Ladies of PHANTOM: Past and Present Part 2

We’re back with our lovely Ladies of Phantom: Rebecca Caine, Margaret Preece, Gina Beck and Rebecca Lock. In this final installment of our Phantom chat, the ladies talk costumes, dreams and ghosts…

Last time, we left off chatting about onstage mishaps...it seems that the fate of a Carlotta is to suffer from wardrobe malfunctions! Carlottas, I’ve heard that your costumes, albeit beautiful, are ridiculously heavy…what’s all that about?!

MP: The Hannibal costume weighs four and a half stone!

RL: They are mega heavy. My back took a while to get used to it when I started. I was told they weigh 3 stone...Maggie is showing off, ha ha!

Christines, are your costumes as heavy?

GB: No idea, as I've sadly never tried hers on...but I would hazard a guess that Carlotta's are heavier.

RC: The costumes are one of the great joys of the show, and the death of Maria Bjornson is a terrible blow. I sang in three productions of the show and the costumes all differed slightly. I remember doing a nine-hour costume fitting in Canada, and then doing a tour of the costume shop in the wedding dress; the makers cried with pride at their work. They were heavy, and being chucked around in the same way every night led to back and hip trouble. I got sciatica from twisting against the Hannibal skirt, and eventually fell during the rooftop scene and smashed up my knee and had to have an operation. But that’s the joy of a long run.

In the show, lots of creepy things seem to happen at the Paris Opera House…any unexplained Phantom tales at Her Majesty’s to report?!

RC: No…however, the Adelphi is famously haunted, so you might ask that lot!

RL: No, I haven’t heard of anything or seen anything...although I’d LOVE it if I did! Ooooo!!

MP: No, can't think of anything - but I always felt spooked during the show when the Phantom does his hypnotising trick!

GB: Well, apparently there are ghosts around the theatre, but no-one’s seen any since I've been there. There was a show once when all the mics went weird, and whatever anyone sang was repeated back to them a couple of seconds later. The Sound Department investigated and apparently a random switch had been flicked sub-stage and no-one knew how or why…ooooo!