I have two things to tell you:
The first begins in the stage management office of The Phantom of the Opera, a few short hours ago. We were talking about songs about months of the year, which after exhausting May, led to June, which of course led to “June is Bustin’ Out All Over.” This subject invariably leads to someone mentioning the infamous clip of Leslie Uggams performing said song at some event in Washington, DC and completely and utterly going up on the lyrics. It’s one of the most famous theatre-related moving pictures ever, it seems. We all got a good laugh just at the thought of it, so I swung around in my chair and headed over to YouTube so we could all enjoy it. But IT’S GONE!!! We searched under several different names and phrases. We did a Google search, which only led to broken links of YouTube videos that have been removed. If anyone reading this can point me to a working link for this video, many people in the Phantom company will be grateful. Bonus points if it’s the one with the subtitles speculating on what she might be trying to say.
After our disappointing failure, someone who had popped their head in at the prospect of seeing Leslie Uggams mentioned that on YouTube there was allegedly a video of the performance of Phantom where a certain Joseph Buquet had missed his entrance in “Magical Lasso”, and Meg (Heather McFadden) jumped up and sang the whole song. We found it quickly, and soon the halls of the Majestic were echoing with screams, laughter, and applause at this miraculously preserved moment in theatre history. Embedding is disabled so you will have to click the link to go directly to the page, but it’s well worth it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrzAKtZxK44
Heather is my new hero. Sally Williams is the Madame Giry, who is mostly holding herself together, even under the scrutiny of a close-up.
