Phantom of the Opera

Title: Phantom of the Opera

Author: Andrew Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe

Genre: Play

Time: 1.8 hours

2015 Book Challenge: a play

I first wanted a Shakespeare play for this one but I figured, all those old English-type writing/dialogue would make reading one twice as long and I really want to finish all the challenges this year.  So I opted for something written more recently.

 

Of course, I’ve heard of this play already and even have a vague idea of how one of the chorus of the songs go but I never really knew the full story.  I thought the “phantom” was like the Quasimodo character in the Hunchback of Notre Dame, you know, really friendly but stayed away from people because they are intolerant of his deformity.  But, nope, this guy was malicious and obsessive.

 

I can’t tell if his was really a ghost as the other characters believed him to be or just plain human with a deformity and got plain crazy.  I don’t know if the non human-y stuff he did should be taken literally or metaphorically.  But that was probably not the point as this is supposed to be a musical play. 

 

I guess, because this was meant to be enjoyed as a musical play (and not as a book), this was probably meant to invoke all kinds of emotions and reactions with the story intertwined with the music and set display/effects.  This was not about getting all the details like the who was the phantom? what made him that way? what was his real name? why motivated him to do what he did? why Christine of all people? what happened to him in the end?

 

I can really picture out how that would be an amazing musical… the light effects, the music and instruments and good actors… good story for a makings of a good book…