Anthony Crivello.
Энтони Кривелло.

Meet the Phantom...
by nicola slavin — last modified Mar 05, 2009 03:19 PM
— filed under: Phantom of the Opera
- Mar 05, 2009
In the first of a two-part interview we talk to Anthony Crivello, our Las Vegas Phantom.


Anthony Crivello stars as the Phantom in Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular - a unique version of The Phantom of the Opera which opened at The Venetian Resort and Hotel in Las Vegas in June 2006. In the first part of our interview, Anthony talks to us about his early career and reveals what its like to play the Phantom in a city like Las Vegas...

Las Vegas is a city in the middle of the desert. What implications does this have for your voice?
I’ve worked in New York, London, Toronto, LA, Florida, Calgary, Chicago... all of them have different difficult weather patterns, but nothing compares to this. It’s part of the old ‘legend of the Vegas throat,’ or desert throat – which is indeed a reality. You’re coping with a combination of extreme heat, extreme cold, dust, wind and pollen – so you’re fighting constantly.

I have an ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat specialist) that is on call and if I have any kind of a problem, I’m able to call him. I take a series of medications to combat the allergies that I have. It’s a challenge – you just try and take care of yourself as best you can. There’s a small humidifier in my dressing room and three at home – and you have to learn to hydrate (drink water) constantly.

How does Las Vegas compare with the other cities and continents you have played in?
It is like no other city. It’s just a constant turnover of different people, and it makes for this sort of crazy profile.
I also work as a writer and I was compiling some statistics as to who was in town at a moment in time as far as entertainment goes and who you could potentially access on short notice. I drew up a list during the months of November and December – and that list was astonishing. Vegas draws a myriad of people and celebrities from all different walks of life that have had a good amount of media exposure. For example right now we have the Miss America contest, so there are all these young hopefuls in town who came to see the show last night.

So you can have Miss America now, and at other times you have rappers and musical artists ... and at the beginning of January we had the AVN convention, which is the one time of year that the pornography industry gathers here! Other times we have all kinds of electronics conventions that will come into town…you have celebrities, you have athletes … I mean it is a variance of all these, and different nationalities as well. You have the rodeo in town to, the cowboys and their wives will descend on the city en mass.

Do the Las Vegas audience react differently to the show compared with other cities you have played in?
Yes, to a certain degree. Shows that don’t have words here, like the Cirque du Soleil shows or the Blue Man Group, tend to have longer extended runs. But with a show like Phantom there’s a universality to it that crosses language borders. Obviously there’s opera in the content. It’s like listening to Puccini or Wagner. A multi-national audience is not concerned with understanding the words as much as they are enjoying the story-line, the melodic content, listening to the singers and their technique. And specifically with this production as well, the spectacle that is involved. You have Andrew Lloyd Webber and Harold Prince allowed to, if you will, ‘run wild’ with a 'fantasy production' and a much larger budget, thus producing something you would never see, for a myriad of reasons, in New York or London or on the road.

Is that because here it was possible to build a venue specifically for this production?
Exactly. For instance, with all other productions of Phantom the opera boxes were never part of the permanent structure – but here in Las Vegas they are. There are pyrotechnic effects that you could never get away with in another city because specific fire laws outside of Vegas would not allow it. The chandelier, which was originally 6 feet tall in London and on Broadway and weighing I imagine a couple of hundred pounds at the very most – here we have a chandelier that is 2 stories tall, assembles before your eyes, operated by 32 winches. And when it descends you feel a breeze in the theatre because it’s travelling at 35 mph inside the building – THAT’S what modern technology can do!

Going back to the point of not seeing this on the road or in London or New York – in order just to achieve the chandelier affect you have to have gear mechanisms and winches that are built into the bedrock of the building. There are beautiful theatres in London and New York, but will those old structures support a 2100 pound chandelier? Most likely not, and i imagine nobody’s going to take a chance to find out. Even with road companies, they might play brand new theatre, but they’re going in as a temporary production. So the Phantom Theatre here is the only place where you will see this type of production and spectacle – that’s part of what makes it so wonderful.

