I saw the original production of Phantom in London shortly after it opened, and have also seen it with a resident company in San Francisco (and an orchestrette). In London (I think it was at Her Majesty's Theatre, if I remember correctly), I thought it worked well (within the limits of Andre Lloyd Weber's capabilities -- I think he's good, but not great, though Phantom was his best to date). The theater's decor matched the period of the show perfectly, and the theater's chandelier had been replaced with a functional prop -- no one knew until it literally came crashing down onto the stage, mere feet above the heads of the audience. The problem with Las Vegas houses is the same as with the newer "office building" theaters built after the '70s on Broadway -- they're simply too big, and isolate the audience from the performers. In ancient Greek times, the problem of large "houses" (the theaters then were, of course, open-air) was solved by putting the actors on platform shoes and in masks with built-in megaphones so that they could be seen and heard better. Contemporary theater uses mikes on the actors -- a practice I despise since you're not hearing them, you're hearing the sound system. Broadway never used mikes until the late '60s, when PZM mikes were put at the edge of the apron and used for "sound reinforcement." Before that, actors were just expected to project, and could do so with no difficulty at all. The apron mikes were replaced with individual wireless mikes in the '70s. These early experiments with artificial amplification sometimes had unexpected and funny results -- soundmen would forget to turn off an actor's mike and you'd hear his or her off-stage comments, or forget to turn them on, rendering an actor completely mute, when actors got too close together their mikes would interact and screech and, fairly often, the sound system in one theater would pick up the mikes from another and the audience would find themselves listening to an entirely different play. Sound technology has improved substantially since then, but I still don't think it's "real" theater unless I can hear the actor's voice coming out of his or her mouth, as opposed to monstrous speakers on either side of the proscenium.

Anyway, I digress (again). I was okay with The Producers, though I thought, musically, it was very weak and I am definitely NOT a fan of Matthew Broderick, at least on stage. For me, the original film with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, is the definitive interpretation and far, far, funnier. However, the price of admission to the musical was worth it just to finally see the show-within-the-show, "Springtime for Hitler," performed live in full Busby Berkely style.

Same here. Why don't we start a Broadway Musicals thread? I'm trying to figure out where it should be -- probably not in "Destinations - New York" because it should also include London theater, which produces some of the finest English-speaking theater in the world. I use the term "Broadway Musicals" only because the genre was invented and perfected here in the U.S.