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[0:00] Chris Adams: Ah, the Playbill. There we go. Adverts for cigarettes and fur coats. The past. The 80s.

[0:11] Holly Morgan: There we go. How many have you seen? What else was on in 1988? Cabaret, Joel Grey.

[0:20] Chris Adams: Nick, Anything Goes with Patti LuPone. Patti LuPone in Anything Goes. Amazing. Oh my god.

[0:25] Holly Morgan: Macbeth. Christopher Plummer in Macbeth. And Glenda Jackson. Glenda Jackson. Madonna.

[0:30] Chris Adams: Oh my god. In Speed the Plow. Bloody hell. Here she is. Oh my god. Carrie. Betty Buckley in Carrie the Musical. Betty Buckley in Carrie. Tuesday to Saturday 8. Oh my god. It's actually on. It's actually on. It doesn't give an end date on there does it? It's probably out of date already.

[0:50] Holly Morgan: Exactly. Chapter 6. Act 2. Shit. Look at all these pigs.

[0:59] Chris Adams: Welcome to Out for Blood. Our, what would you call it? Um, oral history. Perfect oral history of the infamous Broadway megaflop Carrie the Musical. My name is Chris.

[1:20] Holly Morgan: And I'm Holly. And this week we are delving into the madness of Act 2 of the show and finding out from the cast what it's like to be part of the only Broadway show to feature a song about slaughtering a pig.

[1:29] Chris Adams: And of course the big moment at the prom where Carrie gets covered in the blood of said pig and destroys the place. How the hell do you do that on stage? Let's find out.

[1:45] Holly Morgan: So the interval slash intermission is over. The bemused audience members have downed a wine or two and they're ready to tackle the second half of this delirious theatrical feast.

[1:55] Chris Adams: The curtain rises on a location that the playbill ominously describes as the pig farm. As the synths kick in Charlotte d'Amboise as Chris literally crawls from a fiery pit in the stage. For those who had heard about it this number was what they'd been waiting for. On one bootleg audio an audience member is clearly heard exclaiming with delight. Oh it's the pig number. Oh it's the pig number. It's because this song is batshit crazy.

[2:35] Holly Morgan: Nasty Chris now in a red leather bra and miniskirt combo has persuaded her boyfriend Billy to come along and slaughter a pig. Collect its blood in a bucket and string it up in the school gym where they will unceremoniously dump it on Carrie at the prom. Fixing the vote for prom queen to ensure she gets as humiliated as possible. What a bitch. They are accompanied by Billy's gang of bad lads who for reasons we will never know are dressed in full S&M style leather.

[3:06] Chris Adams: This scene is in the film.

[3:11] Holly Morgan: Yeah but it's not like this. It's nothing like this.

[3:12] Dean Pitchford: Not just leather pants and a leather shirt but leather straps and leather vests and very revealing and Charlotte who played Chris was in red and everybody else was in very revealing S&M looking black leather which wasn't American high school. It didn't look like American high school. Didn't look like these kids were pulling a prank.

[3:42] Kenny Linden: The leather clad boys perform dangerous looking thrust heavy choreography around and above the pit in the stage. Do you remember we had to dive over the pit that the stage opened up and we had to sort of lie across it and we had to jump it and the stalls had no idea what we were doing because you couldn't see the pit from the stalls. You can only see it if you're in the circle or the dress circle. And so it was a completely ridiculous idea to have us jumping this pit that no one could see. And we were killing ourselves really working hard. I mean we came off that like we just run a marathon. It was killer and all for pretty much nothing with the funniest lyrics you could ever do. I mean that rap thing we did was just silly.

[4:25] Chris Adams: Here's the lyrics to that rap in full which I shall perform for you now. Chop kill the pig pig pig kill kill kill kill. We'll make him bleed. Here's his blood blood blood. I'm just gonna let that hang for a minute. It's almost like being there.

[4:48] Holly Morgan: Shall we move on?

[4:49] Chris Adams: Yeah fine.

[4:50] Holly Morgan: Charlotte as Chris gets one of the most quoted lines from the show. It's a simple little gig you help me kill a pig and then I've got some plans for the blood.

