|
 As the musical's late October
reopening neared, sometimes all Picerno could
think about was making it to the first curtain
call unscathed by the breakthrough COVID-19
cases that had sidelined vaccinated actors at
other shows.
Outside long days in a chilly mirror-lined
rehearsal studio near New York City's Times
Square, Picerno had put herself back on what she
called lockdown.
"I'm a full-on monk now," she said during a
rushed lunch break between back-to-back run
throughs.
She knew her job came with risks of exposure.
Playing the show's heroine Christine required
Picerno to kiss two co-stars daily and to sing
full-throated love songs with them unmasked and
at close range.
"Hopefully, none of us have it, because if one
of us have it, we all have it," she said.
The crowded Broadway theaters, vital to the
city's tourism industry, were the first places
closed by the New York government as the
coronavirus began to ravage the state. Word of
the abrupt shuttering came during a "Phantom"
matinee at the Majestic Theatre on March 12,
2020, as some cast and crew themselves were
falling sick.
Now, after an unprecedented shutdown, the
theaters are among the last workplaces to
reopen. Their return this fall is viewed as a
test of the city's efforts to restore some new
sense of normalcy.
Reuters watched as the "Phantom" company
prepared for its return. The pandemic left
unmistakable marks.
Within a few weeks of the show going dark,
COVID-19 had claimed the life of a beloved
dresser, Jennifer Arnold, who had been with the
show for more than three decades.
After protests filled U.S. streets last year in
outrage at the killing of George Floyd, a Black
man, by a white police officer, newly unemployed
Broadway workers pushed the industry to make
overdue changes to increase racial diversity in
theater companies.
In August, "Phantom" producers announced they
had cast the first-ever Black actor to play
Christine since the show opened on Broadway in
1988. The actor, Emilie Kouatchou, would make
her Broadway debut as an alternate for Picerno.
For the returning cast, there were tweaks to
lyrics and staging to learn, making it more
straightforward to cast non-white actors in
principal roles. The entire company was required
to be vaccinated and twice a week went to get
their noses swabbed at a nearby theater lobby
repurposed as a temporary coronavirus testing
site.
Picerno said she was happy to embrace whatever
was needed to get back on stage.
In the dark days of 2020, living back in North
Carolina with her parents and claiming
unemployment benefits, she said she "almost felt
like a failure." She sang her part every day to
keep it fresh in her mind until the singing made
her too sad and she stopped.
Emotion again overcame her on the first day
reunited with her castmates in late September.
Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber had swung by the
studio to deliver a pep talk to the cast before
they sang through the familiar score.
Picerno's singing dissolved in tears during the
love duet "All I Ask of You."
"Sing along! Help her!" the conductor urged the
masked chorus, whose voices carried Picerno
until she regained her composure.
'THINK OF ME'
A few days later, the cast practiced dance steps
in a mix of street clothes and the bulkier parts
of their 19th-century-style costumes.
Picerno drew a scarf through her fingers as she
danced and sang "Think of Me" in her bell-like
soprano. Off in a corner of the studio,
Kouatchou silently mirrored Picerno's every
move.
Kouatchou, the daughter of immigrants from
Cameroon, grew up in the Chicago suburbs.
"Phantom" was the first Broadway show she ever
saw, on a trip to New York with her high school.
She remembers being transfixed by Christine.
"I could sing that role in my sleep," she
recalled thinking.
Still, she worried about stereotyping, that some
would see a mismatch in her voice, an operatic
soprano, and her appearance, which was not the
sort of "petite white girl" who seemed to always
get cast as a show's ingénue or heroine.
[to top of second column]
|
 "I didn't feel like I had a
place in musical theater because I didn't see
anyone who looked like me who sung like me," she
said.
COVID-19 had both upended live theater and made
space for progress. "The
pandemic was terrible," Kouatchou said. "But we
wouldn't be able to have conversations like this
and change things like this if it hadn't been
for the pandemic."
Now, as the Phantom begins making his terrifying
presence known in Act One, a frightened ballet
dancer turns to the heroine and sings:
"Christine, are you alright?"
Before the pandemic and Kouatchou's casting, the
lyric had always been: "Your face, Christine,
it's white!"
The old, creepy Christine doll that stood in the
Phantom's lair, her features unmistakably white,
also was out. A new doll, designed to be
racially ambiguous, would debut on reopening
night.
Later that week, Kouatchou got her first glimpse
of one of the new Christine wigs designed to
match her hair texture.
 "It's
curlier and frizzier and I love it," Kouatchou
said.
'THE POINT OF NO RETURN'
On the first full day of stage rehearsals at the
Majestic Theatre, members of the company waited
to show vaccination proof in an alleyway lined
with trash cans leading to the stage door.
Backstage, masked dressers who help actors
quickly change costumes in the darkness of the
wings were testing alternatives to the
bitelights they had gripped in their teeth
pre-pandemic. They experimented with little
lamps strapped to their foreheads or on gloves,
hoping they wouldn't confuse audiences by
shooting out beams of light across the stage
mid-show. From the orchestra
seats, John Riddle, who plays the show's hero
Raoul, marveled at one of the dazzling
spotlights high up in the proscenium. Its beam
used to illuminate a "constant cloud of dust,"
he said.
"The fact that it's clear now means something to
me," he said. "They say it's the cleanest a
Broadway theater has ever been."
Even so, there was worrying news from shows
nearby. The Disney musical "Aladdin" was forced
to close for two weeks soon after its September
reopening because too many actors tested
positive for the coronavirus.
Maree Johnson, who plays the black-clad ballet
mistress Madame Giry, said she was resigned to
the likelihood that "Phantom" also would record
breakthrough coronavirus cases.
"It's going to happen sooner or later," she
said.
Nine days later, on Friday afternoon, Picerno
was in her dressing room when she opened the
email with results of her final coronavirus test
ahead of reopening night. Relief washed over
her. It was negative.
That night, audience members dressed in evening
gowns, bow ties and the occasional
"Phantom"-style costume crowded the theater
doors, fishing out proofs of vaccination.
"Welcome back to Broadway!" chirped the newly
hired COVID safety monitors who waved large
signs saying "MASKS UP" at the audience inside.
 Backstage at the top of a staircase, a few
members of the company had placed a vase of
flowers and a photograph of Arnold, the dresser
lost to COVID-19. Some of the cast and crew
paused by the memorial before resuming the final
minutes' rush in nearby dressing rooms.
The house lights dimmed, and the familiar
descending chromatic chords of the "Phantom"
theme surged from the orchestra pit. Picerno
danced across the stage as Kouatchou watched
from the audience, sometimes mimicking her hand
gestures. The new Christine doll lurked in the
Phantom's lair, her face now silver.
At the final curtain call, the audience roared
with delight. Picerno ran to the front of the
stage to take her bow, her face crumpled and
shining with tears.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Colleen
Jenkins and Diane Craft)
[© 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content |
