This 'Phantom' gives up the ghost

In many ways, the touring production of ''The Phantom of the Opera" is the perfect fit for the Opera House. As Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical has become more bloated over the years, the Opera House focuses the material more sharply than the Wang Theatre, where it played in 1996, was able to do.

That's the good news.

This is a production that has road show writ large all over it. From the tinny synthesized sound ''augmenting" the live musicians to the charisma-less performers, there is nothing at all special about this ''Phantom."

Not that such matters have ever been of concern to the Lloyd Webber faithful to whom every sentimental ballad, crashing chandelier, and inane joke is the stuff of rapture. And the opening night crowd on Friday responded accordingly. Even a critter scurrying around the seats down front didn't break the spell.

For the more skeptical, ''The Phantom of the Opera" grows more suspect with each viewing. I used to think that the first act was indicative of underappreciated talent on the part of ALW, particularly those early scenes between the phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House and Christine, the young singer he seductively mentors.

The rich, darkly texured ''The Music of the Night," in which he tries to lure Christine over to the dark side, may be the best song ever written by Lloyd Webber. It is more than the dark side that the phantom is singing about; the song also speaks of a Wagnerian world of heightened artistic appreciation and romance, one far removed from the middle-class nothingness represented by the rest of the characters.

Although he was technically not a great singer, Michael Crawford made something thrilling out of the character with the wide-ranging personality of his voice and a sense of swagger. But the more straightforwardly one plays him, the less effective the character becomes, and though his voice is strong and rounded, Gary Mauer's Phantom is neither frightening nor seductive.

Rebecca Pitcher has pipes for the part of Christine, but the two have about as much chemistry together as Mitt Romney and Michael Moore. (Elizabeth Southard plays the part at most Saturday matinees and Sunday evenings.) Tim Martin Gleason, thankfully, brings a bit of spark to Raoul, the conventional good guy who brings Christine back to the light.

Mauer and Pitcher sell their solos, and with the help of eye-catching tricks under Harold Prince's direction, balletic choreography by Gillian Lynne, and smart if a bit oversubdued design by Maria Bjornson, the first act of ''The Phantom" has its moments. Lloyd Webber even adds clever touches to transfiguring the night music into the sunny ''All I Ask of You."

But the lack of chemistry between the Phantom and Christine makes even the high spots ho-hum before the second act goes completely awry as Lloyd Webber pulls out every Grand Guignol cliche in the book. The music, too, grows self-parodistic, particularly the tedious tango, ''The Point of No Return." You can see signs in the first act that Lloyd Webber could have been an artistically successful musical theater composer. In the second act he is all shlockmeister.

There's one other way that the theater is the right fit for Lloyd Webber. It is expected that the Opera House will soon be rechristened Citizens Bank Theatre, as if to assert the primacy that commerce now has over music. That, more or less, is the story of Andrew Lloyd Webber's life.

Ed Siegel can be reached at siegel@globe.com.