Michael Crawford’s Vampire Meets Critical Brickbats

West End star Michael Crawford‘s return to the Broadway (and legitimate musical) stage for the first time since the original production of The Phantom of the Opera in 1986 launched the Briton as the biggest musical star on either side of the Atlantic opened last night at Broadway’s Minskoff Theatre, and this morning has received devastating notices.

Charles Isherwood, theatre critic for trade newspaper Variety, writes: “Michael Crawford will live to rue the day he chose this ludicrous musical as the vehicle for his Broadway return. He’ll cringe at the mortifying makeup job, which makes him look like a drag queen whose vanity mirror could use a few more lightbulbs, and the pseudo-mullet wig, scarier than any of the show’s other special effects.” However, he goes on, “Of course, for now at least, Crawford can cringe all the way to the bank: On the strength of his massive Phantom following, the musical is doing strong business.” Critical ridicule, he concludes, might dampen the box office “a bit, but the show will probably last out the season – maybe longer”.

In the New York Times, Ben Brantley makes a similar point to the one stated in Whatsonstage.com’s New York Nights column: “Theatre disaster cultists, a breed that makes Vlad the Impaler look small-time, have had their fangs at the ready ever since the early buzz began on Vampires…. Hopes were high that this musical might be in the league of platinum-plated flops like Carrie and Moose Murders. And it’s true that there are moments that climb into the stratosphere of legendary badness…. For the most part, however, Vampire exudes the less exalted, simply embarrassed feeling of a costume party that everyone got all dressed up for and then decided wasn’t such a good idea.”

Brantley goes on to compare Crawford to looking like “a Goth version of Siegfried, Roy and Wayne Newton combined”. Associated Press critic Michael Kuchwara also compares him to Newton – “Crawford looks like a shellacked Wayne Newton (check out that ducktail)” – while Broadway.com‘s Ken Mandelbaum opines: “Crawford looks fairly ludicrous in his Liberace get-up”. In USA Today, Elysa Gardner writes that at 60, Crawford “looks disturbingly like a cross between an aging David Hasselhoff and Donald Trump, and likely couldn’t sing his way past either of them.”

The show itself is variously described as “spectacularly idiotic” (USA Today), “this appalling evening” (Broadway.com), a “musical of mind-numbing silliness” (Associated Press), and as wanting “to be campy, preachy, lewd and romantically rhapsodic all at once” (New York Times).

– Mark Shenton