Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera, produced by Cameron Mackintosh and The Really Useful Group, is the longest-running show in Broadway history and one of the most successful stage productions of all-time. It had its world premiere at London’s Her Majesty’s Theatre on October 9, 1986 and the New York production opened at Broadway’s Majestic Theatre on January 26, 1988. It became the longest-running show in Broadway history seventeen years ago, on January 9, 2006. After three and half decades, it celebrated its unprecedented 35th anniversary on Broadway on January 26, 2023, marking its 13,890th performance at the Majestic. In that time, Phantom has been the largest single generator of income and jobs in Broadway and U.S. theatrical history. For the New York production alone, an estimated 6,500 people have been employed during its 35-year run. The New York production cost a record $8 million in 1988. The same production today would cost $20 million. There are 125 cast, crew, orchestra members and house personnel directly involved in each performance. On April 16, 2023, when it will take its final curtain call on Broadway, the NY production will have played a staggering nearly 14,000 performances to an unheard of 20 million people and grossed nearly $1.3 billion.
The Phantom of the Opera is widely considered one of the most beautiful and spectacular productions in theater history with its lavish sets, costumes and gorgeous lighting. Directed by the late, legendary Harold Prince, with musical staging and choreography by the late Gillian Lynne. The Phantom of the Opera’s simply stunning production design (costumes and scenery) is by the late Maria Björnson, and the elegant lighting design is by Andrew Bridge.
To mark this historic closing PLSN caught up with three of the lighting team who have continuously worked on the Phantom’s Broadway production since the very beginning: Lighting Designer, Andrew Bridge; Associate Lighting Designer Vivien Leone; and Head Electrician Alan Lampel.
Andrew Bridge,
Lighting Designer
Thirty-five years on Broadway and it still looks as beautiful as the day it opened. Your design has really stood the test of time.
I’ve been over quite a few times and I’ve always sat there amazed how it just hasn’t changed. Alan and the whole crew have looked after it so well. Of course, the American Broadway system always does that quite well. The crews in New York pride themselves on repetition and everything working correctly. Our crew at the Majestic, Alan and all of them are wonderful. They can maintain a 400-lamp fixture rig, easy-peasy and you can eat your dinner off the floor underneath, it’s immaculate. They definitely take pride in maintaining that show. I think they’ve done an extraordinary job of keeping it going, which is lovely. Of course, nobody knew it was going to last this long, to be honest.
In New York, over the years it’s been a very interesting task for us, trying to keep things the same but also deal with, things like manufacturers going away. Conversations of, “Oh my God, have you got any more bulbs for those beam lights that we imported from Germany?’ , with Vivien saying, ‘I think we’ve got three left.’ They are still our followspots in New York and when we closed London during COVID, we found in the basement some more of those crown silver bulbs and sent them over to New York. Plus, they found in the basement somewhere in New York another box of eight. So we sighed and thought, ‘Well, we’ve got another two years.’ If we weren’t closing we were going to need to work out what followspots we would have to change to in the next two years, when we ran out of bulbs. It has been things like that. Over the years, we went from Coloram scrollers to Rainbow scrollers and now I think we’ve swapped out to [ETC] Lustrs, so it’s the same job, but we just have to keep things moving along. But it costs a lot to make the changes. Luckily we have a lot of the same equipment, as I said the crew in New York has been wonderful keeping it all overall running, it is superb the way they maintained the rig for 35 years.”
It is a very elegant design, very purposeful. Tell us a bit about the design itself.
Maria [Björnson], Hal [Prince] and I wanted to reproduce the feeling of a very old way of lighting in the Paris Opera House. At the time period of Phantom, they were on the cusp of using electricity instead of gas lamps. So, we kept that sort of gaslight feel. And then of course, we reproduced a lot of that in our hanging positions as well. We invented the MR16 battens, which went vertically up the booms off-stage to give great big washes to cloths as they did in the tormentors in Paris. They had lots of gas there, they had lots of fires as well, but that’s how they lit the cloths and we tried to keep that positional feel in our design. Without the gas, we used tungsten lighting, which gives you a lovely sort of warm atmosphere. And over the years we have struggled to maintain that color a lot of the time. I never want any of it to look too modern. With the LED stuff, now ETC’s stuff is brilliant, but in the beginning when some of the LEDs were coming out they just weren’t the right color. They were too, what I call acrylic, too harsh. So much of the kit available has changed over time.
