RALEIGH -- After 17 years, you might think that "The Phantom of the Opera" would have reached its saturation point. That producer Cameron Mackintosh's mega-musical will play four weeks in Raleigh, after five weeks in its initial tour stop in 1998, is one more indication that it has not.
"Phantom" opened in London in 1986 (where it is still playing) and on Broadway in 1988 (where it is the Main Stem's third longest-running musical). It has been seen in 100 cities in 20 countries. But with a whole new generation of theater-goers, as well all the repeat business this show engenders, there's no end in sight.
 
So, for repeaters and first-timers alike, the only question: Is this tour the real thing?

Actually, that answer has never been in doubt, because Mackintosh insists that any "Phantom" tour be 99 percent the same as the Broadway and West End versions.

The 20 trucks that haul the scenery and costumes and the extra week for set-up ensure that all the effects and stunning visuals are intact. The chandelier falls, the life-size elephant appears, the lighted candles rise out of the foggy lake, and the Phantom makes magical disappearances. The huge, angel-encrusted proscenium, the stage-filling Paris Opera staircase, the several hundred richly detailed costumes -- it's all there, and much more.

Of course, a musical must go beyond mere viusals to keep it long-running. Andrew Lloyd Webber's score is easy enough on the ears, the lush pop ballads comfortably familiar-sounding, the operatic pieces delightfully comic yet impressively constructed. The story of a disfigured composer's all-consuming love for his young singing protege, familiar from films and TV versions, is generally melodramatic and syrupy. But its theme of the rejected outsider, especially as portrayed in the final scenes, gives the show enough heart to send audiences away satisfied and entertained.

While much of the show's attraction is built-in, having first-rate performers can make it soar. The players in Raleigh have all the right credentials, many having been in the New York and London casts. Brad Little does not overdo the Phantom's intensity, instead bringing a sympathetic humanity to the part while enacting the little quirks and hypnotic gestures. Vocally he fills the role with both power and gentleness.

As Christine, his object of desire, Rebecca Pitcher sings strongly, moves gracefully and projects vulnerability. Tim Martin Gleason brings youthful ardor to both his singing and acting as Raoul, the man Christine falls in love with, to the Phantom's despair.

Every one of the 36 cast members -- including dancer Kara Klein, a former Raleigh resident -- makes individuals out of the characters. Chief among them are the hilarious but dead-on vocal talents of Kim Stengel as the prima donna Carlotta and Frederic Heringes as Ubaldo, the stentorian Italian tenor. David Cryer and D.C. Anderson play the Paris Opera managers with panache and charm, and Patti Davidson-Gorbea gives the ballet mistress Madame Giry a chilling spookiness.

First-time audience members should be aware of several things. The story takes awhile to establish and becomes more interesting as the show progresses. There are a lot of characters, and significant plot points are too briefly mentioned in the first half-hour. The opera and ballet sequences, as well as two big scenes in the managers' office, are magnificent musically but take the tension out of the plot.

But none of this really matters. The whole is greater than its parts. There's nothing to equal the sheer spectacle of "Phantom."

Orlando, Fla. -- Gary Zabinski, the production stage manager of "The Phantom of the Opera," can tell you almost everything you want to know about the third touring version of this Victorian nightmare.

As the man entrusted with the show's aesthetical vision, the man who serves as irector-in-residence and father confessor to a company of nearly 100 actors, stage hands and musicians, Zabinski can tell you that this production cost $12 million to stage six years ago and is booked well into the
year  2001. He can tell you that the chandelier alone weighs 1,000 pounds, stands 10 feet tall and drops faster in this production than in the New York original.

He can even tell you the name of the wood and fiberglass elephant standing in the wings (it's Gilda).

But what he cannot tell you is why the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical has become the most successful show in entertainment history. If he could - if anyone could - then we would all be on the assembly line turning out Gothic horror stories and romances by the dozen. And Sir Andrew's
"Phantom  II" would be more than a rumor.

"Even though we all have ideas about why this works, why it keeps selling, why people keep coming back time and time again, none of us really knows the one true answer," Zabinski says. "And in many ways that's one of the reasons I still work in the theater - because of that mystery, because of that elusive element that we are always trying to capture."

Or in the words of Scott A. Hemerling, the company's press  representative,  the show is "a phenomenon, and often a phenomenon cannot be explained."

