Excuse me? Do I relate to the Phantom of The Phantom of the Opera? The unnamed, unloved, horribly disfigured, sociopathically murderous ghoul? Popular entertainment’s poster child (and best not to think too hard about this while watching) for coercive control?

Of course I related. The tortured, misunderstood artist? Skulking in the shadows, firm in the belief that your appearance, your mind, your art will only be ridiculed? From the rafters, watching life play out without you? Loving so deeply you can’t ever really love at all?

The character I first encountered in a booster seat at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne in, I think, 1991, gallantly rendered by Anthony Warlow, whose lines I then memorised from the vinyl’s liner notes? Whom I watched in Hamburg, performed entirely in indecipherably guttural German? Who, as conceived by Victor Hugo, haunted the Paris Opera House’s box five, which was absolutely not kept empty for me when I went to pay my respects on the same European sojourn?

Of course I related to the Phantom. But I could do without the unflattering comparison, at about two hundred bucks after Medicare.

Joshua Robson as The Phantom and Georgina Hopson as Christine Daaé in Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour’s 2022 production of The Phantom of the Opera (photograph by Prudence Upton)

Phantom, man and show, as his young ingénue Christine warbles in the title tune, is there, inside your mind – whether you like it or not. There had been better stage musicals before Andrew Lloyd Webber cracked open Broadway with his synthesisers and British bombast. And there have been  much better musicals since, a form elevated by new artists such as Lin-Manuel Miranda. And yet, like fragile masculinity and dangerous disaffection, Phantom endures, reliably entertaining and reliably profitable.

Which brings us to Sydney Harbour and an opera company battered by pandemic shutdowns, one that long ago abandoned its exclusively operatic repertory focus and now needs a hit to take to the bank. There was only one choice. But there’s novelty beyond the familiar comfort. For one, we are outside (mercifully in a narrow rain-free window on opening night). We are maskless, finally, except for you-know-who on stage, who dons shiny metallic replicas of the famously matte-white original. And the production is unlike anything Phan-fans have seen.

The star, arguably, is Simon Phillips, Australia’s go-to director for a bit of razzle dazzle, who almost rehabilitated Webber’s lamentable Phantom sequel Love Never Dies in 2011 and who perhaps, as a result, has been entrusted to create what amounts to the first major revision of the work since the Hal Prince-directed 1986 original. And if you think the outdoor stage, sans proscenium and usual machinery, might rob Phantom of its spectacle, well, not if Phillips and his long-time designing partner Gabriela Tylesova have anything to do with it.

Enormous, glittering, precariously secured chandelier? Check. Sweeping marble Paris Opera House replica staircase? Check, draped in Tylesova’s kaleidoscopic costumes and bathed in ravishing gold light (designed by Nick Schlieper) for the spectacular act-two opener, ‘Masquerade’. ‘Swirling mist upon a vast glassy lake’? Check; candelabra-lit, of course, for that gondola to navigate. Towering graveyard mausoleum? Check. Magic dressing-room mirror? Check, and even more magical than the original. Pyrotechnics? You bet, on stage and high in the sky with that World Wonder backdrop of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House.

The Cast of The Phantom of the Opera in Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour’s 2022 production of The Phantom of the Opera (photograph by Hamilton Lund)

Phillips’s top hat of tricks seems as bottomless as any magician’s. On opening night, without a single preview, after a rain-affected rehearsal period, not everything came off. Microphones weren’t toggling at times. The magic mirror was on the fritz. The chandelier’s crash to earth – spoiler alert – was more like a gentle parachute landing. The blocking left some faces in the shadows at key moments. Conductor Guy Simpson, a Phantom specialist buried with his orchestra under the stage, didn’t seem to have complete control of his forces.

The performances will deepen over the run, too. Already, Joshua Robson is every bit as contused and creepy as the hundreds of Phantoms whose shoulders he must stand on, with a fittingly brassy but bruised baritone instrument. It’s a big break for the mostly unheralded hoofer. So too Georgina Hopson as his star-cross’d chorus girl muse, who sang with wonderful warmth and colour. She’s coquettish as the role demands, but with a stiffer spine that negates some of the dated role play.

As the third point of the love triangle, Raul always seems wet and weary. Callum Francis can’t quite find him and seems oddly underpowered for a powerhouse performer who has freatured in West End shows like Kinky Boots. It may be a sound mix problem, it may be a bad fit, ultimately – but he’ll no doubt improve over the run. Rising soprano Naomi Johns certainly has the vocal chops for resident house diva Carlotta, and finds most of the comedy in her tantrums. Michael Cormick and Martin Crewes bring decades of musical theatre experience and all the requisite stuffiness for the baptised-in-fire theatre managers.

Lloyd Webber seemed pleased enough at the curtain call, as any multi-billionaire would at yet another iteration of a show that stands by some measures as one of the most successful pieces of entertainment in human history. (He also energetically deejayed the party after, as any seventy-four-year-old ex-peer of the realm does.) Phantom is so stuffed with melody, so sturdy in its gothic story construction, it has earned grudging respect, if not critical acclaim. His willingness to allow its al fresco reinvention is a gift to an audience and a production company tip-toeing out of pandemic stupors, fixed to the foreshore, to popular entertainment and to skulking phantoms the world over.

I broke up with the shrink soon after our Phantom conversation. The shame of my Phantom kinship remains.

The Phantom of The Opera, presented by Opera Australia, is playing from 25 March to 24 April 2022 at Fleet Steps, Mrs Macquaries Point. Performance seen: 25 March.