[5:06] Chris Adams: Can you deliver that one as well in full please just in case anyone missed it on that muffled recording.

[5:10] Charlotte d'Amboise: Of course. It's a simple little gig you help me kill a pig and I've got some plans for the blood.

[5:16] Chris Adams: That line would go on to haunt the writers of Carrie and is often quoted as one of its most ridiculously over-the-top moments. I'm gonna get it on a mug.

[5:26] Kim Criswell: In the audience has only just recovered from the fit of laughter she experienced during this sequence. There was a moment in the show that I screamed with laughter. There's Gene Anthony Ray was in it remember him from fame and he played you know the bad boy and there's the place where they're you know getting the pig's blood and the way they had staged it there was this sort of trough of light coming up that they're as if the pigs were down below the stage. At one point they were doing this frenetic Debbie Allen way too much going on dance. They're all dancing around you know in a pig frenzy pig blood frenzy and then at one point he he it all stops cold and he looks down and goes shit look at all them pigs. The whole house started to giggle. I don't think that's what they meant us to do.

[6:14] Todd Graff: From the workshop performance of Carrie recalls seeing the show in its Broadway previews. The workshop had focused on act one only so he was surprised to finally see how the second half began. That was insane with that you know where bodies were just sort of you couldn't see them they would dive down into whatever that pit was supposed to be. I don't know why they keep pigs in a pit but oh pig pit yes as opposed to pig pen and they would dive down and then you would just see like bodies leap up over the kind of you know uh periphery or horizon line that you could see like ah and then back down disappearing to kill the pig and then blood would spurt up.

[6:52] Chris Adams: I swing what looks like a medieval sword around the pit in the stage and we hear loud pre-recorded oinks as the unseen pigs meet their end. Gene Anthony Ray scoops up pig's blood from the trough and smooths it out across his topless body. The boys are chanting kill the pig pig pig as this bizarre orgy plays out.

[7:20] Holly Morgan: Betty Blue Eyes has a lot to live up to.

[7:27] Chris Adams: It was such a it was so it was I mean my hat is off to it because it was so brave and in its single-mindedness of no no no we're not listening to anybody this is what this show is. This little pig song is of course Out For Blood. Our namesake. The definition of revenge but also literally what our leather-clad teens are doing. Clever. But in the early days it had a different name and different lyrics. In Stratford previews it was called Cracker Jack named after the American popcorn snack which traditionally came with a prize inside the box in the days before kids started choking on everything.

[8:02] Holly Morgan: Let's listen to both.

[8:32] Chris Adams: Easy to tell you're going straight to hell.

[8:40] Holly Morgan: Why dare I ask was it called Cracker Jack?

[8:46] Dean Pitchford: Well you know when you grab a box of Cracker Jacks and you open up the prize you never know what you're gonna find.

[8:55] Holly Morgan: Um okay. Terry had long argued that Brits unfamiliar with such sophisticated American delicacies just wouldn't get the reference and so the lyrics and the title of the song were altered. If we'd done Cracker Jack which is what it originally was it made sense it suddenly it was a proper number I thought and then we changed they changed it to this rap where we're going kill the pig pig pig kill him now get the blood blood blood oh blood and we go why? And yeah it it was a classic moment.

[9:24] Chris Adams: And why change it just before you're about to go to America where people know what it means? They could have picked a British snack, a wagon wheel, a hula hoop, a penguin.

[9:38] Holly Morgan: If this scene also sounds like a lot to take in spare a thought for the audience of at least one of the Broadway previews at which Charlotte's microphone cuts out so you don't even get the context it's just the dancers in leather shouting about pigs for no discernible reason.

[9:47] Dean Pitchford: It's like an average night out. I mean can you imagine how baffling that night must have been?

[10:01] Joey: For the ensemble performing this number for the first time led to a bit of an epiphany. It was the first night we're in Stratford we're sold out you couldn't get a ticket completely sold out the entire run and I think it was the opening of act two which is the kill the pig number the infamous kill the pig pig pig make it bleed bleed bleed we have these crazy mohawk punk hairdos like weird look like a like someone vomited uh Mad Max and Clockwork Orange together it was just very bizarre so we do this the boys do this great number we're dancing like maniacs like banshees out of hell. At the end of the number Terry Hands in his other role as lighting designer beamed bright floodlights into the eyes of the audience to momentarily distract from the cast exiting the stage but it meant they got a clear look at the audience staring back at them and there must have been 600 people with their mouths aghast you could hear a pin drop no not a clap not a sound people were just shocked mortified by what we had just experienced because it's a royal Shakespeare company they had never seen anything of such radical interpretations.

