'the final moments... are almost unbearably moving.
You would be well advised to keep a Kleenex handy.
This, I have to say, is due not just to the power
of the music, which gathers irresistibly, but to the performance of Michael
Crawford, reasserting his pre-eminence as the outstanding star of our musical
theater.'
Michael Coveney, Financial Times (London)
'a melodrama which risks audience laughter at its overwrought
and unlikely exaggerations. Thanks to his tactful treatment that laughter
never comes . . .
Michael Crawford is superb - tense, controlled,
tigerish, - as the mystery man, conjuror, magician and murderer who terrifies
the Opera personnel into thinking him a ghost.'
John Barber, Daily Telegraph (London)
'Of the first-act sequence where the Phantom spirits
Christine through her dressing room mirror, down into his underground lair.
Michael Crawford's performance here, and everywhere, is greatly compelling
in its passionate sincerity and courageous emotional abandonment. His tenor
voice rings through his half-mask with desperate power as he handles the
spellbound Christine like a human cello. And when he is unmasked, he rivals
Lon Chaney in his demoniac anguish.'
Jack Kroll, Newsweek
'the director Hal Prince, the designer Maria
Bjornson and the mesmerizing actor Michael Crawford have elevated quite
literally through the roof. . . Apart from the stunts and set changes,
the evening's histrionic peaks are Mr. Crawford's entrances . . . Mr. Crawford's
appearances are eagerly anticipated, not because he's really scary but
because his acting gives Phantom most of what emotional heat it has. His
face obscured by a half-mask - no minor impediment - Mr. Crawford uses
a booming, expressive voice and sensuous hands to convey his desire for
Christine . His Act I declaration of love, The Music of the Night
. . . Stripped of the mask an act later to wither into a crestfallen, sweaty,
cadaverous misfit, he makes a pitiful sight while clutching his beloved's
discarded wedding veil. Those who visit the Majestic expecting only to
applaud a chandelier - or who have 20-year-old impressions od Mr. Crawford
as the lightweight screen juvenile of The Knack and Hello Dolly!
- will be stunned by the force of his Phantom.
Frank Rich, New York Times
'what keeps this wobbly blockbuster from collapsing
under its own grandeur id Michael Crawford. His characterization of the
disfigured Phantom terrorizing the Paris Opera House galvanizes the show
into grand theater - for the last 20 minutes. . . Though performing behind
a mask, he projects a beguiling combination of danger, eroticism and anguish'
David Patrick Stearns, USA Today
'Let it be said, though, that Michael Crawford
demands absolute attention in the show's final, desperate moments making
a fine thing of his ultimate emotional surrender.'
Walter Kerr
Clearly, were supposed to. Phantom has a lot of fun
sending up the junk operas of 100 years ago, with their prop elephants
and pudgy tenors...
But Phantom is perfectly serious about its phantom,
whom Michael Crawford plays even more quietly and intensely at the Ahmanson
than he did on Broadway . . .
No one could accuse Michael Crawford of giving a
canned performance. Crawford's crepuscular voice and his lynx like movements
do stir sympathy for our poor benigned Phantom, and you so have to respond
to his commitment as a performer - he couldn't give more to his part if
it were performed as Dante.
Crawford's Phantom combines the size and intimacy
in a way that only a very experienced musical theater performer could achieve.
He comes close to us, and yet he brings off the grand gesture. The final
renunciation scene is especially well-judged. Almost, he makes us
believe...'
Dan Sullivan, Los Angeles Times