strangers in the night

Strangers in the Night, The Valentine Effect.
i have chosen this topic form Daily Californian.
it is very romantic topic, i hope you will enjoy it.

By Stefanie Lee
Contributing Writer

Would it be too much to expect chills from watching your first performance of "The Phantom of the Opera"? After all, there's a lot of long-standing socially-constructed gravitas swirling around this theatrical work. A masked, angry dude pining after a beautiful soprano? A chandelier with a mind of its own? Sequins (in general)? "Phantom" is the complete entertainment package, or so they say. "All I Ask of You" is a pop culture staple, transcending stage origins and popping up as a cell phone ringtone. Yet while the latest San Francisco installment of this timeless story, performed by the Cameron Mackintosh/Really Useful Theatre Company, Inc. at the Orpheum Theatre, brought the occasional shiver, those consistent chills were nowhere to be found.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera" is a theatrical anomaly. It's the longest-running Broadway show, having overtaken the reign of "Cats" in 2006, yet it hasn't aged a bit since its debut in 1986. The story is still interesting, the costumes are still flashy and the chandelier is still freaky as hell, but there's something stagnant about it. It's hard to place the origins of that missing element. Is it the quality of this particular performance? Or is the work itself an impossible standard to reach?

Although the set as a whole fit comfortably into the Orpheum Theatre's ornate backdrop, its individual parts formed something of a mixed bag. On the plus side, the black-and-gold frame for the stage created the illusion of an impressionist painting. And, if the chandelier wasn't enough, its moving parts allowed the Phantom to haunt his theater (and ours as well) from above the stage.

But the cup of cons runneth over. Years ago, someone came across the problem of simulating several fiery explosions-necessary to the plot, but obviously risky to the venue and the audience. The solution was and still is unimpressive. It's hard to tell where the weak "fireball" comes from, but the most obvious answer is 1986. The good news is that even viewers in the back row can feel the quick heat wave.

Simulation is actually a theme in this production. The use of smoke to recreate the Phantom's watery path to his lair is convincing for a few minutes, but as soon as it hot-boxes the orchestra pit, sympathy for the instrumentalists outrules the cheap showcase. And, speaking of music, perhaps it was this play that taught the makers of "A Knight's Tale" to take guitar riffs and snare drums out of their rightful historical context. Then again, in 1986, there was a first time for everything.

The strongest performance in the cast was arguably the one that needed to stand out. Trista Moldovan as Christine Daae gained vocal confidence as the play progressed, culminating in two musical high points: an emotionally-grabbing rendition of "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" and a powerful duet with the Phantom in "The Point of No Return." The problem was that it took the pair this long to establish any trace of chemistry. Prior to this moment, it was impossible to sympathize with the Phantom's morbidly dreary life, even though we're taught as members of entertainment-hungry society to love him in spite of his faults. John Cuida, who played the Phantom, also improved throughout the show, but there was something incredibly anti-climactic about the mask-removal moment. Remember Dr. Brown from "Back to the Future"? Remove even more hair from his head and he'd bear a striking resemblance to the Phantom. Now that's chilling.