[11:31] Chris Adams: Ken Mandelbaum's book Not Since Carrie corroborates Joey's story when the number ends it says a few applaud dutifully but most look at the stage or each other with their mouths open just like the audience at springtime for Hitler the show within the movie in the producers.

[11:44] Holly Morgan: I'd forgotten that but now that you say that I absolutely remember we all stood in the wings going they're not clapping nothing that was happening nothing's happening we're awful we're gonna this show is awful we're going down that's all I can remember so just out of interest what happened to all that leather like the show itself the costumes met an abrupt end when we came off stage with those leather jackets on the last night in on Broadway they took them off us and shredded them the the American um wardrobe union is so strong out there that they destroy all the or back then they destroyed all the costumes as you came off stage because you were not they had to remake them if they ever did the show again they weren't going to use them again so they would took these beautiful leather jackets off us and we were like I would have to keep that if I could know a travesty.

[12:24] Chris Adams: In the new version of Carrie tragically Out For Blood has been cut but it is such a special moment in theatre history that is true it's been replaced with a song called A Night We'll Never Forget which follows the kids getting ready for the prom in anticipation of their big night it's just not the same Out For Blood does live on though as there's a single verse of lyrics in the middle of the new song just as we see Chris and Billy breaking into the farm but the tribute is over and done with quickly and there's not a topless blood-smeared leather dancer in sight shame.

[12:47] Holly Morgan: Back to 1988 and our heroine Sue gets her big number it hurts to be strong.

[12:57] Chris Adams: Back in Stratford Sally Ann Triplett had a different song and it was a long time coming she recalls um in Stratford my number was White Star so I had this ballad called White Star which was really pretty and but I guess they wanted to make Sue a bit tougher a bit stronger a bit more you know self-willed and and that this is what I want to do I want I want I want Tommy to take her to the prom so they gave me this other number but they didn't write it for about six weeks honest to god I was waiting every day they'd be like and this is when Sue will sing her song and yeah this is when Sue will sing her song and and and then finally I got it and I I'm trying to remember what it was but I I know we were in tech um and we were like coming we were taking the second act which was when the song was and we were getting closer and closer and I finally got my song like a day before we were taking it cutting it a bit fine.

[13:40] Chris Adams: Interestingly White Star uses the same melody as Heaven which comes later in the show.

[14:02] Sally Ann Triplett: Arriving in New York she had to learn the new number and she had a chance to reflect on the experience just last year. So I came here to do The Last Ship which was the Sting musical and we opened at uh the Neil Simon in New York and I was on the fourth floor and it's it's such a wonderful theatre because outside the building are these light bulbs so it's very sort of old-fashioned New York with um Neil Simon and because I was on the fourth floor I was like right up with the end sort of thing and um and it shines into the dressing room and one of the girls in the show she came in and she said hey Sally are you excited to be um on Broadway for the first time and you know I said to her well no I've I've been on Broadway before and she couldn't believe it she's like what do you mean what what show was it and I

[14:50] Dean Pitchford: It was Carrie and I couldn't remember, I knew it was called the Virginia Theatre but I couldn't remember where it was. And she said, are you kidding me? And she held my hand and she took me to the window and we stood by these light bulbs and she said, there, that's the theatre. And it's the August Wilson, which was literally across the road. And I had these goosebumps. So I had this connection with the Virginia Theatre for ages and then about three years later I went to see Groundhog Day. I went to see it twice, which was at the Virginia. I loved it. It was such a good show. And as I went in, I looked to my left and I saw the piano or where the piano would have been, where I was taught It Hurts To Be Strong, that night when they were kind of teaching it to me for the first time. And, you know, it's incredible, the memories and the full circle of everything.

