‘Phantom’ makes its exit Sunday after 35 years, and Broadway won’t be the same

Bye-bye, Mr. Music of the Night.

After some 35 years at Broadway’s Majestic Theatre, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” is to make his final embittered exit at a black-tie performance Sunday night, dedicated to his protectors, producers, income-generating potential and super fans.

For a veteran national critic like me, who has watched that glittering chandelier fall from the theater’s ceiling everywhere from London to Los Angeles (Ah!, the great Michael Crawford!) and from Green Bay to 2006 Las Vegas (where that pretty bauble on steroids came down faster than a roulette dealer raking away your cash), it’s a poignant marker of the inevitable passage of time.

Here goes the ultimate tourist show, the last truly analog mega-production, a miracle of pre-digital design of which Broadway never will see the like again and, whatever nonsense you might read elsewhere, a formidably brilliant piece of populist art directed by a now-deceased genius, Hal Prince.

Even as it approached its dotage, “Phantom” always attracted an international, date-night crowd, people dressed up to the nines and primed for sensual romance, often with the person in the neighboring seat.

In an era where Broadway is most concerned about the intellectual elite and scared to death of sexiness, “Phantom” has been a seductive outlier. It’s a passion-driven show, as melodramas historically have been, and its wily ways have built audiences for all the other shows playing in the surrounding blocks. It has been a gateway drug for Broadway and its supportive army of grown-up theater kids.

And the advertisements for the Cameron Mackintosh production, once ubiquitous on pastable New York surfaces, taught succeeding generations of entertainment marketers that all you need is a single evocative image. Like a mask. Heck, Midtown even named its souvenir stores after the show, even though they sold all kinds of other stuff.

When “Phantom” hit the road, it moved in a fleet of 18 or 20 semitrailers. Somewhere in the 1990s, I watched Wisconsonites emerge from their homes just to see the scenery trucking down their road. This show was that strong a national brand. And one oft-forgotten achievement of this production is that it sparked the renovation of numerous old picture houses in the downtowns of struggling mid-sized cities.

People don’t usually know that “The Phantom of the Opera’ was a major catalyst for urban renewal.

And on Broadway, it sustained a company for grateful ensemble actors, sometimes for decades. That company was like the Hotel California. You could switch roles but you’d never leave.

In all of its incarnations, including the Broadway flagship, the bulks of the people in the “Phantom” audience have not been wealthy folks — they merely saved up for their big night out and the associated thrills the show could be relied upon to deliver. They’ve seen their money right up there on stage before their eyes, which is where it belongs. With its huge orchestra, full-throated ensemble and booming voices (like that of longtime Phantom James Barbour) that you can hear halfway to Chelsea, once they wind up to full power, “Phantom” has been the bomb for years. Most people even actually put away their phones for fears the Phantom might take them out.

Some cynics think “Phantom” will return before long, once his theater has been renovated and the high costs of that orchestra and big ensemble contracted and reduced. The producers are even teasing such a thing. But everyone knows that it won’t be the same, even if the pull of the most famous title on Broadway, still, ultimately proves to be too much to resist.

On Sunday, a masked Elvis exits the building. I hear they’re keeping his box empty.

As well they should. You never know what he might do.