How did you start out in your acting career?
Well, I'll begin this story with my association with Hal Prince. That was critical to my career. I had started in Chicago with a road company of Evita. as "Che." I was plucked out of that company by Hal Prince and brought to Broadway to star in Evita there. About 10 years later Hal [Prince] was casting a new show entitled Kiss of the Spiderwoman and at the time it was suggested to him to have me play Valentin. A workshop production was previously done and it had less than stellar results with not much hope to proceed. At the time Garth Drabinsky saw that workshop, and he was the one who seized the opportunity and said, “I think there’s potential here.” He got on board and they recast the leads. Eventually we opened in Toronto, and then opened in the West End at the Shaftesbury Theatre, and then on to Broadway. We won Seven Tony Awards, I was fortunate enough to receive one of them. And that was all a direct result of working with Hal Prince.

Subsequently I had decided I was going to leave the Broadway production of Kiss, and at that point Hal had said to me, “you know Tony, at some point we have to get you playing "the Phantom.” And I said, “Hal, I think that sounds a great idea and I would love to have the opportunity.” Then... over the next 11 years, correspondence between Hal and myself looking for the right opportunity... and 12 years later – here I am. Mr. Prince is indeed a man of his word.

I’ve worked with some wonderful, wonderful directors and had some great opportunities from Trevor Nunn, John Caird, John Rando, Graciella Danielle, Des McAnuff, Lynne Taylor Corbett, Mark Lamos, Gary Griffin, David Lee, Christopher Renshaw, Hugh Wooldridge, Arthur Allan Seidelman…and I could go on and on and on, there’s so many of them. And I’ve had wonderful opportunities… but the consistent biggest opportunities have been with Hal ... and there’s no doubt with Evita as a launching pad, Kiss of the Spiderwoman and now Phantom – these are three tremendous opportunities.

Who has been the biggest influence on your career?
Without a doubt, Hal Prince. This is my third production with Hal, this is my second with Lord Lloyd Webber. The productions that I did with Andrew and Hal are big. The first milestone was 'Che' in Evita – on tour and then on Broadway. And I was fortunate enough to receive some wonderful notices, specifically from Frank Rich, the main critic from the NY Times at the time. Mr. Rich had garnered the moniker "The Butcher of Broadway." Personally I disagree. But there was a certain amount of fear when the Broadway company of Evita was about to be re-reviewed. Initially Frank had not given the greatest of reviews to the show so there was a certain amount of fear with the replacements. But with the re-review, he felt that many aspects of the production had improved, and he was very complimentary to me and my performance. At the time he called me "the best Che to have ever stepped on a stage in New York and London."

Of all the cities that you’ve played in, what’s your favourite?
There are many favourites for different reasons. Obviously New York City and Broadway is the ultimate experience, as was London and the West End. I have a special fondness for both of those cities because of the profile, because of the theatre communities there, because I have so many friends in both of those cities.

I cut my theatrical teeth in Chicago and I go back to Chicago repeatedly for work. It’s a great theatre town and there’s wonderful companies there and I’ve been fortunate enough to work with the likes of The Goodman Theatre and the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, who have received recognition and Tony Awards. I have come within inches of working with Steppenwolf, it just hasn’t quite materialized, but somewhere along the line ... who knows it may. And there are so many other wonderful theatre companies there of different sizes. But those are the 3 cities that have a special meaning to me as far as theatre goes.

What’s your favorite part of this show?
The last 15 minutes… just before the final lair, starting at "The Point of No Return." That’s the emotional apex of the entire evening for the character. The descent into the lair… the setup that goes into the final lair… for an actor, it’s really the heart of the show, being able to sink your teeth into the emotions that have built up throughout the evening – then, the catharsis that happens at that point for the character. I love the complexity of it. It is great fodder for an actor.

Have you ever had any scary moments as the Phantom?
The scary moments started when we were in rehearsal. I’ll say this, once we got on stage there’s two things I quickly found out- and you cannot portray "the Phantom" if either apply: One is, you cannot be claustrophobic ... and the other one is you cannot be afraid of heights.

How involved were the creative team in putting the show together?
This production is a technical monster in a myriad of ways. We have had minor accidents. There have been times ... opening night, when one of the problems is you’re mounting what is in essence a brand new production. And for that reason, we had virtually the entire creative team with us from the get go. They were here for the entire rehearsal process – we were fortunate that Hal Prince, Gillian Lynne and David Caddick, as well as Jack Gaughan our musical director, associate director Artie Masella and assistant choreographer Denny Berry... all to all assist Hal. Because unlike a multi-million dollar 'road tour,' it really was reconstructing how this NEW inception of an existing show was going to fit together. Hal and David, and Artie and Gillian, were on the phone to Andrew every other day saying "we have a problem here ... we need to cut there," in order to make it fit into the formula that is a 'casino con tract' show - that is, a show without an intermission and within a time frame that is required by casino management so they can get the patrons back out gambling – and that was all part of the negotiations prior to set up.