[15:59] Linzi Hateley: It's actually quite a relief, between all the leather and jumping about, to have one amazing singer standing on stage belting out a ballad. This show is a rollercoaster.

[16:25] Linzi Hateley: Sue's solo is another part of the show which always seems to be constantly in flux. Not only did it change between Stratford and Broadway, it was also completely changed for the revival production where it appears as Once You See, in Act One. ...and suddenly he'll be there, handsome and wise, and probably a prince who could...

[16:49] Linzi Hateley: Oh God, I'm so scared. So scared. What could go wrong? I should be prepared for the worst...

[17:03] Dean Pitchford: Late in the writing process, Dean Pitchford and his collaborators thought there should be a moment for Carrie to take a breath and explore her newfound abilities. I know that in the roll-up to our rehearsals in Stratford, Michael and I wrote a song for Carrie in Act Two called I'm Not Alone, in which she's getting ready for the prom, and she, with her telekinetic powers, uses... Because we realised that we'd never seen Carrie enjoy her powers. It had always been a matter of fear and dread to her that she had this power. So Terry had this idea that he could, he would activate all these moving effects, and so we wrote a song for Carrie to play with her hairbrush and to have her dress swish around the room. It's quite nice to spend some time with Carrie when she's not being hurled around the stage or killing people with her laser fingers.

[17:58] Dean Pitchford: Yes, we get to hear her thoughts as she looks forward to a more positive future. This is a classic emotional climax song, reminding our audience how close we've grown to Carrie and her plight before we head into the final scenes of the show. It's quite hard to see on the video, but she uses her telekinesis to dance with various objects, including her prom dress. I'm fairly sure there's a brief moment where her prom shoes do a little tap dance. And why not?

[18:20] Bob Sembiante: Theatre fan Bob Sembiante was in the audience. They were just, they had lost control and things that were being funny that shouldn't have been funny. Poor Lindsay Hateley having to do the I'm Not Alone number with the self-levitating powder puff and the self-dancing tap shoes. She deserved an award just for getting through the number without laughing.

[18:45] Dean Pitchford: However, the fun doesn't last for long, as cranky old Margaret White heads upstairs to see what all the racket's about. She tries to persuade Carrie to hand over the dress and tells her that Tommy won't be coming to pick her up. Barbara's version is much more chatty, whereas Betty brings a more threatening edge.

[19:00] Linzi Hateley: Give me the dress.

[19:01] Dean Pitchford: No.

[19:04] Linzi Hateley: I won't let you go.

[19:05] Dean Pitchford: Leave me alone.

[19:09] Linzi Hateley: He's not coming.

[19:10] Dean Pitchford: He is coming.

[19:11] Linzi Hateley: He's not coming.

[19:12] Dean Pitchford: He is coming, Mama.

[19:13] Linzi Hateley: He mustn't come.

[19:14] Dean Pitchford: I don't want to fight with you, Mama.

[19:15] Linzi Hateley: This is Satan's power.

[19:16] Dean Pitchford: It's not Satan, Mama. It's me.

[19:17] Linzi Hateley: It is evil.

[19:18] Dean Pitchford: It's not evil, Mama. It's fun.

[19:20] Linzi Hateley: The Lord will not be mocked, Carrie.

[19:21] Dean Pitchford: It's fun, Mama. Fun.

[19:22] Linzi Hateley: It is a sin. There will be a judgment. There is danger. The power will destroy you.

[19:26] Dean Pitchford: No.

[19:29] Linzi Hateley: Carrie sings a brief reprise of the title song, trying to persuade her mother that she isn't, in fact, a witch. She leaves and Margaret sings When There's No One. The Stratford programme lists a song called Once I Loved a Boy in this position, but that never actually made it past early rehearsals before being replaced. The writers felt they needed to take advantage of Barbara Cook's unique voice and created this new song just for her.

[19:53] Dean Pitchford: In Stratford, Michael and I went off and we wrote When There's No One. And we had not had that song for Margaret to sing after. I mean, what had happened was she has the scene with Carrie. Carrie says, I'm going to the prom. You can't stop me. She goes off and Margaret stands center stage and she quotes the Bible. She says, Thou shall not suffer a witch to live. And so we have at that moment her announcement that she is going to kill her daughter. But what we don't have is her gut-wrenching decision, how it rings her out because she truly loves her daughter. And we had gotten all the way to Stratford without addressing that issue. So Michael and I went off and wrote When There's No One.