"Phantom" appeared in the wave of British megamusicals that washed over  Broadway in the '80s. New stage musicals and ideas were in short supply  on both sides of the Atlantic, and these spectacular shows from producer Cameron Mackintosh kept people coming to the Great White Way. Four of the shows from this era - "Cats," "Les Miserables," "Phantom" and "Miss  Saigon"
- are still on Broadway stages.

"Cats" was the first of Lloyd Webber's contributions to the phenomenon,  and with close to 6,500 performances, it is the longest-running musical in Broadway history. "Phantom" ranks fifth in the number of Main Stem performances (behind "Cats," "A Chorus Line," "Oh! Calcutta" and "Les Miz") but first in grosses.

The musical, which concerns a horribly disfigured phantom whose obsession with a fragile young singer named Christine Daa leads to murder and mayhem, opened on Broadway in 1988 at the Majestic Theatre. The score was thin at best, endless variations on the same three or four themes, but Hal Prince's cinematic direction left audiences on the edge of their red velour seats.
Prince not only replicated a lost theater world but left it to his
audiences to complete a striking and deliberately unfinished stage portrait.

The show was - is - a technical marvel. The chandelier falls, the elephant makes a triumphant entrance during an opera rehearsal, and the Phantom and Christine escape to the catacombs on a "travelator," which is essentially a bridge suspended between two moving towers. The bridge tilts
dramatically to create the illusion of flight through secret passages to the Phantom's lair. The journey includes a gondola ride across a vast underground lake lighted by floating candles. The gondola is actually moved by a stagehand operating a radio-control device off stage. And the candles are not really candles, but lighting devices that rise up through miniature trap doors.

Audiences went wild then, and they go wild today. The New York magazine listing says it all: "Nine leads, 10 years, $357 million, and almost 7 million theatergoers later, Andrew Lloyd Webber's blockbuster continues to pack them in."

The three road companies have been equally successful: The first (dubbed the "Christine") has been sitting in San Francisco for more than five seasons. The second (the "Raoul") has been in Chicago for well over a year, and the third (the "Music Box"), designed for five- and six-week
engagements, opens Wednesday at Raleigh's Memorial Auditorium after a return engagement
in Orlando, Fla.

Each production has a distinguishing quality, Zabinski says. He mentions the trap door effects and the way the draperies move in New York, the charming intimacy of the San Francisco production and the dramatic intensity at the heart of his company.

"I really think our show is in excellent shape," he says. "We have a sound, quality cast who work very hard to tell the story. We try not to let the show get lost in the spectacle, which it can easily do. We present the spectacle as well as we can for a touring production. And, yes, we have
had to make some modifications, but we've tried not to make too many sacrifices."

Lloyd Webber's megamusicals with their marathon runs have created a new way of working and a new breed of performer, Zabinski says. At 42, he has been working in the theater for 18 years. He started out as an actor in Illinois but soon ended up in New York serving an apprenticeship with
producer Manny Azenberg, a master of the craft. Then, he says, "if a show ran for six months I considered that a good run. If it ran for a year, I thought it was a miracle, and I thanked my lucky stars. Now, when you sign on with 'Cats' you know you are going to be working five, six, seven years if you want to. "I'm not sure if that is actually a healthy thing for an artist, any
artist. I don't just mean actors, but dancers, stage managers, designers. We learn our craft by doing, and we only grow by doing new things, risky as they may sound or seem. But quitting a job like this to go off and audition again in New York where the competition is fierce and there aren't that many shows is a scary proposition."

So actors consider themselves blessed when they join a company like "Phantom." Life is not easy on the road, but the five-week engagements are better than split-weeks. Theatrical boardinghouses have gone the way of gaslights, and the accommodations are quite acceptable if not luxurious. Everyone seems to have his own car, which is shipped from city to city. Brad Little, the Phantom in the Music Box production, spent more than two years in the Broadway company (first as a swing and then as Raoul). He even sang the role of the Phantom 15 times on the Main Stem. "But I really didn't know what I was getting into when I took this job," he says.

Playing a complex character is an adventure, a series of discoveries that bring the actor ever closer to the heart of the man. The makeup goes on the same way every evening, but every evening his phantom seems to have different moods and needs.

The other night, Little experienced an epiphany. He was in the middle of the farewell scene with Christine. As she flees the lair, he buries his face in her scarf. All of a sudden, Little realized that love is not clinging to the one you adore, but caring so deeply that you can let her go.

The scene has always played well, fraught with romantic passion and danger, but on that night it was an entirely new experience for the actor.

