MC on EFX

Excerpts from an interview with Tony Palmer on BBC: "Michael Crawford in Las Vegas - Kaleidoscope Feature. 12/08/95 Tony Palmer meets Michael Crawford in Las Vegas to discuss the challenge of working on one of the world's largest stages and the combined perils of the new technology and the Nevada desert.

"Presenter: Tony Palmer, Producer: Anthony Denselow, PA Jill Bellamy."

MC: "I've dealt with a home computer and that was my only... adding up house hold bills. I didn't realize they could be such trouble, or they could be as clever as they're capable of being".

"We have about, I suppose 450 things that go wrong and at least 20, if we're *lucky* only 20 go wrong per show, and you saw us one night when one of the dragons uh failed to perform, so to speak and uh, it was *my* dragon, who just hang limply there but it was 108 degrees outside so I suppose he had some excuse."

"It's staggering I mean I couldn't believe, it was more than I ever imagined and that's was.. so much of this production has been done in a round table because..I use the word vulgar again because it is vulgar, the amount of money that's available here and that's what in a way attracted me to the project. That you could do something larger than what one could ever *ever* imagine doing anywhere else in the world. And to get people like David Mitchell the designer who did Barnum and many, La Cage..and many many broadway productions, to get people, they're all Tony Award winners, to get these people together and it's as though you give them a paint box and let them choose their colors and we come out of a play room that we've all had things that we've wanted to do all our careers."

"I never ever thought that I'd end up in Las Vegas and laugh every time that I say it."

"I *do* wear a shirt in the show, and sadly most of the women do too, well all of the women do."

TP: What do you do on your very infrequent days off?

"Silence"

About the fog being thicker on days when there's humidity outside: "Every one says to me, Don Rickles, the comedian says, 'Well you're from London you're used to the damn fog'. I haven't seen that much fog in London for some time, not as much as we had here the other night. "

When asked about where he goes from here, Tony Palmer saying he couldn't go back to the Apollo and do a two-hander, could he:

"Oh yes, oh easily every.. that's what's so.. so wonderful about theatre and as soon as.. .What I hate about theatre is sort of.. elitism, this thing of you can't do this and you can't.. I mean, Andrew Lloyd Webber gets attacked by the Opera people, because his music isn't..or even by music people I mean, it all brings, they all bring audiences to the theater. We're bringing young people and old people who may never have been to the theatre..."

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