three notes of “Think of Me,” a beloved song in the show, and her midriff shows an address for the Majestic Theater: “245 W 44th.”Growing up in South Carolina, she fell in love with the music by watching the film; when she was six, she saw it for the first time on Broadway, on a trip with her grandparents.“The Phantom was Hugh Panaro, and he terrified me, and I kept wanting to go back,” she said.Now Dyches, 22, is a singer-songwriter, living in New York and working at a cat sanctuary on the Lower East Side. Throughout the pandemic, she worried about whether “Phantom” would survive, but once it reopened, she felt reassured.“I’m real sad — I thought I had more time to see it,” she said. “I’ve not lived a life without ‘Phantom’ being on Broadway, and there’s always been the notion that if I’m having a really crap day, I can go.”And, with that address inscribed on her abdomen, she is wryly watching what happens next.“I hope something good goes into the Majestic,” she said, “because otherwise I’m going to be screwed.”Phan ArtWallace PhillipsWallace Phillips, who said he had seen “Phantom” 140 times, creates artworks inspired by the show, and dreams of making an animated film of the musical.Lucia Buricelli for The New York TimesWallace Phillips didn’t even know what “The Phantom of the Opera” was when he dressed as the Phantom one Halloween. He was 10 years old, growing up in Silver Spring, Md.; he just thought the costume was cool.His mother gave him a cast recording and then, in 2010, brought him and his sister to see the show on Broadway.“It was eye-opening, and awe-inspiring,” he said. “I was enthralled.”Phillips is now 27, living in New York City, where he moved to study animation at the School of Visual Arts. He’s making his way as a freelance filmmaker, while working as an usher at “Hamilton.”How much does he love “Phantom”? At last count, he had seen it 140 times.Phillips expresses his Phandom through his artistry — he hopes one day to make an animated film of the musical, and meanwhile, he does concept art and drawings, some of which he signs and gives to cast members.“Despite all the times I’ve seen it, I’m always surprised, every time I’m there,” he said. “That overture! That chandelier rising! The theater transforming! It keeps me awed every time.”The NamesakeChristine SmithChristine Smith, of Bountiful, Utah, was named after Christine Daaé, a character in “Phantom.”Taylor SmithShe became a Phan.Chrisitne SmithIn elementary school in Kaysville, Utah, Christine Smith had to write a paper about where her name came from. When she asked her mom, she learned that she had been named for Christine Daaé, the young soprano at the heart of “The Phantom of the Opera.”“I wrote that I was named after some dumb opera singer,” Smith recalled.Her father, who worked graveyard shifts stocking shelves in grocery stores, listened to “Phantom” to pass the time. She didn’t understand the appeal until she saw the movie.“I know it sounds silly, but I just could tell, that was going to be my life,” she said. “I really learned to love my name.”She picked up a cast album at Walmart, started performing in school shows, and dreamed of playing Christine. Her family couldn’t afford to travel to New York, but they made it to a production in Las Vegas, which she eventually saw six times.Smith, 31, who now lives in Bountiful, Utah, finally got to see it on Broadway — twice — after the show’s closing was announced. In October, she and her husband arranged a flight layover in New York so they could see “Phantom,” and then, in January, she won a contest to see its 35th anniversary performance.“It made my ‘Phantom’ heart so happy,” she said.The GlobetrotterAlessandro BertolottiAlessandro Bertolotti, who lives south of Milan, has seen “Phantom” all over the world.Alessandro BertolottiHe has programs in many languages.Alessandro BertolottiAlessandro Bertolotti, who lives in Codogno, a small town south of Milan, has seen “Phantom” roughly 100 times: not just on Broadway and in London’s West End, but also in Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Spain and Sweden.“The most memorable evenings are those where you feel an energy in the public — something created by a fusion between the audience and the cast,” he said. “And then there are shows, like the one in Sweden, where I really enjoyed seeing a completely new staging of ‘Phantom.’”Musical theater did not initially interest Bertolotti, 67. Opera was his thing — both as a fan and a director. But two decades ago, while in the United States to work on a production of “Otello,” Bertolotti saw “Phantom” on the recommendation of a colleague.“It was a revelation,” he said. “I was fascinated by the music, by the sets, and this vortex of costumes and fast scene changes.”He is planning this summer to see a version in Trieste — the first in his native Italy — that will star the Iranian-Canadian “Phantom” veteran Ramin Karimloo.