[21:05] Dean Pitchford: The creation of this song had another motive, an attempt to placate Barbara Cook and persuade her to stay with the production. And so it was not just a question of serving Margaret, the character, but serving Barbara Cook. We had one of the greatest stars in the history of Broadway and we needed to give her something more than beating her daughter up and throwing her in a closet in Act One. And so we gave her something that she could float in her, in that incredible, inimitable style of hers. And that was the mandate for When There's No One. And it would not have happened if Barbara Cook had not been the voice in our ear.

[22:07] Dean Pitchford: This song has become a bit of a musical theatre standard. And although written with Barbara in mind, it later became a staple for Betty Buckley, who still performs it to this day. And, interestingly, Lindsay Hateley also did an online rendition of it this past Halloween. It was incredible. I hope it's planted the seed in some producer's mind to get Lindsay in to play Margaret in a full production one day. And I can be Carrie. Despite its dark intentions, it's a heartbreaking song and a welcome moment of calm and reflection in all the craziness, setting the course for the show's dark ending.

[22:47] Kim Criswell: Kenny and Lindsay used to watch Betty from the wings. Just stunning. And I used to stand, because I was saying to Michelle earlier, or Shelley, our entrance was on stage left for the prom and she sang that just before that. And I always used to scoot down to the front to just watch round, because the stage, the set was a big box. And you couldn't really see onto the stage unless you went to certain places. And I used to just nip to the edge and just watch Betty and she would be crying and just every night I'd go, this is just amazing. And then we went on.

[23:34] Dean Pitchford: Then a bell tolls. And as we all know, that means prom time.

[23:44] Linzi Hateley: Yeah!

[23:45] Dean Pitchford: Thus our cast returns for another very special number.

[23:58] Linzi Hateley: What a night! W-O-T-T-A night.

[24:03] Dean Pitchford: And they're presumably exhausted from all the thrusting and smearing. All dressed in unflattering boxy white formal wear. We have it on good authority from our American correspondents that these do not look like typical prom outfits. By this point in the show, having suffered leather, spandex unitards and even mismatching underwear from a now defunct British department store, they'd had enough. Shelley Hodgson remembers.

[24:26] Shelley Hodgson: Do you remember going to that, I think it was a cafe in New York and we sort of mutinied and we invited Debbie along to say, we've got to do something because no one's going to know what we're doing and what we're wearing. No, I'm not saying we mutinied, but we got Debbie along in our lunch hour and said, Debbie, you've got to help us. This is not making sense. And we need to wear our own clothes. Maybe if we just come in and we just wear, we just costume it ourselves because the whole Greek thing and I think it was maybe in previews when the audience was roaring laughing. But we were desperate to try and sort of go, OK, if there's one thing we could change that might help, like you say, this should work. What can we do? Nothing was changed.

[25:13] Dean Pitchford: That shiny white colour scheme will shortly go on to haunt the costume designer. Meanwhile, the sidewalls of our space age set rotate into mirrors. And lights up on a massive, shiny disco ball. Peter McIntosh, a set design student who watched the tech rehearsal for Carrie, remembers this unique prop.

[25:30] Peter McIntosh: And it was the most astonishing thing. It was like this, the biggest mirror ball you have ever seen in your life, bigger than a person. And it was just, it sat in the corner of this white box on a little base that turned it so it wasn't even hanging in the air, it was on the floor. And it was just, it filled the sky with, I mean, stunning, a stunning visual effect. But the ball was not long for this world. Debbie just walked on and said, that's got to go. And she had them remove it. And as the stagehand was wheeling it off the stage, I can't remember how much it was, but it was something like £20,000. And he said, that's £20,000 worth of set going. And I just thought, you can buy a flat for that, because you could then.

Often when I was doing shows at the RSC, when I was in their store, I think it might still have been there. I used to just kind of snoop to see if I could find some Carrie stuff. Farewell, massive, shiny disco ball. Money well spent, if you ask me.

[26:24] Linzi Hateley: Are you following all this?

