Phantom of the Opera at the Marcus Center

­­The touring production of The Phantom of the Opera inhabits the Marcus Center through Aug. 30. The wildly successful 22-year-old Broadway mega-hit comes to town amid persistent rumors that Andrew Lloyd Webber is working on a sequel due to debut on London's West End next spring.

Strip away all of the hype and the show is still pretty entertaining. Quite a bit of the show's impact comes directly from Maria Bjornson's production design-the haunting immensity of the sets and the rich, moving tapestry of the costuming aren't often given the kind of credit they deserve. Her work is, truly, The Phantom of the Opera. Yes, there's some music here fused around kind of an interesting story, but Phantom's appeal lies almost entirely in its visual style.

Webber and lyricist Charles Hart put together a set of songs that feel loosely reminiscent of classic opera by legendary composers. Fusing the feel of classic opera with the format of a contemporary musical, Phantom is a savvy mid-'80s hybrid possessing a classy timelessness largely foreign to Broadway. Though the main theme has a very '80s pop feel to it, the rest of what graces the stage here is a moody dreamscape that paints the stage quite competently. The classiness of the production is doubtlessly very well preserved, but the reality of what makes it to the stage doesn't live up to the towering popularity of the musical. The Phantom's first face-to-mask encounter with his love Christine feels more perfunctory than magical. The tension of the action throughout the story is only engaging enough to get the audience from one scene to the next. The Phantom continues to lure audiences into the shadows, mysteriously vanishing in the hazy substance that is its style.