The Phantom of the Opera in London

The production, the theatre and the run

His Majesty’s Theatre was built for opera in 1705 and rebuilt three times since; the building on the Haymarket today went up in 1897. For the last forty years it has housed a musical about a man who lives underneath an opera house, which is a coincidence the production has never had to explain.

The staging is the original one. Hal Prince directed it in 1986, Maria Björnson designed the sets and the costumes, and what plays now is that production rather than a revival of it — the same chandelier, on the same rig, in the same room. A West End auditorium of this age is small by modern standards, 1,216 seats across four levels, and the sightlines were drawn for a house where the boxes mattered; where you sit changes the evening here more than it does in a purpose-built theatre.

It opened on 9 October 1986 after previews from 27 September, and has never moved. That makes it the second-longest-running show in West End history behind Les Misérables, and it is now in its fortieth year. Nothing about the run is provisional: the booking horizon is pushed forward as it is reached rather than closed.

What that means for a reader deciding between a Saturday matinee and a Tuesday evening is mostly about the room rather than the cast. There are no Sunday performances at all; the day seats are online only and go at 10am for that same day; and the interval is twenty minutes rather than the fifteen most of the street runs, which is worth knowing if you have booked anything afterwards.