The Chandelier Crashes For The Final Time, On February 18, 2023!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                   As if the Queen's passing was not enough, Broadway got a bomb thrown at it, when it was announced that, after 35 years--the same run I had as an employee at Lincoln Center--"The Phantom Of The Opera" will end its run, on February 18, 2023.

                                     I never thought it would close.  But then, I thought the same about "The Fantasticks" and "A Chorus Line."  And now, this.  Alas.  Eras pass, and they are always sad.

                                     I admired the show but did not embrace it.  I saw it on a matinee day, Saturday, January 12, 1988.  Patti Cohenour was playing Christine, as Sarah Brightman--then wife of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber--was not doing matinees.  It made no difference to me, and Cohenour was superb.

                                         But I was not a 'Phantom' groupie.  Many were, and that, plus tourism, plus enduring popularity resulted in a fourteen thousand plus performance run. 

                                           Doubly sad to me is that when the curtain rings down, it will be the last show on Broadway actually staged by Harold Prince.  So, if you want to see the Prince staging, or have never the show, and kept putting it off, now is the time.  Because the closer to the closing date, the harder tickets will be to come by.  That's just a rule of show biz.

                                              I doubt if I will ever see another show run that long in my lifetime.

                                              Meanwhile, there is still "The Lion King!"