WBT Blog chats with Maury Yeston
By Jon Chattman

Maury Yeston’s version of Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera never made it to Broadway, and the legendary composer and musicologist couldn’t be happier. For over a decade, the show, which he co-wrote with Arthur Kopit (the duo won two Tony Awards for Nine- Yeston has another two for his work on the Titanic musical) , has become an international smash, playing regional theatres across the country and abroad, earning raves everywhere it goes. “They nickname it ‘the biggest show never to play Broadway,’” Yeston said proudly in an interview with WBT last week. “It’s succeeded both critically and commercially all over the world. The public has taken this show to its heart and that’s a far greater experience than being on Broadway.”

Phantom was originally poised to hit the Broadway stage in the late 1980s, but when Andrew Lloyd Webber went public with his intentions for a show of his own (we know how that turned out), financing fell through for Kopit and Yeston’s version. While ALW’s show became a hit on Broadway, the duo explored other avenues (Yeston went on to make Grand Hotel for Broadway) – that was until 1991 when the show played to raves at Theatre Under the Stars in Houston. That success led to additional productions, notably at Seattle’s Fifth Avenue Musical Theatre and the Candlelight Dinner Playhouse in Chicago.
(more…)

LoHud: The men behind the Phantom’s mask
By PETER D. KRAMER
THE JOURNAL NEWS

Maskmaker Bill Diamond airbrushes paint to decorate mask made from mold of actor’s face

When Bill Diamond casts an actor, it’s not a typical casting call. Just ask Aaron Ramey, who plays the title role in “Phantom” now at the Westchester Broadway Theatre. “They kept asking me if I was claustrophobic and warning me: ‘You’re not going to be able to see or talk or move really through this whole thing,’” Ramey recalls.

Before the casting started “I was thinking, ‘Gee. I don’t think I’m claustrophobic. I hope I’m not claustrophobic. I’m pretty sure I’m not claustrophobic.’”

After Ramey was cast by director Tom Polum – chosen to play the masked figure haunting the Paris Opera House in the Maury Yeston/Arthur Kopit musical – he was cast again by Diamond, fitted for the phantom’s signature mask.
Get up to 50,000 HHonors&reg  bonus points when  you get the Card.
(more…)

Stay tuned for an interview with the woman behind Phantom’s Carlotta!
BroadwayTheatreBlog.com will chat with the diva next week!

The Maury Yeston Songbook – Music Book

By FRAN SIKORSKI

By now, most theatergoers are aware there are two musical productions of the 1911 Gaston Leroux novel, The Phantom of the Opera, the Andrew Lloyd Webber version continuing on Broadway for 20 years and the Arthur Kopit-Maury Yeston Phantom, an outstanding commercial success at theaters throughout the United States.

The Kopit-Yeston Phantom has a powerful story and includes an emotional explanation of how the Phantom, given the name Erik in this version, was disfigured and exiled himself to the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera House. Phantom was eventually produced in 1991 in regional theaters and has remained a success ever since.

Now in its third production, a spectacular one, at the Westchester Broadway Theater in Elmsford, N.Y., through Nov. 25, the Arthur Kopit-Maury Yeston Phantom will be in hiatus while A Christmas Carol plays during the holiday season, resuming Dec. 27 to Feb. 9. The last time Phantom played at Westchester Broadway Theatre, the run was extended for nine months. Don’t be surprised if this happens again with the new leads, Aaron Ramey as the Phantom, and Kate Rockwell, a runner-up in the Grease You’re the One I Want television show, as Christine Daee. James Van Treuren returns as Gerard Carriere, the Phantom’s guardian, and Sandy Rosenberg is the jealous opera diva Carlotta. All voices are outstanding.

Full Story
Phantom: The American Musical Sensation (1992 Studio Cast)

By Judie Phillips

PHANTOM at The Westchester Broadway Theatre is a thrilling night of theatre. And just in time to brighten the holiday season. If you want to give yourself a treat, or better yet, if you have those people for whom it is impossible to buy for, run, do not walk, to the box office at the Westchester Broadway Theatre and sign up. Even better, treat you and yours to a box and experience what theatre is supposed to be. (more…)

“Phantom” Dazzles The Audience at Westchester Broadway Theatre
By George J. Dacre, Theatre Critic, Rockland County Times

It was a special night, Press night, last Thursday at the Westchester Broadway Theatre in Elmsford. WBT’s 154th production, a revamped version of Phantom, the debut of Kate Rockwell in the role of Christine,electrifying the audience with her voice range, and the presence of the author of the music and lyrics for Phantom, Maury Yeston, as part of the fullhouse attending, made it special. And then there was the emergence of the Phantom, played by Aaron Ramey, as not only a tragic figure, confined to the bowels of the Paris Opera House but a Phantom with a sense of humor, a need for love,and a Phantom who kills to keep his secret. He has no face!!!
(more…)

‘Phantom’ is haunting musical drama
By Chesley Plemmons, News Times theater critic

Drum roll, please. Let’s settle the debate about which of two dueling musicals is best “” “Phantom” by Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit or “Phantom of the Opera” by Andrew Lloyd Webber. In my book, “Phantom,” which has returned to the Westchester Broadway Theatre in Elmsford, N.Y. after a ten-year absence, is the hands down winner.

I’m not discounting the scope and power of a Broadway orchestra or the special effects that a million dollar production can provide, but song for song, and story for story, Yeston’s score is richer and more varied, and Kopit’s book provides a convincing, touching and resolved narrative that tops Webber’s ambiguous ending.
(more…)

Phantom returns to Westchester Broadway Theatre
By Gary Chattman, thecheappop.com

Picture this, if you can: We are transported back in time, to an Opera House in Paris. The year is 1911. This is no ordinary opera house, however. This one has underground chambers, trapdoors and catacombs where anyone—or any phantom—can hide out from the world. As novelist Gaston Leroux wrote in his 1910 novel, Le Fantome de l’opera, The Phantom of the Opera: “The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge.

Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade.” At the Westchester Broadway Theatre this fall you can actually see this ghost—this phantom. He is real!

In 1992, this superior version of this show first played to packed houses at WBT. Now, due to good fortune, or due to the re-creation for this 154th production of the longest-running, 52-week-a-year theatre in New York, the Phantom returns to haunt.

Full Story

‘Phantom’ returns to an old haunt
By PETER D. KRAMER, THE JOURNAL NEWS

Photo/John Vecchiolla

“Phantom” – the Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit musical of Gaston Leroux’s novel “The Phantom of the Opera” – makes a magical return to Westchester Broadway Theatre in Elmsford.

This is not Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera,” the longest-running musical in Broadway history. This one is better. (more…)