[26:25] Dean Pitchford: Just about. They now perform a sort of space age mating ritual.

[26:43] Linzi Hateley: Tommy Ross enters in a sort of puffy white tracksuit, for some reason, alongside his date for the evening, none other than Miss Carrie White. In a suspiciously large dress. Can we expect a surprise reveal? We'll see. Miss Gardner reassures Carrie with a quick reprise of Unsuspecting Hearts, and Tommy encourages her to the dance floor, where he croons our next number, Heaven.

[27:03] Dean Pitchford: Now, bear in mind that the script has been so heavily hacked to its bare bones, that in the eyes of the audience, Tommy and Carrie have, until this point, barely met. In the workshop production and the early scripts, there are extended scenes where, as in the book and the movie, Tommy visits Carrie at home to reluctantly persuade her to come to the prom, and slowly starts to realise that she's beautiful inside and out. Here though, after a brief meeting earlier in the show, he's now essentially professing his undying love for her.

[27:44] Linzi Hateley: By this point, the audience members can barely contain themselves. Contagious giggles start to sweep around the room, as Tommy, seemingly forgetting his long-term girlfriend, tells Carrie that dancing with her is indeed almost like Heaven. Heaven was originally written as an octet, a device in which eight distinct characters' voices sing the song simultaneously around the stage, and you can hear that version in some of the Stratford recordings. The writers had been aiming for a very layered, very lush choral sound, but it became too complicated to follow, with too much sound, too many notes and too many words. And so it was simplified.

[28:28] Stephen Dolginoff: Enter our villains, Chris and Billy, who are, remember, banned from the prom. Charlotte came out when she, in the final version, Charlotte, as Chris, sort of passed with Billy, and she's sort of wearing a black leather bustier with studs, and she's singing about voting, like, I'm ready to vote. And, you know, you see her, like, filling out her ballot as she's crossing the stage. In the first preview, she crosses the stage, but she's wearing, once again, red leather, which made her pop out, and she's singing, is the blood ready yet? And the whole audience laughed. She's, like, walking by and she goes, is the blood ready yet? And the whole audience laughs. Seeing the show again a few nights later, more changes.

So that was gone, the red was gone, and she was in white and sang, I'm ready to vote. So, an improvement. Despite its escalating sense of ridiculousness, Heaven's a nice song, and fans miss it in the revival, where it's been replaced with a reprise of Dreamer in Disguise, the poem that Tommy sang earlier in the show.

[29:40] Holly Morgan: And perhaps with more context around Tommy's sudden infatuation with Carrie, it could have worked. Back to the prom, and of course, Chris has fixed the vote. In the early Stratford performances, there's a version of the script where the votes tie. Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in the history of Broadway, we have a tie between Matthew Dickens and Kath Coffey, and Tommy Jonas and Terry White. Carrie and Tommy are level pegging with Matthew Dickens and Kath Coffey, which, as we know, are the real names of the actors playing those characters. Like much of the script, that bit was cut by Broadway, and we go straight to a verse with Sue realizing her mistake as Carrie and Tommy win the vote. As she hears her name read out, Carrie can't believe her luck. The new lovebirds make their way to be crowned prom king and queen, which of course leads us to... The Destruction!

[30:39] Chris Adams: Coming up right after this message. Yes, it's The Destruction, the iconic climax of both Stephen King's novel and Brian De Palma's movie. In those versions of the story, evil Chris has rigged a bucket of pig's blood above the stage and, determined not to allow Carrie one ounce of happiness, pulls the rope at the key moment to drench her in the sticky liquid. Pig's blood for a pig. Or at least that's what's meant to happen. In the ceiling, there's a big square hole in the ceiling. And you look at that and you kind of go, well, I can see what's going to happen there. I mean, obviously, climax of the show, that's where the blood's going to come from. And it'll be spectacular. It'll be an incredible moment. I mean, that makes so much sense. They were up in the, you know, whatever, the eaves of the gymnasium. And that's obviously where they're going to pull the blood from.