"After a year and a half you would have thought that I would have it down," Little says. "Well, I hope I never have it down because if I do, then it's time for me to leave the show. It's amazing how many different ways there are to play him, and night after night how many emotions you can go through, how many pieces of the puzzle you can put together. I love what I do. I love this business."

And he's as intrigued as the next person by the show's appeal. Is it the technical wizardry, the romance, the unabashed theatricality? "That is the question of the century. After a year and a half playing the Phantom, I still haven't figured that one out. I don't think there is one given
answer. I think the show touches ... people in so many different ways. It's the most brilliantly produced piece of theater that will ever grace the stage. It has the spectacle, the music, the marketing, the romance and the mystery - from beginning to end it's just sevens all the way."

Little's first long stint on the road was "Fiddler on the Roof" (he roomed with Raleigh's Sharon Lawrence). But "Phantom" is a different experience altogether.

One April afternoon in the middle of the Orlando run, members of the cast and crew are outside in the theater parking lot, tossing a football and catching the last rays of the Florida sun. At the far end of the lot, Little is polishing his '72 Mercedes convertible.

Audience members show up early, smartly dressed, like extras in a fashion shoot. Their pace slows outside the theater door. Maybe if they're lucky they'll get a peek at the phantom. No one suspects that the tall, blond kid polishing the red sports car is the star of the show.

Later, seated in front of a mirror, wearing the same grease-stained T-shirt, Little watches his makeup artist work more magic, changing a matinee idol into a monster. It takes an hour or so, time enough for Little to read his fan mail and talk to fellow cast members, who treat the dressing
room like a dorm room on a college campus. They share their day, and even their letters. Little reads a note from a 12-year-old who expresses interest in an acting career but, first, wants to know how much money Little makes.

"Not how do you disappear or how does the chandelier fall or how long does it take to put on your makeup," the Phantom says, "but how much do you make."

Jim Weitzer, who plays Raoul, shares Little's amusement.  "I got one that invited me to DisneyWorld," he says. "Excellent," Little replies. "How old is she?" "Actually," Weitzer says, "it was a he." The clock is ticking. Singers are warming up, and the crew prepares to make magic. The stage is still dark, eerie, a haunted place. Little is in no hurry. The Phantom makes a belated entrance well into the first act. But his presence is felt throughout the evening. The masked man will vanish and appear at will. His voice will emanate from the theater walls; his masked face will peer over the top of the proscenium arch. He will be here, there, everywhere. One suspects doubles are used, but not all the secrets in this show are going to be divulged. Nor does it matter. Nothing matters, really, but the music of the night.
 
 

 By the numbers:

 - World gross: $2.6 billion.

 - Total performances: 30,000.

 - Cities played: 85.

 - Countries played: 12.

 - Audience: 108 million.

 - Number of companies: Nine - New York , London, Toronto, Melbourne,  Hamburg  and Nagoya, Japan, along with three touring companies in San Francisco,  Chicago, Raleigh.

 - U.S. grosses on the road: $902 million.

 - Raleigh gross: An anticipated $5 million for the five-week engagement.

 - Cast albums sold: 1.5 million.

 - Caps sold: 90,000.

 - Mugs sold: 1.6 million.

- New York company: 138 actors have worked in this production since it  opened Jan. 26, 1988.

 - New York Phantoms: Michael Crawford, the original Broadway star, has been succeeded by eight other Phantoms including the current, Thomas  James O'Leary.

 - Road caravan: 20 48-foot semitrailer trucks, including one for Gilda,  the elephant (her fiberglass head must be removed to get her to fit).

 - Costumes: 230.

 - Beads on the chandelier: 35,000.

 - Weight of the proscenium: 2.5 tons.
 

 (This story has a sidebar)

Let there be lights: The chandelier is one of theater history's most famous props.

Little big Phantom: Brad Little, who stands 6 foot 2, stars as the tormented title character in the company  that opens a five-week run in Raleigh on Wednesday.

For love of Christine: Amy Jo Arrington as the heroine in scenes with Jim Weitzer's Raoul and
 the masked, made-up Phantom played by Brad Little.

Grand entrance: In the opening moments of 'The Phantom of the Opera,' Gilda the elephant bears
a tenor playing Hannibal in a rehearsal at the Paris Opera House.

The  diva  in her day: Julie Schmidt plays Carlotta, the temperamental soprano whom Christine replaces.