Went to go and watch Phantom of the Opera last night with Leigh in the West End. I have to admit that I wasn’t that enthralled with it, I would use the term mildly amused. Tickets were £35 each which is pretty pricey considering we were way up in the nose-bleed seats and the view down onto the stage was not particularly great. The play and the set were very impressive, the music is obviously world famous but unless you know the story it can be quite hard to pick up on the storyline just by listening to the words being sung. The acoustics weren’t that amazing so I battled to hear what they were saying - it was loud enough just not clear enough at times. The theatre is very old and you feel likle you have literally been shoehorned into these tiny seats, trust me now, don’t sit in the Grand Circle if you’re over 6ft tall.
The Theatre was jam packed, mainly with tourists, American and Asian. No wonder Andrew Lloyd Webber is a really wealthy man, Phantom of the Opera has been showing in the West End now since 1986 , to put this in perspective here’s a word from the BBC
Phantom of the Opera has been hailed as the single biggest entertainment success of the 20th Century, with worldwide box office sales of £1.8bn, exceeding takings for films such as Titanic and Star Wars.
! The movie has a few funny moments but on the whole it’s as cheesy as a slab of stilton microwaved on high for 10 minutes! Be Cool is no where near as slick as Get Shorty and fails dismally as a quirky cult comedy. The plot has potential, it is of course based on a book by Elmore Leonard, but it is too in your face, too brash and tries to be too main-stream funny. My advice, wait for the DVD. 
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