When we first put it on, we were breaking quite a few conventions for theater in those days. We invented radio control, we invented the MR16 light curtains, the Birdies, or mini PAR cans. We had a lot of new stuff, for the time, mixed with some of the older stuff which we had to use because the budget wouldn’t allow us to have a completely brand new rig. But we did have a lot of innovation in those days, I suppose a lot of it was quite cutting edge when we came into New York. We had a big rig, but in New York terms, it wasn’t the biggest. For a lot of designs, the way you had to work in New York in those days, was you had to almost have a lamp absolutely everywhere, because you couldn’t afford to add anything later on. So a lot of the rigs back then were massive. However for Phantom, Maria, Hal and I had worked out the scenes in detail, so I didn’t need a massive lighting rig to cover all eventualities. There weren’t going to be those kind of changes, and there really couldn’t be; there was no room in the rig.
In New York there’s just inches up there. In the rig. I mean, if I wanted to add a barn door to a lamp, you’ve got no chance. If I wanted to pull a shutter out you’d have to bend it because it’s metal on metal up there. The flying grid is just chock full. There were times Vivien said she would hear a twang when scenery was going in and out and knew a shutter just got hit. We’re talking a shutter got hit, it is that tight. To try and even think of putting a moving light in there would be pretty difficult. There is no room and it all has a specific purpose, so, you can’t muck about with it really. So, I am sad that it’s closing on Broadway, but in a way, Vivien and I, in a couple of years, we would have had some serious problems because we cannot put the new kit within the hanging plot of the Majestic Theater. There is no room for moving lights, every inch is used with lights and scenery.
Is there a scene or sequence that you’re particularly proud of?
For me, the opening is what stands out. When we start, the house lights snap off, which is a very unusual thing. There’s no overture and we’re straight into a very atmospheric auction, which is almost like a funeral scene. And from that moment, at the auction, then we fly back in time, and we get to basically the opera rehearsal. And then we go from that to the gala and then we go to backstage. Those first 23, 24 minutes, I have my heart in my hand always. It’s absolutely constant stuff and there are so many potential show stops that you hold your breath until we almost get to the lair, which is the journey of the boat and the traveling bridge, with the dry ice and 200 candles and all that. Once we get through that, then I can go to the bar. But up to that point, one little thing could go wrong and it all goes wrong. The thing about Phantom is it was a really closely choreographed piece regarding the scenery moving and scene changes. And each light is precise for those scenes and moves, if the dressing room scene, which is a little truck coming behind a scrim, with one light hitting the doorway, now if the stage crew haven’t put that light or that truck in exactly the right position, that light on the doorway is instead going to light the stage crew pushing the truck on. If the drape doesn’t come down in the right time, you will see the fans in the mirror and so on and on with things like that. It’s a very detailed choreography of scenery and lighting working in tandem.
I think the way that Hal worked and the way Maria worked, that the scene changes and the fluidity in and out of scenes was just as important as the scene. And I think a lot of shows have great scenes, but then they haven’t quite worked out the transitions. And a lot of the shows are too bright as well. I mean, I find that Phantom at times, the light bulbs last because we never put them at full. In Phantom one of my favorite scenes is actually the dressing room when you have the ballerinas rehearsing upstage in a sort of glowing backstage light and uplit from footlights. And then there is a gas lamp on the table lighting Christine’s face. It’s a wonderful snapshot of backstage life in the 1800’s. I like that scene quite a lot.
Any other thoughts on the closing of Phantom on Broadway?
