Phantom of the Opera

Description:

• This is a 90-minute, intermission-free, heavy-on-the-special-effects, costly staging of Andrew Lloyd Webber's ubiquitous musical, The Phantom of the Opera. The show's fans (and they are legion) will doubtless yowl, but they survived the movie adaptation, while the rest of us might be a little happier with some of the fat trimmed away, though somewhat befuddled by the plot. The lowdown: There's a guy in a mask, and he loves a girl who sings, and she loves him, but she also loves another boy, and there are caverns and canals and romance and tragedy and mystery and murder and light opera. Staged on the former site of the failed Guggenheim Museum (transformed into a $40-million theater), the musical is even more high-tech than the original Broadway staging, with increased special effects and whatnot (like anything can top that chandelier crash). Phantom is over the top, but then, so is Vegas, and this seems like a good fit. Monday through Saturday at 7pm, Monday and Saturday also at 9:30pm.

• © Frommer's 2013