Phantom of the Opera by MSA University

The MSA University of Cairo put up the Phantom of the Opera on 4 consecutive nights at the Opera House from the 20th to the 23rd of July.

It was advertised on facebook as
For the first time in Egypt and the Middle- East.

Dr.Nawal El Degwi Proudly invites you to attend the First Musical production (The Phantom Of The Opera) .The first and largest English musical production in the Middle East. This production, "The Phantom of The Opera", is one of the wonders of the international theatre and has been a great success for many years at Broadway .That includes more than 100 students from different nationalities that will be held at the Main Hall of the Cairo Opera House for four running days 20th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd of July 2008.

All the revenues will be invested in the charity project “Contribute in Building one hundred Schools” which is targeted at renovating and building schools under the supervision of the first Lady of Egypt Mrs. Susan Mubarak".

We caught the 2nd public performance on the 21st.

It started off with 3 songs from the original musical played live by their band. The band was good. Its a pity, they did not play live for the rest of the performance. The drummer and acoustic guitar player were the best. Somehow most of the semi-professional guitar players I have seen in Egypt do not exude the attitude and confidence that most guitarists in other countries do, even though they do play well.

Then a couple of students sang the most famous pieces. The lead Singers Samaa Mohamed and Othman were excellent. Samaa faltered a bit at the start, but quickly recovered to give an admirable performance for the rest of it.

The entire story was shortened to a one hour performance. So obviously a lot of the story line was lost. The accents were a bit hard to follow. Raoul was the clearest speaker but not the strongest performance. The phantom was agood performance but I wish he could have been more menacing. Instead of scaring us, he made us want to give him a hug and tell him "Everything would be ok in the end"

Christine was played well, but the best performance was undoubtedly that of Joseph Boque who had a minuscule speaking part but he was the most authentic of all the characters. Carlotta's acting was good, but with her put on Italian accent it was difficult to follow her lines.

The one professional ballet dancer in the group, who performed a solo (actually a duet, but the male dancer was more of a prop to her dancing) was excellent.
The dancers were good but could have done with more synchronization.


The costumes and sets were Outstanding!

All in all, it was an average college performance studded with a few stellar ones in between. It was definitely over priced, but since all ticket sale money is supposed to go to charity, I guess that makes it worth the price.