‘Phantom’ gets refreshed for new touring production

On Broadway, “The Phantom of the Opera” is legendary.

The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical remains the longest-running show (11,000-plus performances since 1988) and even though it was recently surpassed by “The Lion King” as the highest-grossing stage production worldwide ($6.2 billion to “Phantom’s” $6 billion), the enigmatic love story remains a trailblazer.

Last year, a refreshed touring version of the show debuted in Rhode Island, after a year spent traversing the U.K.

The tweaks and refinements made to the show are only reflected in the road version — those heading to New York or the West End in London will see an unchanged production.

But the revitalized “Phantom” heads to the Fox Theatre on Oct. 22, where it will set up its dangling chandelier through Nov. 2.

Everything about the show, produced by Cameron Mackintosh and directed by Laurence Connor, remains grand: The production travels in 20 trucks (“A small city,” joked associate director Seth Sklar-Heyn), and the cast and orchestra total more than 50.

But the featured actors in the show are new to this touring version.

Cooper Grodin, formerly the “Phantom” understudy and ensemble member Joseph Buquet, has starred as the titular masked character since the beginning of the year, and his love interest and opera ingenue, Christine Daaé, is portrayed by relative newcomer Julia Udine.

In an interview on Oct. 14, Sklar-Heyn talked about what audiences can expect from this edition of “Phantom.”

On what has and hasn’t changed about the production:

“The writing hasn’t changed, the characters are the same. We haven’t taken away the spectacle; we haven’t taken away the high grandeur of what people have come to love about ‘Phantom.’ But we’ve made the characters a little more rounded and grounded within the same world.

“We have a large unit that exists in the center of the stage, like a big cylinder, a massive U-shaped wall that can split apart. It’s an amazing piece of machinery and it allows us to seamlessly crossfade from one environment into another.

“You really get the sense that this is a man who lives in the bowels of this building and had created for himself a life … it allows us to see a real man who is suffering from a deformity and has to find a way to endure. If anything, it makes the love story that much more exposed and raw. You’re seeing a real man who wants to find connection and healing and solace through a relationship with this girl. The story hasn’t changed.

“A lot of people will ask what’s different, but more is the same than not. We know audiences have fallen in love with a story and themes and characters and Andrew’s music and it’s that music that is the foundation on which all of this exists.”

And about that storied chandelier …

“It’s an ever-present character in the story. The audience expects it to be there as an active member of the ensemble. It’s been engineered now technologically in a way that never could have been done 26 years ago on Broadway. When the ‘event’ happens at the end of Act 1, there is always a gasp, there is always a reaction, and it’s wonderful to see because people are expecting it to have an effect.”

On tweaks to scenic design and sound quality:

“It was a brilliant choice to maintain the (Tony-winning) costume designs of Maria (Björnson). The characters look the way they expect them to look, but the environment around them has been reshaped and refreshed.

“The orchestration has changed, because we’re playing with different orchestras in every city. But the goal was to make it sound as it’s always sounded, but using different instruments in different places. What this production has done is reinvest in the sound design and try to bring a freshness to that aural experience. It’s rare more often than not for audiences to come in and experience an orchestral sound. That’s something ‘Phantom’ has been known for. Audiences might not notice a difference, but I hope they notice a clarity.”