“Among all the musicals I’ve seen, ‘Phantom’ will always be the most fascinating and the most engaging,” he said. “It’s part of me now.”Phandom FROM AFARYixuan WuYixuan Wu, who grew up in Changsha, China, watching a DVD of “Phantom,” has seen it on Broadway 61 times since she moved to New York in 2021. Lucia Buricelli for The New York TimesYixuan Wu was just 11 when she stumbled across a “Phantom” DVD in a video store. She was about as far from Broadway as can be — in her hometown, Changsha, China — but the packaging caught her eye, so she rented it.She watched it over and over, and nurtured her Phandom online, streaming bootleg recordings from around the world.“I just feel like this story was calling to me,” she said.Flash forward to 2021. Wu had finished art school in China, and moved to New York to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She bought a ticket at the TKTS booth in Times Square, and finally saw “Phantom” from the right rear orchestra.“I was amazed and surprised by all the colors onstage,” she said. “You have to see it with your own eyes.”Wu, 25, has now seen the show 61 times, sometimes with a $29 standing room ticket, sometimes by winning a lottery, and once in a while by springing for a full-price seat. She collects merch (including teddy bears from the Japanese production), writes fan fiction and makes fan art (illustrations of cast members, many of which she gives to them).“Every time I go into the Majestic,” she said, “I feel like I’m home.”CosplayingPatrick ComptonPatrick Compton had not heard the term “cosplay” when he first showed up at “Phantom” in a costume.Greg MillsHe performed a scene from “Phantom” for a fundraiser at his church in Frankfort, Ky.Charlie BaglanThe first time Patrick Compton dressed as the Phantom was at a church event. His congregation in his hometown, Frankfort, Ky., was raising money with an evening of scenes from Broadway shows, and he decided to sing something from the musical.Compton, a duty officer at Kentucky’s Division of Emergency Management, had loved “Phantom” since his parents took him to see it in Louisville, and this was his moment.In the years since, Compton, 47, has taken voice lessons, recorded his own versions of “Phantom” songs, taken a weeklong workshop with “Phantom” alums and auditioned for a number of shows. He has seen “Phantom” 20 times in New York, and five times on tour.He had never heard the word “cosplay” when he started showing up to the show wearing a mask, cape, vest and fedora — he just thought it was fun. Now he’s done it several times.“To this day I have yet to figure out how a show like that can just emotionally affect you — from the very first note of the overture, you get goose bumps, and your hair stands on end,” he said. “You can’t help it. It’s addictive.”Elisabetta Povoledo More

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      ‘The Phantom of the Opera’: Thinking of a Spectacle Fondly

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      As the longest-running musical in Broadway history closes, Times critics with a lasting affection for the show take stock of its legacy.With “The Phantom of the Opera” set to play its final performance on Sunday — yes, it’s actually happening — Broadway’s longest-running show, a spectacle in residence at the Majestic Theater since 1988, still resonates with fans. The closing date was delayed by eight weeks after a surge in ticket sales.Joshua Barone, the assistant classical music and dance editor and a contributing classical music critic, was joined by the critics Alexis Soloski and Elisabeth Vincentelli in a discussion about the show’s legacy. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.ALEXIS SOLOSKI I first saw “Phantom” in Los Angeles, at the Ahmanson Theater, sometime in the late ’80s during its first North American tour. My friends and I were obsessed. We wore the T-shirts, we wore out the cassettes, we watched every Michael Crawford movie. (He also did the “Phantom” tour.) When you’re a preteen girl just on the cusp of sexuality and sexuality seems a little scary, the idea of being in thrall to some powerful man is awfully compelling. That this genius is also a murderer with some very strong incel vibes didn’t occur to me till a lot later. It remains a foundational text for me — as a critic, as a woman — but one I’m wildly ambivalent about. I love it. I love the big feelings. I can sing (badly) every tortured line. But it’s rape apology with a fog machine.ELISABETH VINCENTELLI The first and only time I saw the show was on Broadway in May 2011. I had not paid much attention to it before but loved it so much that I seriously questioned my entire life before that: Why had it taken me so long, considering that the show checks a lot of my taste boxes — bombast, over-the-top melodrama, histrionics? What’s especially surprising about my late discovery is that I had actually