Broadway's 'Phantom of the Opera' plots a cautious return to the stage
Send a link to a friend
[October 25, 2021]
By Jonathan Allen
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Meghan Picerno was
back at work after 18 months of pandemic limbo, overjoyed to be singing
and dancing again with her "Phantom of the Opera" castmates as they
rehearsed for the return of Broadway's longest-running show.
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.
"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.
[to top of second column]
|
Actors rehearse a scene on their first full day of rehearsals at the
Majestic Theater during preparations to reopen "Phantom of the
Opera" in New York, U.S., October 13, 2021. REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
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.
|