Ramin Karinloo: Phantom has Asperger’s According to an interview published in the Telegraph last month, Ramin Karimloo star of The Phantom of The Opera and Love Never Dies said he believed the Phantom showed clear signs of the condition known as Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a form of autism. Sufferers often have difficulties with communication and social relationships. According to Ramin Karimloo, who joined the London production of Phantom of The Opera two years ago, the autistic spectrum and asperger’s in particular could explain the Phantom’s eccentric traits, his musical genius and his difficulty with social interactions which led him to hide away beneath the Paris Opera House for all those years. It’s an interesting theory, which could also help to bring better public understanding of the increasing common condition of autistic spectrum symptoms but it seems to me that Ramin Karimloo is completely ignoring the effect of the Phantom’s facial disfigurement and hence the mask in the story which is set two centuries ago. But never mind, “I saw a documentary on Asperger’s syndrome and it made a lot of sense to me,” said Karimloo. Ramin Karimloo was born in Iran and has been central to the launch of Love Never Dies, the long awaited Phantom story continuation which Andrew Lloyd Webber says “is not a sequel” Love Never Dies with Ramin Karimloo and Sierra Boggess opens in London in March 2010 at the Adelphi Theatre, and then later around the world.

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