Andrew Lloyd Webber

So they would sing the whole song, then they would all collapse and he would go, ah, I'll take this song.

Was it just Andrew Lloyd Webber dressing up? No, it was someone dressed as the Phantom going around stealing songs and then there were two, I think there were two Year 8 girls or two kids that were like trying to find him and get the songs back.

So the Connect, you both

had Year 8s as part of it?

Their backstories of the adults back when they were younger and Grizabella would have been all glamorous.

They told us stories about Andrew Lloyd Webber and putting it together and piecing it together.

And since then, I've listened to every interview possible.

I'm sure you've done the same.

And so she comes out and she's kind of more glamorous looking so that when you see her first entrance in the entry of Grizabella, she's very similar looking, but obviously very tattered and torn and not as glamorous at all anymore.

So I kind of told a backstory.

When I did it at Emmons, I started with a TS Eliot because of the interview where Andrew Lloyd Webber describes how TS Eliot's wife found Grizabella's poem in a drawer and all of that.

I always tried to make it Grizabella's story really from beginning to end.

I watched Dracula, Wolfman, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Invisible Man.

You had never seen the Andrew Lloyd Webber Phantom of the Opera.

Yeah, and I also watched the old Phantom.

Oh, that's one of my favorite.

Queenie, baby, you're just a baby.

Yeah, I watched The Mummy.

I watched the old Phantom of the Opera and also the Andrew Lloyd Webber 2000s.

Yeah.

First of all, it's a revival of Cats, but in a whole different way.

I got a chance to meet Andrew Lloyd Webber.

at a party, at the opening night party.

I was, of course, a little starstruck.

I said, Andrew Lloyd Webber, I should have asked him the question I really wanted to ask him.

But I say, what's your favorite musical of all time? I'm like, oh my God, it's so embarrassing.

But I did get a chance to meet Shonda Rhimes and with Lawrence Fishburne and Angela Bassett and Wendell Pierce, I mean, and Chapel Roan.

As the head electrician, he was the person keeping the lights on.

The show's composer Andrew Lloyd Webber once said that Phantom shone brighter on Broadway for 35 years because of the work of Alan Lample.

It didn't look like he had an important role, nobody in the audience even knew he was there, but they certainly would have noticed if he wasn't.

And it's like that in Christian ministry.

I wanted to ask you about, about

the musical theater thing like as you said earlier at the beginning of the podcast like I grew up listening to jazz and my sister who was like the musical theater singer she listened to the Andrew Lloyd Webber and we had like this battle of the cassette tapes going on

I remember those

time like it was my birthday she would sing like happy birthday and i'd be like god damn you shut up with your musical theater voice you know and um it wasn't until it wasn't until i like my first job out of uni was um teaching music in a musical theater school.

Ed, must we love this? What's going on here?

This is the lead single to promote her soundtrack to the 1996 film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's musical Evita, based on the life of Eva Perón, who was married to Juan Perón, the Argentinian president, who was deposed in the notorious military junta.

Two more singles from this soundtrack are released, the second of which arrives in time for Christmas and sells tons and tons.

This sells just over 90,000 copies here.

yeah that's awesome yeah that is really cool Um, I'm going to take us back for a moment just to Evita.

I think Another Suitcase, Another Hall is like my, it's, it's maybe my favorite Andrew Lloyd Webber song of all time.

Like I really think it's like one of the best songs he's ever written and your version of it was so beautiful.

Um, talk to me about, uh, how you booked Evita and your way into The Mistress.

And there's a YouTube guy named Jonathan Young.

who did a cover of the Andrew Lloyd Webber...

I don't know if it's considered a cover.

He kind of merged a few of the elements.