Read the full story here: https://bit.ly/2MiMPto
See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos
Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km
Jonathan Roxmouth on how he gets into the mindset of an iconic role
#PhantomOfTheOpera #theatre #Dubai
See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos
Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km
Jonathan Roxmouth on how he gets into the mindset of an iconic role
#PhantomOfTheOpera #theatre #Dubai
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00If they say to you, oh I never bothered looking at Crawford, they're lying.
00:04It's his role. I'm renting it from him at the moment but it's his role. It always will be.
00:11What's really exciting about this version is the show's been around for 32 years,
00:16okay, so it's been around as long as I've been alive. There are certain ways of doing
00:20things that were amazing in the 80s that, you know, were kind of cool in the 90s
00:26and were good in the 2000s and now that we're in the 2010s, it's just like,
00:30so they've updated it. Not that the show's ever been, but the technology available to us now
00:37means that they've added all sorts of technological advancements that keep the
00:41show state-of-the-art. A lot less hand cranking, everything is far more digitized, the scenes are
00:46slicker, they happen much faster now. Our chandelier is now the fastest, so I'm not going
00:55to tell you why that matters because some people don't know the show, but at the end of Act One
00:59there's something really cool that happens, but it's better with speed. The show, the first time
01:02we ran it, we've got lots of people in the cast who've done the show before and even they were
01:08going, I've never seen it look like that before or sound like this. We've got a new orchestration,
01:13that sounds incredible. We have a wonderful conductor, you know, it makes such a difference,
01:18a lot of shows are tracked now and we have a conductor conducting the orchestra right there.
01:22Everything is, as people know, Phantom. It's the original production, but just shiny. We went into
01:29rehearsal and for reasons that are not necessarily necessary to go into now, our Phantom got sick
01:36and we had our first preview and they came to me at the end of that first preview and they said,
01:42look, our Phantom's going to step out for a while, would you be interested in being the Phantom
01:47indefinitely? When I woke up, I was the Phantom and I went on and from that our Phantom left the
01:58production eventually. 32 years on Broadway means something. It has to, you know,
02:04you don't, musicals that get lucky don't run for 32 years. Musicals that mean something do
02:12and I think the answer is very simple. Phantom's become an heirloom that families pass down
02:17through generations. I was one of those kids. I got it as a, you know, when I was five or six,
02:22I got it as a gift that was passed down by my grandfather. The music is timeless. I think the
02:27fact that it's not set in a relatable time helps. It's far away from our reality, but it's passed
02:36on through generations. It's become part of theatrical initiation, I suppose. If you haven't
02:45seen a Broadway show, nine times out of ten, people take their kids to Phantom. Above that,
02:51it's a story about what makes us human in the first place. It's about love. Who doesn't have
02:57an opinion on that? Who hasn't been touched by that? Who hasn't experienced that or been denied
03:02that? People who don't know the story, who don't know anything, have the same reaction as the fans
03:07who've watched it from day one. That means something and it doesn't matter what language
03:12the show's in. That's what's so amazing. It doesn't matter. That means something. There's
03:19enough in this role that I could play this for 10 years and still never get it right.
03:24There's so many layers, there's so much there that you never get it 100% right in every performance.
03:31It's so addictive that you want to try again and get it right and then you have 96% and then you
03:36try again. My next dream role, please God, will be written for me when I meet the composer one day.
03:43I had two people that inspired me for different reasons. Number one, anybody who plays this role,
03:49if they say to you, oh, I never bothered looking at Crawford, they're lying. It's his role. I'm
03:55renting it from him at the moment, but it's his role. It always will be. So inevitably there are
04:00things about him that just come out in the music. Even if you just think of the first lines of music
04:06that Nighttime sharpens, everybody does it. It goes, Nighttime, that's Michael Crawford.
04:11It's written that way because of the way he did it. So you have to defer to that in some way.
04:16There will always be elements of Crawford in every phantom. I don't care what anybody says.
04:21The other person that inspired me was Leonard Bernstein, the conductor, because I'm obsessed
04:26with hands and he expresses music through his hands all the time. And there's a scene in the
04:32show where it's just my hands, everything else is covered up. I'm in a big cloak with a hood
04:37and that's all you have to express to the audience. And without realizing it,
04:42when I watched footage of myself later, when the director said, I just want to show you something,
04:47I was doing Bernstein without even realizing it. I was like, oh my gosh, it's so funny what comes
04:51to the surface. So consciously Crawford, subconsciously Leonard Bernstein. I think
04:57it would be easy to say, why shouldn't they? The reason why they shouldn't is they shouldn't give
05:03into the hype that's been around for 32 years. They shouldn't see what everybody else is talking
05:08about and they shouldn't come and sit in one of the most beautiful opera houses I've ever seen
05:13and watch one of the most perfect shows for this venue. Reasons they should? Very simple, it's Phantom of the Opera.