An entertaining musical with directorial problems

It took almost four decades Andrew Lloyd Weber's most iconic and popular musical upon arriving in Barcelona. And it has done so with a co-production by the production companies Letsgo and Amigos para Siempre (founded by Antonio Banderas and Andrew Lloyd Webber) based on the Italian production directed by Federico Bellone. It's a somewhat different production from the original that premiered in 1986 at His Majesty's Theatre in London under the direction of Harold Prince, where it is still shown, and even from the Lope de Vega Theatre in Madrid in 2002, which replicated it very exactly. One of the reasons why the new production is less faithful to the original is that it was originally intended to tour, and consequently had to be adapted to theaters of different sizes.

This does not prevent the similarity of the Tivoli Theatre to an opera house where the performance takes place from greatly benefiting the show, and the production works generally quite well with powerful and well-tempered voices and a fifteen-piece orchestra that sounds lively and in tune. In fact, the musical part stands out against the weak staging.

Daniel Diges's ghost is charming, and his clear pronunciation is appreciated. Ana San Martín's Christine, on the other hand, despite shining in the high notes, doesn't always have the necessary intelligibility to follow the story. The rest of the characters and the heart are also good (she's also not very intelligible), but, as we said, the performance suffers from a lack of energy in the stage direction, as well as some poor decisions. We're referring to the fall of the iconic light, which isn't clear here, to the confusing escape of the ghost, and to the ridiculous final scene with the ghost declaring his love for Christine in front of the well-hung but still-living groom. However, since there will surely be no other opportunity to enjoy it, Lloyd Weber's fantastic music and the excellent voices of the performers are worth a visit to the Tivoli.