Congrats to Phantom on 11,000 NYC performances!

[Phantom4ever]

Posted: 7/8/14 at 12:16pm

Kind of bummed I haven't seen any press yet on this but Phantom is reaching 11,000 performances on Broadway this week, and it will be the first time in history a Broadway show has reach this milestone. Here's to 11,000 more!

[wdwfreak]

Posted: 7/8/14 at 12:19pm

That's shocking that no other show has ran longer performances since Phantom is the longest running show.

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 7/8/14 at 1:26pm

Wdw for the win.
And yes, congrats on clogging up a theatre for so many years and convincing people that a show like that is Broadway is about.
I enjoy Phantom to a degree, and it has been in very good shape, relatively speaking, with a few strong principals, but lord...

[Phantom4ever]

Posted: 7/8/14 at 2:01pm

Feed the trolls or no? I'm gonna go with no. :) Congrats again, Phantom!

[ShakinBaconGirl]

Posted: 7/8/14 at 2:06pm

Congrats to Phantom!

[mjohnson2]

Posted: 7/8/14 at 8:35pm

You know, this show is just so much fun to watch and is in such great shape after all these years unlike a lot of other long running shows (coughcoughChicagocoughcough) I can see why people love it so much. The best production of this show was definitely the Las Vegas one thanks to the spectacular set, but the Broadway one is still pretty good. Happy 11,000 Phantom

[Tag]

Posted: 7/8/14 at 8:53pm

Anyone know if there are still any company members who have been there the whole run?

[Phantom4ever]

Posted: 7/8/14 at 10:11pm

No. George Lee Andrews was the longest-staying 1988 cast member but his contract was not renewed a few years ago. Some crew have been there since 1988

[Tag]

Posted: 7/8/14 at 10:44pm

Yes I purposely wrote company, not cast, member.

Crazy to think that some have made a career out of one show.

[Elfuhbuh]

Posted: 7/9/14 at 2:49am

It still bugs me how they pushed the celebration back a day just so Sierra Boggess would be a part of it; the real 11,000th performance happened on the 7th, and I don't think it's fair to Mary Michael Patterson for them to pretend that she did not partake in the actual performance.

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 7/9/14 at 9:29am

Really Useful has been treating Sierra like their second-coming princess for years; that's not going to stop anytime soon.

[trpguyy]

Posted: 7/9/14 at 9:52am

Lowell Hershey, principal trumpet player, has been with the show since opening.
http://ibdb.com/person.php?id=112761

[Phantom4ever]

Posted: 7/9/14 at 2:15pm

I've never heard of company being used to describe backstage employees as well as the cast. In scripts or cast recordings when it says "full company", they don' mean that the stagehands come out and sing too. My apologies for misunderstanding you.

[beautywickedlover]

Posted: 7/9/14 at 2:43pm

That is quite an accomplishment. Congrats!

[Elfuhbuh]

Posted: 7/9/14 at 3:14pm

I know, and I think it was handled wrongly. If they wanted Sierra to do the performance so badly, then they could have switched the schedule and made her perform on Monday this week. Or, if that wasn't possible, she could have come out during the curtain call out-of-costume to celebrate with the rest of the cast. I'm sure Mary Michael Patterson is a complete professional and is letting this blow over, but I still think it's unfair for them to not give her any credit whatsoever for being at the actual performance.
Ah, well, I guess that's what happens when you're the alternate, though. :/

[AHLiebross]

Posted: 7/9/14 at 11:39pm

I wonder if there's something in Sierra's contract that she would be the one to perform in the show in which the celebration took place.

Cal Ripken announced his retirement from the Baltimore Orioles effective the last home game of 2001. As a result of 9/11, games got cancelled, probably because of the fact that air traffic had shut down, and also because Baltimore is too close to DC for comfort when there's fear of an attack in the DC area.

When the season resumed, the missed games were tacked onto the end. The Orioles, in my opinion, bungled the Ripken retirement ceremony. Either they should have held it on the date scheduled, or exchanged the tickets for people who had bought them months in advance, so they'd attend the actual last game. We had bought tickets a few weeks before to a meaningless game that wound up being the last of the season -- the one to which they'd moved the ceremony. It was a surreal experience: People still in shock over 9/11, military planes flying overhead to protect the stadium (and probably Bill Clinton, who was speaking at the ceremony), and some of us in the crowd realizing that we were getting a benefit to which we weren't really entitled by being there at all. It was especially bad knowing that the benefit came about because the United States had been attacked.