Unmasked man

What, exactly, does a sports-loving Phantom do when he’s not brooding in his underground lair?

He’s watching the NFL Sunday Ticket package in his dressing room.

“I’m a gigantic Dallas Cowboys fan,” said Richard Todd Adams, who plays the Phantom in the national tour of “The Phantom of the Opera,” currently at the INB Performing Arts Center. “My cast mates are sometimes in my dressing room at 10 a.m., too, to watch the early Sunday games.”

We spent time with Adams last week to find out what life was like on the road with the national touring company of a mega-musical. We found out it’s a lot like any job: Hours and hours of intense work relieved by just enough time for winding down and getting to sleep.

Then you do it all over again, eight performances a week.

We met Adams at the Rusty Moose Bar and Grill in Airway Heights for a key part of his daily routine: His main meal at around 2:30 p.m.

He had the place mostly to himself between the lunch and dinner rush.

“Your schedule is always the exact opposite of everyone else in the world,” said Adams, tucking into his dinner plate of meat loaf.

Here’s a typical day in the Phantom’s life:

11 a.m.: The alarm goes off in his extended-stay suite in Airway Heights.

Airway Heights?

Most of the cast members are staying in the company-provided hotel, near the theater. But those who wish to strike out on their own can take their daily travel stipend and arrange their own accommodations. Adams usually tries to find a “corporate apartment” – a fully furnished unit in an apartment complex that can be rented by the month – or an extended stay suite, either of which provide a semblance of a normal life.

“You don’t feel as much like you’re on the road,” said Adams.

He can actually feel like he is “part of that apartment community” for a month.

Do his fellow residents realize that their neighbor is the dreaded Opera Ghost (i.e., Phantom)?

Never. One thing about this role – nobody recognizes him without the mask and makeup.

By the way, on weekend days with matinee performances, the alarm goes off an hour or two earlier.

Noon-1 p.m.: “I get some breakfast, relax and go to the gym,” said Adams. “I don’t usually do a real strenuous workout because the show is pretty athletic and you already get a good workout. So I do a bit of cardio and just get my body going a little bit.”

2:30 p.m.: Time for the day’s big meal, usually at a restaurant near the theater or his apartment. Plenty of time for digestion is vital.

“You’re sort of like an athlete, in a different sense,” said Adams.

In this show, he needs to pay particular attention to his pre-show intake because he has to spend 15 minutes hunched over awkwardly in a giant gilded angel suspended above the stage.

“If you’ve just eaten, it shoots that acid right up into your throat,” said Adams. “During the first couple of shows, I’d get up to sing that song at the end of the first act and all of the sudden I’d be hoarse. Also, you’re in pain if you have all of this food.”

He usually tries out a number of area restaurants the first week or so – “the restaurant options by the theater (in Spokane) are fantastic” – but then he usually settles into a routine.

“You hear about athletes getting superstitious about their routines, and there’s a little bit of that here, too,” he said. “You look for the restaurants that are your go-to spots.”

3 p.m. – He’ll usually do some light vocal warm-ups and just generally tries to relax (this is a luxury reserved only for days without matinees).

He has an understudy ready to step in at short notice, yet Adams’ goal is to do all eight performances a week.

“In Seattle I was battling this throat infection and I missed three shows right at the end of the run,” said Adams. “I always get very down when I’m not doing a show. So I went to this place called Oceanaire Seafood, very close to the theater, at about 7 p.m. and the show is at 8 p.m. It was totally packed and a lot of people were going to see ‘The Phantom.’ ”

He was alone, feeling sorry for himself, when the bartender came over and said that a couple nearby had a question: Would he like a ticket to see “The Phantom”? A friend had canceled out and had a third ticket.

“It’s supposed to be a great show,” said the bartender. “I don’t know if you’ve seen it …”

“Well, I’m in the show,” replied Adams, somewhat sheepishly.

After a few more questions, Adams admitted he was the Phantom. They ended up having a laugh over that, concluding with the bartender saying, “Well, I guess the answer is no.”

6 p.m.: He gets to the theater in plenty of time for his 6:45 p.m. makeup call. If he’s staying near the theater, he walks. If not, he drives a rented car. He allows plenty of time for traffic delays and has never been late for a performance.

He usually goes to his dressing room, which is equipped with a TV, a DVR and a DirecTV connection. He does vocal warm-ups and tries to relax in his own way, by watching a game or ESPN SportsCenter.

Adams can be charitably described as a sports fanatic (at the Rusty Moose, he was unrecognizable in a Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt and a Chicago Cubs cap). At Trinity University, he double-majored in music and sports broadcasting. He still loves sports, but it turned out there were more opportunities for him at the Juilliard School and in musical theater than in the broadcasting booth. Still, he’ll often watch a game during the 50 minutes it takes for a makeup artist to give him that classic Phantom disfigured face.

Curtain time: The lights go down. The curtain opens. Adams is … not even in costume yet.

The Phantom doesn’t make his first entrance until about a half-hour into the show, so he has ample time to get into costume. After his entrance, however, all becomes a blur. Adams likens the next two hours to a “sprint,” in which he blazes through the performance with single-minded intensity. Even when he’s offstage, he usually has to race through a costume or makeup change.

The only lull comes at intermission, when he takes a short breather in his dressing room.

“(Last week) we had the Red Sox game on,” said Adams. “We had six or seven people in the dressing room, just watching.”

Then the sprint to the closing curtain resumes.

Closing curtain: It’s time to hand in the Phantom mask and revert back to being Richard Todd Adams. A lot of younger cast members go out after the show. Adams is married and his wife just had a baby last month. Even though they are not with him yet, he rarely goes out these days. Instead, he simply tries to let the adrenaline subside.

“I get home around 11 p.m. and usually sit and watch ‘The Daily Show’ and ‘The Colbert Report,’” he said. “Then I sort of check e-mail and get caught up on that. I try to go to bed around 1:30 a.m. or 2 a.m. Not on two-performance days. Then I come home and am just whipped. I go to bed at 12:30 a.m.”

So that’s his long day.

However, he knows this particular schedule won’t last. His wife and baby will be arriving at the tour’s next stop, Tampa Bay, to stay with him.

“That will change the routine,” he said.

Nothing like a newborn to play havoc with the dreaded Opera Ghost’s sleeping schedule.