"The problems lie within the book," says the Guardian's Michael Billington, pointing to Lloyd Webber's decision to transpose the phantom character to Coney Island, 10 years after the original, where he has somehow (despite being deformed, mad, violent and probably dead) established a thriving theatrical business.
He has long been populating Shakespeare's plays with phantoms: characters who quietly appear, as if in the mind's eye, when others speak or think of them.
The music heard at the beginning of the episode during the burglaries is taken from the film The Pink Panther, in which Niven played The Phantom, a similar character.
Hideo Kojima's time-sinker Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain had my character creeping around Afghanistan for hours.
Star Wars Episode I: Obi-Wan's Adventures is a video game that chronicles the events of the film Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace from the character Obi-Wan Kenobi's perspective.
Friends of "Phantom" will recognize these characters, as they are all (except Gustave) recycled and in some cases, changed beyond recognition from the earlier show.
I wouldn't want to stop reading like that, being moved by these character-phantoms just as if I knew them in the flesh.
Being the title character of "The Phantom of the Opera," the most successful musical of all time, wasn't enough for him.
It was only with the release of the film that the story and the character of the Phantom achieved international celebrity.
Mr. Barrett, 54, a dashing leading-man type, has been in and out of the Broadway production of "Chicago" as Billy Flynn and has played many other roles in New York, in regional theaters and internationally, from Fred Graham in "Kiss Me, Kate" in London to the title character in "The Phantom of the Opera" in Las Vegas.
He later starred as the title character in The Phantom of the Opera (2004), the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, and in Beowulf & Grendel (2005), a fantasy based on the epic poem Beowulf that was highlighted by Butler's gritty but compassionate portrayal of the Norse hero.
