Two other famous effects end the first act. Here, and in the major cities that follow, the candles will come implanted inside a special floor that will be about a foot deep and will rest atop the actual Auditorium stage itself.) Chicago is the first stop on the national tour of ''Phantom,'' so a more adaptable method had to be devised-theaters get touchy when a touring show asks to rip up the floor.
(In London and on Broadway, portions of the stage floor slide aside, enabling the candles to come up into view. I just adapted that system for the candles.'' It had Victorian scenery underneath the stage that you could push up. The actual inspiration came from Her Majesty`s Theatre.
Conveniently, the imagery of the candles also creates the illusion that the lake is very deep. ''The idea was to call a church to mind, to reinforce the notion of ritual. One of the more famous images of ''Phantom'' is the candlelit lake, wherein the stage floor, covered with fog, is suddenly afire with the flickering light of a carpet of candles, as the Phantom escorts Christine to his home in a sort of Venetian gondola. And I wanted their journey to be ritualistic, in line with its mythic imagery. If we just used dry ice (a routine show-business gimmick), the whole thing would look a little murky. ''Then there was the problem of the lake. She solved it by coming up with the idea of a moving spiral staircase, now one of the signal images of the show, that can be trucked all over the stage as it twirls. If you placed them at the front, there wasn`t room to do the scene.'' ''The problem with moving them came from the fact that if you put them in the rear of the stage and started them high up, nobody could really see the descent. In solving the problem of how to physically move her characters underground and then across water, Bjornson came up with two of her more sensational effects. It was a journey across water, which has always had a heavy sexual symbolism and still works on that level today.'' ''Another problem with the lair came from the fact that Andrew had written this wonderful journey sequence in which the Phantom and Christine travel from the opera down to his hiding place, and it was very psychological, with roots in Greek mythology. It wasn`t just your Hollywood movie doing the usual imaginary something or other. He absolutely knew the atmosphere and architecture.
That`s one reason the film`s such a success. It was partly designed by Ben Carey, who happened to be a scene painter at the Paris Opera House before he went to Hollywood.
Obviously, the Lon Chaney film influenced me very much. The lair (the Phantom`s secret underground ''I spent 3 1/2 hours checking over some 300 pictures from different periods in its history.
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