Last Friday, a new national tour of Phantom of the Opera opened in Seattle. I hadn't seen a performance of the show since 1992, when my parents took me to see it at the Los Angeles Music Center for my twelfth birthday. Back then, we were in the very last row of the uppermost balcony, and I couldn't see a thing, except fog rolling out over the audience and into the orchestra pit.

There is just as much fog in this production, plus an insane amount of fire (the heat of which reached me in row S), plus all those infernally catchy songs, plus the two-way mirror trick. And there are some new things, including a bulging, water-tower-like structure (see photo above) with steps that emerge from the curved wall as the Phantom and Christine walk down them (the effect looks like something from Indiana Jones). Instead of a hanged man suddenly dropping from the rafters while the ballerinas are dancing, in this production you actually watch the Phantom lift a stagehand into a noose and hang him before your eyes.

I had forgotten how riveting and plot-heavy that first act is. It almost makes sense that the show is such a freak hit, given the tension and mystery in act one. Then comes act two, and everything goes to hell.

It's stunning to me that the longest running show ever on Broadway (by a wide margin) has such a strained and unsatisfying act two. As a piece of playwriting, it's a mess. There are holes in the plot big enough to steer a gondola through.

Don't read this paragraph if spoilers to The Phantom of the Opera are something you're trying to avoid. Skip ahead to what I have to say about Porgy and Bess. (Or better yet just go see Porgy and Bess.) But... uhhhhh... guys? That second act? First of all, it communicates that people with disabilities are disgusting. Second, it communicates that murderers are okay if they really wanted a certain woman badly enough. Third, it suggests that this guy who's been murdering people left and right, and cursing opera singers to sound like frogs, and crashing chandeliers, etc. will be totally cool and change his mind and move on instantly if the beautiful woman (who's about to run off with some other guy) just gives him one peck on the lips.

It makes no sense, it's way too easy, and in the current climate, the whole thing seems somehow both mean-spirited and naive. Eva Tavares (who studied opera in Vancouver, BC) sings the Christine Daae role well and hits those high notes; Quentin Oliver Lee, as the so-called angel of darkness, is a fine actor, though his voice lacks the power and depth of a musical genius, which the Phantom is supposed to be.

But the fog and fire are cool.

Porgy and Bess doesn't have any fire or fog, but it does have actual opera singers (filling McCaw Hall with their voices alone, no amplification, naturally), and one of them, Angel Blue, who plays Bess, in bed with Porgy in the photo above, is one of the most charismatic performers I've ever seen onstage. Whenever she walked out in this Seattle Opera production, she was all I could look at.

Born in 1984, Blue has performed all over the world, and in 2017 made her Metropolitan Opera debut (in New York City) singing Mimi in La Boheme. According to Wikipedia, "Blue's voice has been recognized for its shining and agile upper register, 'smoky' middle register, beautiful timbre, and her ability to switch from a classical to contemporary sound."

My colleague Charles Mudede, who writes about the soaring Gershwin score right here (and his favorite covers of it by Nina Simone, et al), asked me on Monday morning (since he didn't go) how Porgy's physical disability was handled. Was he wheeling himself around in a cart?

No, there is no cart—just a crutch and a limp. Walker plays the part with a winning warm-heartedness. Even though (like the physically disabled Phantom) he also kills someone in the course of the story, it isn't a senseless killing meant to deflect attention, scare ballerinas, and epitomize toxic masculinity. He kills a man who has himself just murdered someone else. It is a killing that has everything to do with protecting Bess.

There are also wonderful supporting performances, including from Jermaine Smith, above, who brings some physical comedy into the story, and from Mary Elizabeth Williams, as Serena, who becomes a widow in act one and manages grief through the grace of her voice.

In summation...

Porgy and Bess is satisfying, complex work of art that examines the lives of the marginalized and misunderstood, the lure of addiction, the pleasures of sex (people with disabilities have sex, too), and the vicissitudes of personal attachment. It is the quintessential American opera.

Phantom of the Opera has stage fog and pyrotechnics.

Phantom of the Opera plays through August 19. Porgy and Bess plays through August 25.