Supermarkets and department stores throughout the area are promoting a variety of British imports this month - Rajah chutneys at Smith's . . . Twining's teas at Dan's . . . Callard & Bowser's candies at ZCMI as part of the monthlong UK/Utah Festival 1996. (Hmmm, I wonder if Ken Garff Motors is having Jaguar sale? Probably not.)
But one of the hottest commodities from Great Britain is just around the corner.Cameron Mackintosh's production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Charles Hart's megahit musical, "The Phantom of the Opera" is opening an unprecedented 16-week run on March 28 at the Capitol Theatre. The Theater League of Utah presentation will run through July 13.
I talked to Mackintosh in a telephone interview from his 13th-century home, a restored priory in a pastoral setting right out of a Merchant-Ivory movie in Somerset, about two hours out of London. He had just returned from walking his dog "and sort of wandering about looking at the cowslips."
Mackintosh, who was being officially knighted a few days later, said, "I'm delighted about `Phantom' coming to Salt Lake City. It looks like it's going to be a great success there.
"It's amazing and I'm so grateful. When I first started coming to Salt Lake City with shows like `Cats' and `Les Miserables,' a week was a long time, and now `Les Miz' has come back so often. It's become a wonderful city to play and I really look forward to bringing all my shows there."
A hint, perhaps, that "Miss Saigon" and its helicopter could land here sometime.
The Salt Lake engagement of "Phantom" has a couple of Utah connections. Susan Facer, who has a degree in vocal music and pedagogy from Brigham Young University, is billed as an "alternate" in the role of Christine Daae, the young soprano befriended by the mysterious Phantom.
Also, Thomas James O'Leary, who plays the title role, has a note in his program "bio" dedicating his performance to Nephi Jay Wimmer, a close friend and fellow cast member from the original Broadway cast of "Miss Saigon" and a touring production of "Chess." Wimmer, a native of American Fork and former member of the BYU Young Ambassadors, died on July 26, 1993, in New York City at the age of 33. O'Leary hopes to visit with Wimmer's family after he arrives in Utah.
Cameron Mackintosh became involved with "Phantom" during its early conceptual stages in the mid 1980s.
"How it first came up," Mackintosh explained in his clipped British accent, "is that Andrew's then-wife, Sarah Brightman, had been approached by an English writer and director who was doing another version of `Phantom of the Opera' at the Stratford East Theatre and was interesting in having Sarah playing the role of Christine in his version. This was Ken Hill and his version has been around as well.
"She decided to say no, but she had obviously discussed it with Andrew and he rang me up at home one day and said, `Look, what about doing "Phantom of the Opera," ' and I said, `That's a good idea.'
"Our original thought was that he and I would just produce it together, and we did actually discuss doing Ken Hill's version and sort of souping it up a bit. We went to see it and we liked it, but as we started to work on it a bit we realized that, really, we couldn't do much to help his version. He'd done a jolly good version on his own, although we knew at the time there were at least three others and that Arthur Kopit and Maury Yeston were working on one and there was another one being done in England as well.
"So we thought, well, it's in public domain - why don't we all have a go? That was in 1984. For the first six months Andrew never intended to write the music. Oh, if necessary, he said he'd write the odd, incidental themes, but basically we were going to put out-of-copyright ballet and opera music into the score.
"Then, at the end of 1984, we were discussing the project with a director who might have become involved in it, about the kind of show it would be and we all agreed that it needed to be a gothic romance, and this director (Jim Sharman) said to us: `Look, Andrew, it's a wonderful idea for a show, but I think it would be even more wonderful if you would write the score.'
"Andy rang me up on Christmas Eve and said, `Look, I've decided I'm going to write the score myself.' I think it was partly because of what Jim had said and partly because we had been talking about it for a long time and also he had been working with Sarah on the `Requiem Mass' that he had written in honor of his father. I think working with her he realized what an extraordinary range she had, and that proved to be the musical key to how he was going to approach writing the score. Thank God he did - and very quickly. The score came together by the summer of 1985."
Mackintosh said he and Lloyd Webber put on the first act at his home outside London. He has access to a church where he tries out his shows either in concert or, as in this case, "we staged it with Maria Bjornson, who I immediately brought on board as production designer when we first discussed the idea.
"Two-thirds of the first act has remained, and we realized then that it could work. We still had to finish writing it, then (lyricist/writer) Richard Stilgoe came on board. We felt we needed another lyricist as well and originally we were going to have Alan Jay Lerner, but sadly he got cancer just as he was about to start and he had to pull out. Then I found Charles Hart, who had just won a competition for young writers, and we put him on the project. We opened in London in October of 1986.
