Michael's Patience on EFX

Anyway, I figured you rabid MC fans would like to hear a few stories about things that I saw during rehearsals for EFX (I used to hang with the techie people).

First story: (caution, vulgar language!)

MC has a British sense of humor. He let a bit of it show during the creation of EFX: There is a scene where MC, as Harry Houdini, is in a seance around a huge round table, but he's dressed up as Houdini's wife Beth. (It's part of a magic illusion, you see). So all the actors were sitting around this table, waiting for the lighting crew to fix bugs, waiting for the sound people to fix bugs, waiting for the automation people to fix bugs, waiting and waiting and waiting, meanwhile nobody could move (cuz Natasha Katz was trying to dial-in the Vari*Lites etc). Finally, after something like two hours of nothing, they asked MC to do a run through of the scene.

So, he starts out, "Harry ... Harry ... it's Halloween ... come to us on this night of nights ... come to us from beyond the spirit world [etc etc] ... we've been waiting sooooo long ... ALL F------G DAY AS A MATTER OF FACT!!!" The last line was delivered, not in his faux-female voice, but in his booming Phantom voice. Everybody was laughing so hard that it was ten minutes before anyone got back to work. MC's commentary led to a hilarious exchange of insults between MC and Anthony Van Laast, another Brit from the wrong side of the tracks. Anthony was choreographer and co-director. It was all in good fun, of course. MC was almost always laughing about something during rehearsals -- I think if it wasn't for him breaking the colossal tension heaped upon everyone by the MGM bean counters, I think the production might well have disintegrated long before the March 23rd opening show.

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