It’s a shame because I think the opulence of the show and the old way of doing things manually with humans is slightly more aesthetically pleasing to me than automation. I like the way that a manual drape is flown and things are just slightly different each night, it’s a bit more organic. So the opulence and the way it is choreographed on stage, the scene changes and all that, we will miss that. There aren’t many shows that can do that now. We have something like 150 people working each performance. You can’t do Broadway shows today with that size crew, cast and a 27-piece orchestra, it’s just not viable. So, I think we’ll all miss the opulence of that kind of Broadway show. For 35 years, the New York Phantom has continued to do this well choreographed show, theater done at the very highest level of operation. Watching backstage, it’s like seeing a big schooner ship being beautifully handled by a crew. It’s a work of art to see onstage and backstage, and I think we’ll miss it that. I don’t know we will see a Broadway show like it, as opulently done again. Mostly though, I will miss the people, I will miss the whole Broadway crew.
Vivien Leone,
Associate Lighting Designer
With a show that’s run this long, talk a little bit about maintaining the lighting design.
I started out as the assistant lighting designer and then I took over as associate about 15 years ago. Today, my job is to go in with a fresh set of eyes, periodically, to make sure that the show is maintaining its original intent. And, I would just like to say that Alan Lampel and the crew have just done an amazing job of maintaining the show, and the equipment specifically. What we have now is lighting equipment that literally spans three and a half decades. So, the most challenging part for me has been to continue to keep a coherent look even though the equipment is being mixed across decades. It was very interesting because certainly in 35 years things break and are no longer made and need to be replaced with something that was not originally on the show. That of late has become more of a challenge because of the pretty extensive changes that have occurred in the business, primarily going from incandescent to LED, it’s been challenging to blend it all.
As technology has marched on, what’s changed and what’s stayed the same?
Well, certainly when the show started, they had not invented DMX or color scrollers, so those were two of the first big things that we changed, adding color scrollers, certainly. At one point we changed out the carbon arc followspots because we did not have a reliable source for carbon rods. You never quite know when something is going to stop working, or stop being accessible, to keep the show running.
Talk about the process of switching from scrollers to LEDs? How was that?
I’m going to go with painful. It was very, very difficult for me to replace, not the scrollers to LEDs, it’s the incandescent to LEDs. I want to be really clear that that’s where the problem is, it’s in the source. It was very hard for me on a number of levels. We went with ETC Lustr IIs. It was a little bit scary trying not only to match color, but to match color throughout the redshift. Especially in Phantom where 25% to 45% is an actual real level in the show. We go from 60 to 25% within a scene, and it was just really difficult to keep that incandescent feel. We did end up going with HSIC mode on the Lustrs.
In addition to the LED Lustr IIs, there is still a mix of Source Four incandescent and still some 360Qs.
There’s KL units, there’s 360Qs, there’s Mizars. Really, when I say it’s a mix of three and a half decades worth of lighting equipment it really is. We don’t change out gear unless it really is non-supported, unless it’s really going to endanger our being able to present the show. We’ve kept a lot of the old equipment; it’s really become a living a museum. And it’s still, I think, the only Broadway show with no moving lights on it.
What are some of your favorite memories from working on Phantom?
I think my favorite memory is the first time we teched the overture—the very first thing we teched. It was the very first time I saw it; I was just completely gobsmacked by it. It felt like it went on for 20 minutes. I remember sitting there with my mouth open and at a certain point in time, I thought to myself, ‘why is the designer not saying anything?’ Because I’d never worked with a designer that wouldn’t be yelling out channel numbers. I looked over and Andy was looking at us assistants, and at the end, when it was over, I said to him, ‘Did you have notes or…’ And he was like, ‘No, I just wanted you guys to really see it uninterrupted,’ which I thought was just one of the loveliest things, that he recognized what a special thing it was to see and allowed us that time.
Talk a little bit about working with Andy on the show.
He’s great to work with. My job was to do the track sheets, and back then my memory was very good, so I had all of the channels memorized and I was just writing. In keeping track sheets, I literally could visualize what the stage looked like because I knew what light was being brought up and to what level. I would be able to just keep my head down, tracking everything, and have a pretty good idea of what the stage would look like, believe it or not, it’s true. But then Andy would call out channels and I would have to pop my head up going, ‘What? What is that going to look like?’ He would always surprise me. I loved that he would then bring something up just to see what it did, and if it didn’t work, he would just take it out. To me, he was completely fearless. His ability to just play and see what happened was really fun. But it was so funny because, at a certain point, I would hear him call out a channel and I would think, ‘that’s never going to work’. And I’d pop my head up to look at it and we would both at the same time go, ‘Nah.’ Or I would go, ‘Oh wow, that’s great.’ It was a lot of fun that way. That’s the thing I love about him a lot, is his willingness to play with the light and to explore and to do beautiful things.
