Hadley Fraser

At the Phantom of the Opera 25th anniversary, Andrew Lloyd Webber turned from Ramin Karimloo to Sierra Boggess. Hadley Fraser remembers the words as thanks, and then a dedication: you are my Christine for the twenty-first century, and I could not be more proud of you. Boggess already had a history with Christine, which is why Fraser says the line landed. He sets it beside the Phantom lines Webber had just given Karimloo. The speech, as Fraser tells it, is short. The sentence he keeps for Boggess is that Christine line, spoken at the end of the night rather than in a rehearsal note.

Hadley Fraser retells Andrew Lloyd Webber's words at the Phantom of the Opera 25th anniversary at the Royal Albert Hall. The lines for Ramin Karimloo call him the modern-day Phantom. Webber said he was proud of their association and that Karimloo was the epitome of the Phantom. He then turned, looked Karimloo in the eye, and said the two of them had had a lovely time. Fraser is proud of what the company got through in those two weeks, including a second act they never teched. He does not stretch the speech into a long private conversation. The Phantom lines, in his retelling, were the ones aimed at Karimloo.

At both anniversary performances, Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera, Hadley Fraser and Ramin Karimloo stood side by side for the bows. Fraser says they acted like children. One would stand on the other's toes, or an elbow would dig into a rib, and both would try to keep a straight face. He calls the shoving part of the joy of those nights, not a lapse they regret. The bows are the specific thing he says they shared at both anniversaries. The speeches came after, and he tells those separately. The physical bit in the lineup is the memory he pairs across the two shows.

Hadley believes in authorial intent - trying to put what the author intended rather than his own stamp on to things. Such that the result comes out as a group intent. He aims to be a part of a congruent whole.

Hadley has found himself to be better when he doesn't drink. It's a check in with himself. "I can't just live a life unthinkingly, then expect my voice to be there".

Early in his career when Ramin was playing the Phantom, an older couple came to stage door just to tell him how amazed they were for his show. They also shared that they had saved three month's for their matinee tickets. It became a wake up call for Ramin to always try to give his best.

Ramin Karimloo says the hard part of parenting while performing is energy, not only the voice. A curtain that comes down at midnight and a child up at 6:30 leave about six hours of sleep, and the morning starts at full speed whether or not he is speaking. When he is alone on a job in Japan, the pace is slower because he only has himself to protect. At home, telling a child he cannot play because he is resting his voice makes him feel guilty. He describes looking outside, seeing a child shooting basketball alone, and going out even though he was tired from filming. They had a good afternoon. His lesson is to say yes sooner.

Parenthood is a challenging responsibility that is wonderful. At times playing with his daughter may come at the cost of getting rested for a show. He now looks forward most to going home.

Ramin Karimloo says his best beard was the one he grew while playing Jean Valjean in Les Misérables in Canada. Hadley Fraser asks whether he simply let it grow, and Karimloo says he did and that it was a big one. He sets it next to a beard he remembers on Fraser outside the Garrick Theatre, and he is clear that the Canada beard was his own high mark. He does not give the year in this conversation. The marker he uses is the job: Valjean, in the Canadian production of Les Misérables, grown out on purpose rather than trimmed for a look.

Ramin Karimloo remembers picking Hadley Fraser up outside the Garrick Theatre, about three or four years before this conversation, and Fraser getting in the car with a beard Karimloo still brings up. Fraser says he was proud of that beard, and he thinks he has grown a bigger one since. He jokes that he would now feel more confident growing a beard than going back to eight shows a week. The talk does not pin the beard to a year or a role. What it does pin down is that night at the Garrick, and Fraser's own ranking of it as a beard he was proud of rather than his largest.

Hadley finds it very inspiring that Ramin continually find the motivation to self educate and self improve. When they first started playing music together, Ramin didn't know how to play the guitar as well as Hadley. Yet through teaching himself, seeking the best people to learn from, Hadley thinks Ramin is a better guitarist than he is today.

In March 2020 Hadley Fraser was going back to eight shows a week in City of Angels at the Garrick Theatre in London. He calls the Garrick a home theatre. By his count this was about his fourth show there, or his third stint, because two earlier ones played in rep. He is glad Ramin Karimloo will see this production. Karimloo had not seen the previous one. Fraser says the return makes him anxious and excited at the same time, after years of eight-show weeks. The production page linked from this note is https://www.cityofangelsmusical.co.uk/