Meghan Picerno was back at work after 18 months of pandemic limbo, overjoyed to be singing and dancing again with her 'Phantom of the Opera' castmates as they rehearsed for the return of Broadway's longest-running show.
Actor Ben Crawford, who plays "the Phantom," stands on the stage of the empty Majestic Theater, which is scheduled to reopen in October, in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., September 3, 2021. Picture taken September 3, 2021. REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
Now, after an unprecedented shutdown, the theaters are among the last workplaces to reopen. Their return this fall is viewed as a test of the city's efforts to restore some new sense of normalcy. In August, "Phantom" producers announced they had cast the first-ever Black actor to play Christine since the show opened on Broadway in 1988. The actor, Emilie Kouatchou, would make her Broadway debut as an alternate for Picerno.
Kouatchou, the daughter of immigrants from Cameroon, grew up in the Chicago suburbs. "Phantom" was the first Broadway show she ever saw, on a trip to New York with her high school. She remembers being transfixed by Christine.Still, she worried about stereotyping, that some would see a mismatch in her voice, an operatic soprano, and her appearance, which was not the sort of "petite white girl" who seemed to always get cast as a show's ingénue or heroine.
The old, creepy Christine doll that stood in the Phantom's lair, her features unmistakably white, also was out. A new doll, designed to be racially ambiguous, would debut on reopening night. "The fact that it's clear now means something to me," he said. "They say it's the cleanest a Broadway theater has ever been."