read the 1910 novel it’s based on, by the French pulp-fiction auteur Gaston Leroux.JOSHUA BARONE I didn’t see “Phantom” until a high school trip to New York in the mid-2000s. By then, I had read the Leroux novel, heard the cast albums and seen the 2004 Joel Schumacher film adaptation. Unfortunately, I fell asleep at the show; I was tired from a long day of sightseeing. The spectacle didn’t quite reach me at the rear mezzanine, and I was asleep by the end of “The Music of the Night.” But I’ve since gone several times — with, for better or worse, increasing affection for it.SOLOSKI That’s the thing, right? It’s in terrible taste — histrionics all the way down — but it works.The chandelier in “Phantom” is emblematic of the mega-musicals that emerged in the same period, our critic writes: the “Miss Saigon” helicopter, the “Les Miz” revolve, the absolute commitment to spectacle.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times BARONE It works, I’d say, better than most shows of terrible taste and histrionics from its time. There is, for all its historical specificity — those synths! — timelessness in its subject matter and score. It’s solidly middlebrow, and that’s a large part of its appeal. Your best bet, should you find yourself in the audience, is to just sit back and surrender to it.SOLOSKI But that’s what the Phantom wants, Josh! Fight it!VINCENTELLI I was headbanging in my seat when I saw it. I distinctly remember cackling at the insanity of it all. I love when art throws any regard for logic, taste, story to the window and goes for broke. I was also stunned by the way the score integrates rock and electronics in a way that still feels bracing. The rock energy is indisputable.SOLOSKI It does have an undeniable pull. When I hear that synthesizer launch into that descending scale, I still get literal chills.VINCENTELLI Roger Waters of Pink Floyd thought Lloyd Webber had stolen from the 1971 Pink Floyd song “Echoes” and then dissed him in “It’s a Miracle”: “We cower in our shelters with our hands over our ears/Lloyd-Webber’s awful stuff runs for years and years and years.” I live for feuds like this.SOLOSKI That’s where the music lives, right? In some unholy space between prog rock and grand opera.BARONE That’s one of the reasons we get chills. “Phantom” is often derided as a product of the big-hair, Neo-Gilded Age days of Cameron Mackintosh’s Broadway, but I think it’s just as much an artifact of 1980s postmodernism. You hear Puccini’s lush orchestration and lyricism — literally, in the case of “The Music of the Night” quoting “La Fanciulla del West” — but also rock-pop, 18th-century opera buffa and what is clearly stylized melodrama.SOLOSKI And some really dumb ballads. “Think of Me.” Ugh.VINCENTELLI Lloyd Webber had approached Tom Stoppard and Jim Steinman as potential collaborators for “Phantom.” That says a lot. (I still want to see that show!)BARONE And don’t forget that Alan Jay Lerner, before he died, was on as the lyricist! Imagine that show — perhaps one in which the ballads wouldn’t have been as banal (“Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again,” yikes) as they are as written by Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe.In the foreground, from left: the Broadway producer Cameron Mackintosh, Andrew Lloyd Webber and the director Hal Prince at the end of a 2006 performance.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSOLOSKI For me, the most perverse element is that Lloyd Webber began this show “because I was trying to write a major romantic story, and I had been trying to do that ever since I started my career. Then with the Phantom, it was there!” Let’s be clear: This. Is. Not. Romance. Even in the initial Times review, Frank Rich wrote that “Music of the Night” “proves as much a rape as a seduction.”BARONE One of the many dramaturgical question marks that hang over this show. But, strangely, that perversity is kind of what makes it an inheritor of the theatrical traditions it tries to emulate. And only because it is indebted to opera does it get away with as much as it does. Other composers — including him — have tried to copy the gothic romanticism of “Phantom,” but few have come close to his success. Opera is a medium that thrives in extremity, and Lloyd Webber follows that to a logical, undeniably entertaining degree. He found a cousin in “Sunset Boulevard,” in which he adopted a lavish Golden Age Hollywood sound in the score. But “The Woman in White”? The dead-on-arrival “Phantom” sequel “Love Never Dies”?VINCENTELLI Common wisdom has it that the show was trounced by critics when it opened, just like most mega-musicals are assumed to have been pilloried. But that’s not the case: Most of those shows have had at least mixed reviews, and most have earned tons of Tony Awards — regardless of what one thinks of the Tonys as critical arbiters, they do suggest a level of institutional