It was an interesting experience from that standpoint ... of putting it all together. Because it was a 'brand new production' in essence and because of the fact that it had no 'try-out' on the road, and because there was so much new technology, it was a discovery process. And part of that discovery was how the mechanics of the show were going to work. Even though there were designs that were originally done by Maria Bjornson there were some adaptations that had to take place. So there were some – I’ll call them growing pains. There are still things that malfunction, like any 'live' production, but not quite to the extent that it did at the beginning.

Has anything ever gone wrong onstage?
Well... you know it may be a $250,000 mechanical boat but it still has a mind of its own. Literally one time the computer 'brain' of the boat decided it wasn’t going to function. The thing is you can’t run up to the local electronics store and say “OK, give me another one of these.” With this type of technology, it has to be manufactured. So that’s just one of the latest. Consequently, you have to operate for a few days without a boat so 'the Phantom' winds up escorting Christine into the liar with a leisurely walk through the fog. And even THAT becomes precarious because there’s trapdoors that are open and you have to know where they are! We literally have to rehearse how to walk into the lair. But that’s also not unlike any large spectacle, there’s always going to be a certain amount of … unpredictability and danger.

Do you get nervous before a performance?
Generally, no. The wonderful thing about theatre, especially because we had a wonderful long rehearsal period, is that although there are times, benchmark times when you might get a little bit nervous with the first performance or whatever, we’re very well rehearsed. Everyone’s very comfortable. A few mishaps just takes us back to the technique of relaxing and going with the flow. We feel safe in the environment, so generally the nerves die away... which is good because you’re able to play. And you really are. I’m a Method trained actor so I’m really looking for the opportunity to react and be 'in the moment' with the other actors ... as well as entertain the audience.

What’s your dream role?
That’s a hard question to answer. I could say that there are times that I have contemplated what it would be like to play Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman", or what would it be like to play Johnny Friendly in the stage version of "On The Waterfront." I have an open invitation with the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre to do Shakespeare and their Artistic Director Barbara Gaines has said to me, “Tony, what role would you like to do?” I think ultimately though, the role that I am slowly trying to pursue is on the other side of the floodlights. I would like to have an opportunity to direct. I’d like to have an opportunity to create. I see myself moving in that direction… directing in theatre. Sometimes I dream about directing a film but I think ultimately my heart lies in the theatre. I have done my share of film and television and I’ve enjoyed it as well, but it’s not like the theatre to me.

What’s your favorite musical number?
From this show or from any show? Boy, that’s a tough question! Let me narrow it down to things that I have performed. I love, for instance, the score of 'Kismet', the song ‘Stranger in Paradise’ – that melodic line, Rogers and Hammerstein. I love the music of "West Side Story." Leonard Bernstein I think is a genius. My experience with "Les Miserables" was nothing short of wonderful on all counts!! But from a performance standpoint I have to say, I would love to have the opportunity to do "Evita" again, even in concert. Che was a wonderful character and ‘Oh What A Circus’ and ‘The Money Kept Rolling In’ and ‘High Flying Adored’ – that was a very special time for me. I love doing comedy and farce as well.

There’s a lot of cynicism in that role [of Che]…
Yes there is, and there’s a great deal of humour in that character too. And I really loved that music. I’ve been so fortunate as far as the musicals and shows that I’ve been involved with. I must say "Kiss of The Spiderwoman" too… Kander and Ebb... it’s just great stuff. And I’ve worked with such wonderful people… I wish I had had an opportunity to work with Bob Fosse. I wish I had also had an opportunity to work with Michael Peters and even Michael Bennett ... in some way, shape or form. But I have had such wonderful opportunities. I love the music of "Jane Eyre" too and Paul Gordon’s work... I think there’s a wonderful melodic content there as well. There’s so many other musicals… I could go to "Guys and Dolls", I could go to "Sweet Charity" and the classics, there’s so many great numbers and shows.

And of course there are the Phantom numbers…
Absolutely. All that being said, I have to honestly say that "Point of No Return" is a wonderful number to sing. I imagine people would normally think that I would say "Music of the Night" but I think that there’s elements in "Point of No Return" that are just lovely.