Phantom of the Opera

"Zoom-thru" of The Phantom of the Opera US Tour
Went to see Phantom of the Opera Thursday night at Keller auditorium. I didn't really enjoy it. I hadn't slept well the previous night and I spent several hours standing around attending a house inspection in North Portland so I was doubly tired. Really, all I wanted was a drink and bed.

The sets, being mechanical things, connected with my inner gear head, so there was that. Keller has a turntable within the stage and they made good use of it, rotating castle walls to the front to convey you to the depths of the Paris sewers (how romantic to take your girl for a ride in a Venetian gondola through the water filled tunnels under the theater). The happy couple descended from the top of the top along a flight of steps, each step being projected from the wall just in time for them to step on it. This wall is big, and this theater troupe is on tour, so when they have finished their run in Portland, the roadies are going to have to take all this stuff apart and load it into trucks to haul it to the next town. Somebody put a fair amount of work into designing and building these sets.

The turntable must be a fairly standard feature in theaters now, for them to build a set that was obviously meant to be used with one. I suspect the turntable may have more than one moving part. I believe I saw a show once where the outer edge of the turntable was turning in one direction while the center was turning in another. I didn't see any evidence of that Thursday night, and I am not positive I have actually seen it before. But I wouldn't put it past them.

I looked for a video that had some of the show, but the only ones I found were either bootlegs with poor sound, the wrong production, or full on promotional barrages. I like this one with the behind the scenes shots.