Kenny and Karen Etra, two of the kindest and most generous people I know, took me to see The Phantom of the Opera in January of 2003, with the idea that it would become the upper-camp/staff show to follow in the spectacularly-successful footsteps of Jesus Christ Superstar and Les Misérables. I had never seen Phantom before and was not familiar with its score, but by intermission I was humming "Angel of Music" and by the time it was over, as challenging as I knew it would be, I was more than convinced that we could attempt this in camp.

Unlike Les Mis, Phantom has a very small cast, so it was not quite as easy as it had been the year before to divide the major roles between campers and staff. The primary leads, Phantom and Christine, are extraordinarily challenging vocally (though I still think Judas and Jean Valjean are harder to sing than Phantom), so those roles went to staff members. Sarah Davis, the theatre program choreographer, had the best singing audition and the highest range, so she was cast as Christine. For obvious reasons, the role of Christine's lover Raoul the Vicomte de Chagny would also have to go to a staff member; it went to Aussie David Stagg, who had impressed the year before in Les Mis. Liz Sherwyn, a newcomer to camp and a terrific performer, got the part of soprano Carlotta Giudicelli, while the role of tenor Ubaldo Piangi went to a camper, Michael Warren, he of the exceptional singing voice.

Other campers and staff sang well in auditions too; Greg Sarafan, now a senior, and counselor Terrell Hart played theatre owners Firmin and André. Mark Hartenstein could still sing, but unfortunately we didn't have a singing role for him so he played Lefevre, the departing owner, and later appeared in the ensemble. Senior Michelle Kremer and counselor Cheryl Giles played chorus girl Meg Giry and her dance-instructor mother, respectively. Of course the comic-relief role of Joseph Buquet went to Shannon Crockett, and a newcomer to the theatre, Steven Samols, gave some interesting comic nuance to the role of opera director Reyer.

For this show, we once again used the plain black backdrop on the stage, but here we needed the entire theater space to really bring home the horror effect. I tried to emphasize the horror element more than the romance in our version, and having the Phantom sneak around, pop up and deliver some of his dialogue and singing from all parts and all corners of the theatre certainly helped in that sense. We made our most extensive use yet of lighted candles, which essentially provided all of the light on stage during "Phantom of the Opera" and "Music of the Night." Unfortunately, one of the air-conditioning units, new in the theatre that year, was turned back on after we turned it off prior to the show, and it blew out some of the candles on its side of the stage. (There were a lot of lighting-tech mistakes in this show, where the stage was darker than we originally intended, but in most cases it worked to our advantage, with the exception of one instance toward the end where the Phantom sang to Christine on stage in total darkness.)

A wooden boat on wheels, which had been constructed for but not used in The Little Mermaid, was very useful here, although we went to great pains trying to figure out a way to propel it from the back of the theatre to the front, ultimately (and exasperatedly) deciding to simply have two of the male staff cast members crouch down and push/pull it along the uneven floor in the narrow aisle. Nothing else we tried, including "rowing" the thing with a staff or pulling it with a long rope, worked. Howard and company also constructed for us a brilliant wood-and-rope-light chandelier, which we suspended over the forestage, raised and lowered using a climbing rope cleated to the wall on the left-hand side. The electrical cord that powered it ran up and down the opposite side, and was set up to coil inside the chandelier as it was raised; unfortunately it was raised too quickly during the opening scene and a loop of the orange cord hung grotesquely from one side throughout the first act.

If it seems like there were a lot of technical glitches in this show, there were; in fact I was so annoyed by them during the performance that I could barely concentrate, and I must confess I initially thought the show was terrible. But the feedback was, as always, very positive, and then when I watched the video I realized that it had actually been a very good production, and as mentioned even the scenes where the lights didn't come on properly looked very good in the dim light of the candles and chandelier. When you realize the old theatre truism that the audience doesn't know when you've made a mistake unless you telegraph it to them, there were actually very few noticeable problems or technical mistakes.

Phantom was the last show where we had staff members in principal roles, ending a brief but very successful era. I still think both Jesus Christ Superstar and Les Misérables were superior, this was still an excellent show that rounded out yet another successful summer in the theatre.

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