Michael Saves the Day

Submitted Anonymously

As I recall, in April 1987 Michael was diagnosed with a severe hiatal hernia (common to singers, not the lifting kind of hernia) and was put in hospital. His official understudy was Steve Barton. In his first performance Steve went on and immediately had a run-in with a trap door and hurt his knee badly. There was no other understudy. Michael heard about the accident in the hospital and, realizing that either the show wouldn't go on or that Steve (who was also a dancer) would ruin his leg by persisting in going on anyway, checked himself out of hospital over his doctors' objections. He played 2 very painful and highly doped up performances with a doctor in the wings to allow RUG time to cram another actor for the part and then went back to the hospital for 2 weeks. This was huge news in England and even made the 'people' column in the Dallas paper.

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