There is a brilliant line in the not-so-brilliant Cameron Crowe film \Vanilla Sky"" where Jason Lee's character informs his best friend, Tom Cruise, that he ""will never know the exquisite pain of the guy who goes home alone"" right after Cruise steals the woman of Lee's dreams.
This line implies not getting the girl is not the stuff losers are made of; rather, it is heartache, and heartache inspires some of the most magical pieces of art.
Most Hollywood movies and Broadway smashes are not about those kind of guys, but ""The Phantom of the Opera"" is a happy exception and has been for more twenty years now, ever since Andrew Lloyd Webber put music to Gaston Leroux's novel ""Le Fantome de l'Op??ra"" and slapped it on Broadway.
""Phantom"" remains the second-longest running Broadway musical, and with good reasons: the extravagant dance sequences, ornate sets, instantly memorable musical motifs and eye-widening on-stage fireworks, and brings to stage the all-too-real, all-too-painful story of a guy who just cannot get the girl of his dreams to love him.
The Phantom (Stephen R. Buntrock shining in spite of the fact he was merely filling in for Gary Mauer, who had played the Phantom throughout most of this national tour) is a disfigured musical genius living underneath the Paris Opera House during the late 18th century, and whenever he's not menacing the theater owners into giving him more money or demanding that they give a silent part to the Opera House's leading lady-Carlotta Giudicella, whom Kim Stengel plays with ridiculous bravado that is to be relished every moment-he's tutoring the voice of young and beautiful Christine Daae (a disempowered female whom Rebecca Pitcher plays with a commanding voice) so that she might take Carlotta's place.
He is glad to hear her beautiful singing, she calls him her ""angel of music,"" and all could've gone well except for one minor kink: He falls in love with her.
Considering the Phantom lives in a dungeon, has a face that looks like what your dog coughed up last night and is competing for her love with the rich and attractive Raoul (Tim Martin Gleason), it is pretty much a given who Christine's going to be choosing.
But the Phantom's tuneful pleas to win her heart don't come across as pathetic, and when he forcefully abducts her and takes her across a foggy underground lake to his cavernous abode to try to intimidate her into staying with him, it isn't played up like horror for cheap thrills.
The Phantom is more than an ugly villain creating the damsel-in-distress phenomenon that clean-cut Raoul must overcome and rectify: He is a person driven to inhuman acts by his own loneliness and the knowledge that a disfigurement that wasn't his fault will forever banish his musical genius and love to an underworld not befitting rats.
The heartbreak Buntrock exhibits as the Phantom elevates ""Phantom"" from just a show, to a beautiful piece of art. The Phantom is the ultimate example of the ""exquisite pain of the guy who goes home alone.\
