Broadway star Hugh Panaro has an accolade no-one else will achieve for sure: he played the Phantom more than 2,300 times – a staggering achievement.
So this huge voice and matching personality could feel constrained in the intimacy of London’s Crazy Coqs cabaret room. Not a bit of it.
From the moment he walks though the audience singing Something’s Coming – you know that it certainly is.
His anecdotes are interesting, darkly humorous, and bring out the undoubted charm of the man. The little small-town boy who wanted to be a vet was bitten with the theatre bug when aged 12 he was taken to see new musical Annie, starring Andrea McArdle – also from his Pennsylvania home town. “I didn’t wanna be a vet anymore,“ he tells us.
A story about seeing Peter Pan links in to his rendition of Neverland – a rich, luscious voice that soars magnificently to the ceiling and back – mesmerising. He seems to hang on the highest notes like a trapeze artist – and boy are there lots of high notes.
A Sondheim anecdote leads to Ah Miss and Johanna, from Sweeney Todd – brilliantly raw and full of emotion. He played Anthony but always craved Tobias’ song, Not While I’m Around, so we get it, beautiful yes but there’s something scary going on behind the eyes of this mad youth.
Elton John’s Lestat – a vampire musical, in which he appeared – lasted 39 performances, but he gives us a truly gripping song written for him for the show by Elton – a crazy love song, Right Before My Eyes. So the star has had some flops – he was in Martin Guerre when it closed in LA, failing to reach Broadway.
He was joined on the night I saw him by guest star Christina Bianco – a big voice and personality and certainly in her soaring pure voice his match in All I Ask Of You and A Little Fall Of Rain, and she followed up in Forbidden Broadway style with a montage of impersonations to The Sun’ll Come Out, from Bernadette Peters to Julie Andrews and many more. Captivatingly funny.
Back with Hugh, there’s the story of how Miss Saigon creator Claude-Michel Schonberg asked him to try out a few songs from the show, which he did – but he wasn’t then offered the lead role of Chris. “At 25 my heart was pretty broken,” he half-jokes.
A year later he was asked to audition for the first national tour of the show – and didn’t get it again: “but I’m not bitter”. Then he sings Why God, Why? with drama, gusto and bitterness and I don’t know why he didn’t get it.
And on we go with too many on his song list for me to recount – through Showboat, a show with Streisand; Les Mis, with a stunningly electric Empty Chairs; and inevitably to Music Of The Night – which I truly believe I will never hear better sung.
Accompanied brilliantly throughout by Joseph Thalken on piano and Nick Laughlin on bass, this is truly a night and a performer to remember.