by Tabitha Hergest

Created on: March 30, 2008   Last Updated: April 24, 2008

As a writer of musicals myself, I've always thought Lord Andrew Lloyd-Webber was a bit of a turnip. A very successful and immensely popular turnip, it must be said - but a turnip nevertheless.

You see, the problem I have with him is not so much the man himself; I have no doubt he is as delightful a chap as one would hope to meet - but his work, oh my dear no, no it just won't do! Of course, the music is competent enough - and indeed some of his works are the most sublime compositions - but there is something undefinably awful about the main body of his work: really, as an oeuvre, the Lloyd-Webber musical leaves more than a little to be desired.

Except. There is one musical which stands glinting like a diamond in a sea of ordure, which is not just better than any other Lloyd-Webber show but also better than a great many of the classic musicals from Kander and Ebb, Lerner and Lowe, Rogers and Hammerstein... even as far as Gilbert and Sullivan. That musical is The Phantom of the Opera.

It was conceived in the mid 1980s (it debuted in 1986 and has been on stage ever since) around the novel by Gaston Leroux, an obscure French literaire, about a disfigured genius who terrorises a Paris Opera house from his lair in its bowels. In the musical, this terror is brought to a dramatic climax through the Phantom's love of Christine Daae, the orphan of a Swiss violinist, who he coaches as her "angel of music" to vie for the title of prima donna - and thence to the destruction of the Opera House when his plans whirlwind out of control.

I have seen the musical on stage. It is wonderfully done, superbly acted (even if the current Phantom is something of a swamp-donkey) and the effects on the stage are incredible. One could say it was more of a comic opera (comic, in the nomenclature of the oeuvre, not pertaining to hilarity), because the music comes thick and fast, and most of the dialogue is hung on that music. This is more pronounced in the 2004 film, staring Scottish actor Gerard Butler as the Phantom.

That film is incredible. Yes, it's rather cringeworthy that many of the lines of libretto are carelessly lip-synched, and to my ears the American accents of the not-very-American Vicomte de Chagny (Patrick Wilson) and the as-near-as-dammit French Ms Daae (Emmy Rossum) are as out of place as a juggler at a funeral. But one learns to live with that, partly because the whole package is electrifying and drips with dark energy - thanks, mainly, to the erotically charged menace exuded by Butler's Phantom. And given that Rossum was barely sixteen at the time of filming, the chemistry between her and Butler belied a knowingness far beyond her years. Combine that with the music, and the whole mix becomes, well, orgasmic.

But then it isn't without its faults, this film. I have touched on a few of them - just a few - above, but if you take the fact that Margaret Preece (the voice behind Minnie Driver's Carlotta Giudicelli) has a far better voice than does Emmy Rossum, it does tend to ring a little hollow. And Gerard Butler's range isn't, perhaps, as broad as one might expect from a phantom who's supposedly a genius teacher. Maybe these are minor niggles - although I can see that for some it would spoil the entire experience.

For me though, it just goes some way to explaining why a Lloyd-Webber musical isn't usually a thrilling prospect for me. Or perhaps he's just too populist...

Learn more about this author, Tabitha Hergest.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.