and industry support. “Phantom” won seven Tonys, including best musical.SOLOSKI I think Rich was extremely fair-minded, acknowledging the deficits, and yet daring you not to enjoy it.BARONE Another favorite line from that review is, “If you don’t leave the theater humming the songs, you’ve got a hearing disability.”VINCENTELLI There was a really fascinating article in The Times in 1988 where people from the classical-music world weighed in on “Phantom.” William Bolcom, Frederica von Stade and Beverly Sills liked it a lot; Ned Rorem, not so much.BARONE Ned Rorem was witty as always, but I do think that to dismiss this music is to risk a kind of affected snobbery. It’s like saying Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky are too sentimental; in some ways that’s true, and you don’t see the same level of craft in their music as with some of their peers, but at the same time it has staying power simply because it continues to move audiences. SOLOSKI We’ve concentrated mostly on the music, but a lot of the power of “Phantom” is its visual splendor. I remember when we first saw it my mother sniffed that the Los Angeles audience applauded the set changes and chattered through the arias, but honestly, Maria Björnson’s sets and costumes are spectacular. Several of them were on display at the Museum of Broadway and the intricacy of the stitching and beading was glorious. I challenge anyone to watch “Masquerade” and not wallow in its excess.VINCENTELLI And at least they are genuinely exciting. I’ve seen people applaud massive, opulently appointed living-room sets at Manhattan Theater Club productions, and my reaction is “Oh, so we clap at Crate & Barrel showrooms now?” In his memoir, “Unmasked,” Lloyd Webber talks about how the sets actually are less grand than most people remember them. They are just very smartly designed.BARONE I was struck by this the last time I saw the show. The gilded proscenium masks — sorry to use that word — the fact that most of the scenic design is made from curtains. Draping black ones, ornately patterned ones with tassels, but curtains nevertheless.SOLOSKI Should we talk about the chandelier?BARONE Lot 666.SOLOSKI It falls … slowly, but it is definitive of the mega-musicals of this period, the “Miss Saigon” helicopter, the “Les Miz” revolve, the absolute commitment to spectacle. Spectacle gets a bad rap, but I wish more shows had the commitments and the budgets to deliver extravaganzas like these.Top 200 Broadway Shows by All-Time Sales More

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      Keith Johnstone, Champion of Improvisational Theater, Dies at 90

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      The theatrical games and performance techniques Mr. Johnstone developed became a familiar part of the acting arsenal.Early in what became a career in theater, Keith Johnstone was commissioned to write a play for a new company in England and studied up for the job by watching the troupe’s actors rehearse someone else’s play. What stood out to him was not the rehearsal techniques, but the fact that he found the sessions boring — “until the actors broke for coffee or stagehands began moving sets around the stage.”“It was only at these times that there seemed to be moments of truth on the stage,” he told The Calgary Herald many years later, in 1982. “When they resumed acting, the performers abandoned their kinetic dance and entered separate glass cages.”That realization helped fuel Mr. Johnstone’s determination that theater and the people who practiced it could benefit from more spontaneity and creativity, and from emphasizing the quest for truth over the mastery of actorly techniques.He spent the rest of his career preaching the gospel of improvisation, developing games, exercises and live shows that were the opposite of tightly scripted theater. His 1979 book, “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre,” is among the most widely used texts in the world of improvisational theater, and the Loose Moose Theater Company, which he created in 1977 after relocating to Canada, became an institution in Calgary.Mr. Johnstone died on March 11 in Calgary. He was 90.Theresa Robbins Dudeck, his literary executor and the author of “Keith Johnstone: A Critical Biography” (2013), confirmed the death.Mr. Johnstone didn’t invent improv, and he wasn’t alone in promoting the technique; the actress and educator Viola Spolin published “Improvisation for the Theater” in 1963, and troupes like the Second City in Chicago, founded in 1959, were also working the territory. But his contributions were considerable. Among Mr. Johnstone’s liveliest innovations was Theatresports, an idea he began to develop in England when he and some colleagues at the Royal Court Theater took notice of the liveliness of audiences at professional wrestling matches.