About ten years ago I was in previews of THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK in Melbourne when Geraldine Turner, playing my wife Felicia, became ill and was forced to rest her voice for three weeks. Our producer Cameron Mackintosh took the extraordinary step of flying out the creator of the role, Rosemary Ashe, from London where she was about to do a Saturday matinee in the West End as Madam Thenardier, to play our press night and stay until Geraldine recovered. Arriving in Australia on
Monday, she stepped onstage with me on Tuesday night without a rehearsal in a show she hadn't performed in 15 months, tore the place apart and we became firm friends forever.
Tonight Rosie appeared at NYC's Metropolitan Room in her sensational cabaret act reprising her original roles as Carlotta in PHANTOM and Miss Andrew in MARY POPPINS as well as her big number from WITCHES accompanied by a surprise guest, the composer Dana P. Rowe on the piano. It was all I could do not to leap up and join her.
In the audience: songwriter and director Barry Kleinbort, the original "Eve Harrington" from APPLAUSE Penny Fuller and Helen Anker, soon to be Eliza Doolittle with me at the Guthrie Theatre.
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