By Eve Zibart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 27, 2007; WE18

A Broadway leading man's face is his fortune -- except, perhaps, when it comes to "The Phantom of the Opera." In taking on theater's most successful show, John Cudia, whose long turn as Raoul earned him a cadre of star-struck fans, had to come to grips with playing not beauty but the beast this time around.

"Obviously, it's given my career tremendous exposure, but not me exactly," Cudia says with wry good humor. "It's so high-powered, but it's also anonymous."

And uncomfortable. The Phantom's iconic white domino is only the outermost of several layers of disguise -- pancake, powder, paint, latex and human hair. Cudia, 36, who stars in the current production at the Kennedy Center, has gone under the palette knife more than 2,000 times. It takes makeup artist Rudy Guerrero nearly an hour every day except Monday, and twice on Saturdays and Sundays, to achieve the transformation.

"I used to have to watch the makeup go on really intently, especially in the beginning," says Cudia, who, as the understudy, played Phantom on Broadway several times while cast as Raoul, Christine's lover. "It was almost like disappearing. I used to watch until I didn't recognize myself as a way of finding my way inside. Then after a while I could find myself there without it; I'd stand in the wings and it would come to me. Now sometimes I completely forget about it."

Cudia has to endure repeated assaults on the skin around his hairline and nape: The Phantom wears two layers of wigs, the "Valentino," the sleeked-back, dark-brown hairstyle he wears for most of the show, and beneath that the sparse and straggling reddish scuzz of the fully exposed creature. Under all that is Cudia's own hair, which is held down by a tight stocking cap, a skullcap glued all around (Guerrero punches small holes in the back so the sweat can run down the back of Cudia's neck unobserved), liquid makeup to cover the seams and a heavy dusting of powder. (Pulling it all off takes only 15 or 20 minutes, but by the end of the week, Cudia says, peeling the glue away from his skin has definitely lost its appeal.) One of Cudia's two microphones is partially held by the wigs as well, and sits just off his temple.

Guerrero has worked with a baker's dozen of Phantoms and has his own way of keeping the job fresh. Although the portion of the "face" that is most disfigured is made of latex (the makeup design is trademarked, and supplies of the molded scar faces are mailed to the tour from London), it's a sort of neutral flesh tone, and Guerrero supplies all the color, shading and even -- via the one exposed eyebrow -- some of the sardonicism. The latex cannot be reused; Guerrero must start from scratch with a new prosthesis every show.

Guerrero says he likes to "evolve" the makeup from time to time, providing darker shadows, more vivid scars and so on. Even that eyebrow is pretty tricky: With the real ones erased by pancake and powder, the arch is created with layers of pencil, shadow and finally yet another pencil, warmed to darken the graphite.

When Cudia -- who bears the singular credit of having starred on Broadway as Jean Valjean in "Les Miserables" and the Phantom, the two monsters (in success terms) of theater's past 20 years -- became the Man in the Mask, he had to project his character's emotions almost exclusively through his singing and body language. The Phantom, like Valjean, is among the most passionate roles in musical theater. But Cudia's most gripping moment, and one essential to the story, comes at the climax, when Christine voluntarily kisses him: Cudia seems to freeze on tiptoe, simultaneously bent back in terror and drawn forward at the torso in ecstasy. It is this entirely silent posture, both potent and pitiable, that must convince the audience that the Phantom's glimpse of true love has released him from his poisonous obsessions, if not his pain.

Various interpretations of the mysterious Phantom have described him as driven insane by pain from fire or by betrayal, driven by love or revenge, or sane but disfigured from birth and even displayed as a freak (as Gaston Leroux's 1911 novel has it). Cudia says he feels emotional agony in the Phantom, "like the loss of a parent figure, the absence of acceptance by the people around him."

In fact, the psychological "cover" the mask provides also became one key to Cudia's interpretation. The Phantom, in Cudia's mind, is "a social wannabe. He's created himself. And that's part of why it works for me. The 'Music of the Night' scene is almost completely choreographed; the whole thing flows from A to B. And when they dance it was clear to me that my body language must be aristocratic. That's how he sees himself. So some [actors] do it in an animalistic way; I save that for when he takes off his mask." Then his sophisticated cover is blown, so to speak.

The touring production is booked for several more years. Cudia, who renews his contract in six-month blocks, says he intends to take a break in 18 months or so. But he may be back. "Every actor in the world will tell you, this is theater history. It's the biggest role in the business."

The Phantom of the Opera Kennedy Center Opera House 202-467-4600 Through Aug. 12