Crawford Skillfully Mines Range of Musical Material

Michael Crawford’s legions of devoted fans know him best as the Phantom. But a more accurate title for this immensely talented performer might be “Mr. Versatility.”

On Friday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts in the first of a sold-out, two-night run, Crawford obliged his fervent audience with a healthy selection of songs from his defining role as the lead in “Phantom of the Opera.” That, however, was only a small portion of a program that revealed, if only partly, some of the 57-year-old Irish performer’s far-ranging skills.

Eager to have a go at “songs I’ve never sung, from shows I’ve never been in, that I would like to have been in,” Crawford brought an impressive stamp of authority to “The Impossible Dream” from “Man of La Mancha,” found the tenderness in “I Won’t Send Roses” from “Mack and Mabel” and matched Barbra Streisand’s intensity with “Papa Can You Hear Me?” from “Yentl.”

Extending his desire to sing songs he’d “never sung” further, he added a number he did not perform in “Phantom”--Raoul’s “All I Ask of You”--dueting superbly with the glorious voice of soprano Dale Kristien.

But Crawford didn’t stop there, his eclectic program reaching in other directions as well. He sang works by Stephen Sondheim (“Being Alive”), Jerry Herman (“Before the Parade Passes By”), a song from “EFX,” the Las Vegas production built around Crawford, and added two tunes from his album “On Eagle’s Wings” (which was recently certified gold, a rare achievement for an inspirational CD).

And as a final bonus for an audience that seemed loath to let him leave the stage, he gave an advance peek at a just-completed Christmas album with a gentle rendering of “Scarlet Ribbons.”

It was the kind of program, touching a myriad of stylistic bases, that--in the hands of a lesser performer--might have seemed overly ambitious and chaotic. But Crawford’s musical intelligence and sheer singing ability are so broad that he moved seamlessly from number to number, marking each as his own along the way.

Equally important, he brought the program together with a series of often uproarious stories, touching on his youthful experiences as a boy soprano, adding a hilarious tale of a boat that went awry in the opening performance of “Phantom” and a comical description of a similarly embarrassing performance of “EFX.”

Crawford delivered these reminiscences with the quick-witted timing of a born comic. But, naturally talented though he may be, he also is a performer with extensive experience, a prominent English artist long before he broke through in “Phantom.” His long career reaches from English TV sitcoms in the ‘60s through film roles in, among many others, “Hello, Dolly!” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” to the musicals “Billy” and “Barnum.”

Beyond his versatility, his stunning, flexible voice, his comic timing, beyond the experience that enabled him to command the stage with ease, Crawford brought one other vital element to his performance--an utterly believable sense of connection. When he told a joke or hit a high note, when he briefly made a mistake in one tune and admitted it, he projected a sense of honesty and vulnerability that brought him in touch, made him someone you really felt you could lift a few with at the corner pub.

And that quality, as much as anything, is what underlies the unrelenting admiration of Crawford’s followers.