The design is specific, it is what makes it so beautiful, I have always thought. If something’s missing, I imagine it is obvious.
I’m going to go one step further. If it’s slightly out of focus, you know it. Which is why maintaining the show for 35 years has been really very important. There’s a lot of oblique focusing in the show, a lot of cross lights, especially on the drapes, and even the drops. So, if it’s not right on, it really stands out. I just find oblique focus is very specific. It requires real fine-tuning.
Alan and the crew really deserve a huge amount of credit because it’s not an easy show to maintain. It’s very tight to this day. I can hear the shutters twanging from scenery hitting into it, especially during tech. I mean, that was the other thing that got me to pop my head up from the track sheets was hearing those shutters getting hit. Between the amount of space that they have for the whole show to exist in, and also the type of equipment and the age of the equipment, they just do an amazing job.
Is there anything else you want to say about the closing of Phantom?
Well, I’m having trouble putting words to it. I’m really emotional about it if I can be honest. But mostly I’m emotional. Emotional for so many different reasons, but I also think about how a show that looks like that is never going to be seen again. Everybody has their own opinion about it, but I do think it is quite beautiful and there will never be another one like it.
Alan Lampel,
Head Electrician
You have been on Phantom since the very beginning. Did you ever think that Phantom would run for so long?
No, I had no idea. It’s sort of unbelievable, but there was something really special about this show, certainly. Before I started on Phantom, the longest running show I was on was 35 weeks. The threshold was A Chorus Line, which hadn’t quite finished by the time we opened, but when it closed, most of us didn’t think that we were going to catch it.
How did you end up operating the show from the front of house?
Phantom was one of the very first shows to put the console out in the front of house for the vantage point. That really is quite a technical thing unto itself. Before that, the shows I worked on, the console was in the trap room under the stage, or on a shelf stage left. On this show it was out front so that the board operator could fashion the dry ice fog. Also, the strobes during the overture, which play a big part, were played live by me, so you had to have some feeling of what was going on onstage too.
How has lighting technology changed over time and what’s stayed the same on the show?
This is the end of the use of the [Altman] 360Q on Broadway. In these last 10 years, it’s tough to get parts unless I’m buying directly from Altman, because PRG just stopped stocking them. Especially ones that had the double locking tilt. We still have plenty of the original 360Qs. I do have to say that that incandescent field of light has gone away; it is now a thing of the past. It was a big change for me when the ETC Source Fours came along, but we used them specifically to replace certain lamps. Source Fours replaced a majority of the pattern units.
Maintaining the show is tough because it’s a very specific design. Each scene has very few lights in it. So, when something is missing, it’s very obvious. However, also because it is so specific, it is a joy to work on and to maintain. It is a straightforward show, quite frankly, it was just a delight to work on these 35 years. We all took a lot of pride in maintaining it.
There was a big changeover right before you reopened after Covid, right?
We changed out the DHA Light Curtains. Several of the moves on the Light Curtains were driven by an antenna rotator on one end of the pipe so the five units would move at once. We replaced them with GLP FR 10 Bars. They are lovely and certainly mix beautiful color. Also, during the restart we went with [ETC] Lustr IIs to replace all color scrollers, because they went out of fashion. We used scrollers until we closed for Covid. On our return, the Lustr IIs took those places as well as a handful of specials used in “Masquerade”, just to bring in new color. Well, not so new, but freshly mixed color that we did right there in the theater, comparing the LED fixtures with scrollers. We also replaced two of the PANI Beamlight followspots with two ETC Source Four 19 with an iris.
The fog has stayed the same. You’re still using the City Theatrical dry ice foggers?
The original units were 55-gallon shop-built units that didn’t last; very early on we switched over to the City Theatrical SS6000 Dry Ice Foggers and those are still what we are using. Running the fog, is one of my favorite things to do on the show, I have to say. With the board out in the front, it was like performing. There’s something really alive about this show from beginning to end. Probably one of those things that you won’t see a lot of again.