"Winding the show up at the dress rehearsal, a couple of friends saw it and said it was just interminable. It's one of those shows that is absolutely magical when it's up to speed and you sit there in disbelief that it could EVER work when you're putting it together.
"It's the alchemy of the whole thing that has made it special. Every department is dependent on the others, but at the dress rehearsal quite a few people went `Oh, dear! This is going to be awful! But from the very first preview, the audiences went mad. It should last another five years in London. We're coming up to our 10th birthday this year."
It took 21/2 years of planning and working to mount "Phantom" for its road tour. When Mackintosh's shows go on tour, they may not be exactly like they are in London or on Broadway - at least not down to all the minute technical details, "but they have to be the same show or you have to put something in its place that's as good as you find on Broadway. That's the reputation of the show and that's the expectation of the audience, and I think it would be wrong to shortchange them."
One of his publicists noted recently that the company coming to Salt Lake City is utilizing some state-of-the-art technical equipment that was not available when the show first opened on Broadway or when the first national tour was mounted.
All of the logistical planning is also why it took so long to get the second tour up and running.
"Every time you do a show, you learn more about how to do it," Mackintosh said. "We've found different tricks and perspectives. Obviously it's impossible (on tour) to do what we did on Broadway with the candelabra coming up through the floor, so you have to come up with another trick instead - so they slide in from the side from a deck that is tourable. That's how we managed it.
"The big problem with `Phantom' on tour is that if a theater's proscenium is too low, then sometimes there's not enough room to put in the false proscenium (which replicates the ornate Paris Opera House). You also need a 32- or 33-foot depth to actually get everything in. It has a big cast and lot of big props that take up room in the wings."
The production's first national tour, playing in such major cities as Washington, D.C.; Boston; Denver; and Los Angeles, opened in May 1990 in Chicago.
The second touring company opened in December 1992 at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle.
"We knew if we could make it fit in the 5th Avenue we could get it in anywhere," Mackintosh said. "Luckily, Seattle has other theaters we can book shows into, too. The `Miss Saigon' tour opened at the Paramount and we've got `Phantom' there as we speak and `Les Miz' is returning to the 5th Avenue. We keep them both very busy."
Meanwhile, a long-running "sit-down" company edition of "Phantom" is still doing brisk business at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco.
"I expect it to run through the end of this year, which is an incredible run in San Francisco, you know - three years. It's a lovely theater."
What draws Mackintosh into becoming involved in a new production?
"Basically, it's the subject matter. It has to mean something to me. There has to be a reason for doing it in modern times, as it were. Most stage musicals are set in a bygone age, but it has to have a contemporary resonance.
"Also, the music has to be theatrical and drive the drama forward. And the sound of the music has to have its own flavor. I listen for a special `voice' in the music. I don't like it if it sounds like somebody else's. Every composer has a style.
"Very few people have the gift to write musicals. . . . I listen to two or three hundred new scores a year. I listen to every one of them, but if I think they're drivel then I don't listen all the way through. You can tell pretty quickly. And sometimes you find shows that may not be good in themselves, but they do show talent from the authors in various areas, and those I try to encourage. Maybe they'll end up writing something which will work as a whole."
Asked how many "Phantom" companies are currently running around the world, Mackintosh counted up a dozen off the top of his head - five in North America, two in England and others in Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Australia and Japan.
When Mackintosh first got started in the theater business, his idea of a tour was hitting Manchester and Aberdeen and a few other venues around the British countryside.
Today he maintains fully staffed production offices in London, New York and Australia, with a small office in Singapore. All of his Asian tours are mounted and managed out of Australia.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
`Phantom' tickets
The Theater League of Utah presentation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera" will open Thursday, March 28, at the Capitol Theatre, 50 W. 200 South, where it will continue through July 13.
Performances will be at 8 p.m. weeknights and Saturdays and 7:30 p.m. Sundays, with matinees at 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.
All seats are reserved, with tickets ranging from $26.50 to $71.50. Most weekend performances are nearly sold out, with best seating available later in the run (June and July) and on Sundays.
For reservations or current availablity,contact ArtTix at 355-2787, or visit the ArtTix outlets at the Capitol Theatre or selected Albertsons at Fort Union, Sugar House, Orem, Park City and Ogden. Credit cards may be used at the Capitol Theatre box office but not at the Albertsons ArtTix outlets.