“Our Royal Court audiences were like whipped dogs in comparison,” he wrote in an essay about Theatresports, “probably because once an event is categorized as ‘cultural,’ it becomes a minefield in which your opinion can damn you.”So he began honing a sort of competitive event in which teams of improvisers would try to outdo each other, with audience howling and booing encouraged and judges rating the efforts.“The judges award points by holding up cards that range from one to five,” he wrote in another book, “Impro for Storytellers” (1999). “Five means excellent, one means bad, and a honk from a rescue horn means ‘kindly leave the stage.’”He introduced Theatresports once he had relocated to Canada, and the concept caught on; variations of the games were soon being performed all over the world.“If the performance has gone well,” he wrote, “you’ll feel that you’ve been watching a bunch of good-natured people who are wonderfully cooperative, and who aren’t afraid to fail. It’s therapeutic to be in such company, and to yell and cheer, and perhaps even volunteer to improvise with them. With luck you’ll feel as if you’ve been at a wonderful party; great parties don’t depend on the amount of alcohol, but on positive interactions.”Mr. Johnstone in the mid-1960s. Early in his career, he determined that theater and the people who practiced it could benefit from more spontaneity and creativity.Mary Evans/Roger Mayne, via Everett CollectionDonald Keith Johnstone was born on Feb. 21, 1933, in Brixham, on England’s southwestern coast, to Richard and Linda (Carter) Johnstone. When he was 9 or so, he decided to stop taking things at face value.“I began reversing every statement to see if the opposite was also true,” he wrote in his 1979 book. “This is so much a habit with me that I hardly notice I’m doing it anymore. As soon as you put a ‘not’ into an assertion, a whole range of other possibilities opens out.”He trained as a teacher at St. Luke’s College in Exeter and began teaching at a primary school in South London. When he won a prize in a short-story contest, the English Stage Company, a new troupe based at the Royal Court, invited him to write a play for it, which he did: “Brixham Regatta,” which Patrick Gibbs of The Daily Telegraph thought was, for a 25-year-old novice, “a creditable — and ambitious — first play.” More important, he joined a writers’ group at the Royal Court and found himself leading improvisational exercises for the group.Published in 1979, Mr. Johnstone’s “Impro” is among the most widely used texts in the world of improvisational theater.He spent 10 years at the Royal Court, leading classes and workshops, screening scripts and producing plays. In July 1959 Mr. Johnstone and William Gaskill produced a largely improvised one-night show called “Eleven Men Dead at Hola Camp,” featuring Black actors ad-libbing scenes about an infamous 1959 massacre of detainees by British troops in Kenya. Alan Brien, reviewing the performance in The Spectator, was not on board with the concept, saying that it “shows the Royal Court in its most militant, inept, radical, ambitious and pretentious mood.”“‘Eleven Men Dead at Hola Camp’ was neither good rhetoric nor good theater,” Mr. Brien wrote. “But if it sent the audience home to study the facts, it will have been worthwhile. And if it sent the producers home reconvinced that acting discipline and writing economy are the heart of drama, then it will also have been worth while.”It did not “reconvince” Mr. Johnstone of that. He continued to develop his improvisation exercises and in the mid-1960s formed an improvisational troupe, the Theater Machine, which performed all over England as well as abroad.In 1972 Mr. Johnstone was offered a two-year visiting professorship at the University of Calgary in Alberta. He ended up staying at the university for 23 years, taking emeritus status in 1995.An early performance by his Loose Moose company, in 1977, was a version of “Robinson Crusoe” that, from Louis B. Hobson’s enthusiastic review in The Calgary Albertan, sounds as if it came close to replicating that professional-wrestling excitement Mr. Johnstone had longed for.“The audience, which is seated in a semicircle, becomes everything from shark-infested waters to offstage spirit voices,” he wrote. “It is a stormy, noisy sea that surrounds Crusoe’s island, and one that never calms down for the play’s 40 minutes.”Mr. Johnstone’s marriage to Ingrid Von Darl ended in divorce in 1981. He is survived by a son from that marriage, Benjamin; a son from another relationship, Dan; and a grandson.Mr. Johnstone’s books and methods have been used in high school classrooms and drama clubs, professional acting workshops and anyplace else where creativity needs to be unlocked and spontaneity encouraged. A passage in his 1979 book describes what set him on the improvisational path.“I began to think of children not as immature adults,” he wrote, “but of adults as atrophied children.” More