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The Group Portrait: The Backstage Spirits of Phantom

New York magazine

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October 10, 2022

The people behind 35 years' music of the night.

- Jackson McHenry

The Group Portrait: The Backstage Spirits of Phantom

ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER'S Phantom of the Opera arrived from London in January 1988 amid enormous hype, chandelier-crashing its way to seven Tony Awards including Best Musical. With several other big imported shows (Cats, Les Misérables, Miss Saigon), it would reshape Broadway toward spectacle and tourist appeal. "We thought we were hot shit," says Russell Easley, who got his first job on Broadway as a dresser for the actor playing Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny. "And we were!"

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