Have the candles changed or are they still the same?
They’re still the same ones from Howard Eaton Lighting. Some of them are in fact, vintage from the original show. They’re treasured, but their color is so different, as they age, they just get a little darker than what you buy straight from Howard Eaton. I repair them, because I’ve been doing that for three decades too, you don’t just throw them out. They’re too expensive to do that. I’d rather not have to throw away a lot of electronics when it’s simple enough to repair.
What are some of your favorite memories from working on Phantom?
There’s a lot of years of memories. It’s a combination… Look, every day is every day; the show goes on or has hiccups. I’d say the big celebrations, such as passing Cats for instance for longest running show, that was quite a special moment at 18 and a half years. Also, because life moves on, I think about all of the people that we memorialized at The Majestic over our set and stage; there were a lot. I have to say, those are my biggest memories, other than just doing the show every day. There are so many things to speak about and try to pull out of the air; it would be a little easier if I only did 10 years of Phantom. Also, working with Andrew. I think the design itself is brilliant, and we don’t see Andrew enough, of course. Andrew is a wonderful guy and he’s always given me a lot of space and a lot of room to converse and to talk about things.
Anything else you want to say about the closing of Phantom?
When they announced the closing, it was quite a shock. The emotions really flowed, but I quickly decided that I’m here to the end. I decided to postpone retiring until the closing. The only good part about it closing now is that I’m actually going to be here from beginning to end. I’m happy about that, but it is emotional.
Gary Fails,
Founder & President, City Theatrical Inc.
City Theatrical, Inc. has supported the long run of The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. There are six CTI SS6000 Dry Ice Foggers on the Broadway show to provide all of the dry ice fog that makes up the ‘lake’ in the Phantom’s lair. CTI Founder and President Gary Fails spoke with PLSN about building the fog solution.
Tell me about the Phantom fog solution.
A lot of the fog machines in that era were basically homemade. They had a 55 gallon steel oil drum, the dry ice was lowered into the water manually, and the fan would blow it out to the stage. London ran that way, and New York ran that way in the beginning. I don’t remember who originally contacted me, probably Alan Lampel, the Head Electrician. They called and said, ‘We’ve got this big hit show and we’re having trouble with the fog tanks because the drums rust out and we have to replace them.’ They had to replace them pretty frequently because the oil drums had were very light gauge steel. Dry ice gets very acidic since it’s solid carbon dioxide. When it is put in the water it makes a weak solution of carbonic acid that’s quite caustic and eats through steel really quickly. So, their tanks were rotting out frequently. They asked, ‘Is there anything you can think of that we could do that would be longer lasting because the show’s going to run for a long time?’ Of course, we didn’t know then it would run for 35 years.
Was this the impetus for you to develop the CTI SS6000 Dry Ice Fogger?
Yes. We were in the Bronx, and we did a lot of welding of stainless steel tanks for things like food trucks and the like. We were proficient at welding stainless steel. So, we thought we’ll just make a fog tank out of stainless steel. We made it big and powerful with big heaters so it would heat up really quickly and made the whole thing out of stainless steel. it was impervious and would last forever. They’ve been there now for over 30 years. Those same machines have been in the theater and they would last forever. They’re never going to rust out. The crew there is really good so they’ve maintained the machines really well. That machine was state-of-the-art in that era. Really nothing is as realistic as dry ice fog. It sinks the lowest, it hugs the stage, it doesn’t whisp up into the air. So, it works really well for Phantom. And Alan Lampel is an artist with it. He knows how to do it with a fader on the console; raise it up and drop it down and raise it up and keep the stage covered with that fog, but not with too much.
How does it feel to have supported Phantom for so many years of its run?
No one in show business expects a show to run forever. Five years is a long run, 10 years was a huge record-breaking run. There are a lot of people who have literally been with the show since the beginning. It spans probably two generations of people working on Broadway. It’s just fun to have been there in the beginning and to still see it going on now. You know you’ve had a long career if you remember the beginning of Phantom.