[31:40] Holly Morgan: The scene in the movie is often used as an example of great filmmaking. De Palma builds the tension incredibly over several minutes, making the moment even more shocking. The writers wanted a similarly tense build-up and shocking blood drop on stage, triggering Carrie's epic telekinetic meltdown. Let's read what the stage directions in the original script for the musical say. What did they want to achieve? She opens her eyes wide and they're glowing, literally glowing in the darkness. And extending her arms in front of her, she flexes and lasers come out of her fingers, flying over the audience's heads and slamming two side theatre doors shut. In the orchestral section that follows, the dream becomes a nightmare as Carrie unleashes her full arsenal of supernatural powers.

It goes on. Utter pandemonium ensues as she seals off the gym, trapping everyone inside like fish in an aquarium. In a blaze of special effects, music, lighting and dance, she enacts her terrible revenge against classmate and teacher, friend and enemy alike. At the height of this spectacular holocaust, Carrie walks through the fiery gymnasium, the stage blazing like Valhalla behind her as she exits. Wow.

[32:57] Chris Adams: That's what we want to see. In fact, what actually happens, with absolutely no build-up, is... No, Billy, no! Chris runs on from the wings and is met by Billy with a plastic bucket. I had to come with a bucket and, like, hit it over her head. And so you'd see this, like, red, like, blob, little blob, and I'd go, you know, and then she would have to kind of put it on her. Anyway, it was so bad and I remember being so embarrassed by it. Then I saw the show twice in Stratford and couldn't believe my eyes when Jean-Anthony Ray just put a galvanized bucket on her head, ran on, put a bucket on her head and ran off. I was like, is, I mean, is that it? This is the climax of, this is the moment that every single person who knows this story is waiting for.

And that's how you deliver it. There's a little pool of blood on the stage and all of those phenomenal white walls that need to now be soaking red are still white. I was like, are you serious? Are you serious? You, like, you're one moment.

[34:15] Holly Morgan: The crew was unable to sufficiently soak Lindsay with blood without coating the stage in slippery corn syrup mixture and causing her microphone to malfunction. Understandably, this was an issue for the final few moments of the show. If there's so much blood that goes over me, that the microphone is going to be affected by it and which way can we make this work? So you wanted this amazing image, but at the same time, you've got to be able to hear. Otherwise, it was just like a distorted sound and things have improved enormously in 30 years. So lots of those things would be ironed out. And crucially, the liquid had to be thin enough to be washed out of the dazzling white costumes each day. They wanted a blood that would be able to wash out, you know, because obviously, you know, costumes were a nightmare.

The laundry bill, I mean, I stupidly am wearing white. There was complete coincidence, but everything was white and we were dealing with blood and there was no way you could wash the costumes and get blood on them. Again, a fundamental kind of, had no one thought about this?

[35:20] Chris Adams: Numerous attempts were made in rehearsals and the Stratford previews to make the blood dump more dramatic, including altering the consistency of the liquid and the angle of the throw. Theatre fan Keith Butler was living near Stratford at the time and was one of the very few people to see the show at the start and end of the run there. In those few short weeks, it was clear that Terry and the team were trying anything and everything to make a bold statement with the blood drop. What I do recall was there was a change, you know, with the bucket scene and the blood and the rest of it. And I think that what had happened in the first production, the first time I saw it, as I recall, it was definitely sort of blood coming out of the bucket and which was because it was quite a sort of horrific destruction type scene.

I think that again, that would have been sort of Terry, I believe, and the way that that was done with all the lighting effects and the rest of it was quite sort of frightening. And of course, the blood added to that as well.

[36:18] Holly Morgan: And then the second time I saw it, again, if my memory serves me right, it was it was red petals that came out of the bucket. And I don't know how true that was. Maybe I'm making that up, but I don't think I am. It definitely wasn't liquid. Petals? Come on now. And so it didn't have the same sort of effect. And I can only think that the liquid had got stuck in Lindsay's mic or something or whatever. And I guess that that's what sort of happened. The crew considered alternatives, including cutting the liquid blood altogether and replacing it with a lighting effect. You know, they were like, well, let's put some red lights on you. Really, really intense red lights. Right. That didn't work.

[37:01] Chris Adams: By the time the first Broadway previews came around, an impactful solution had still not been found. Every night at that climactic moment of the story, a wave of disappointment and disbelief swept across the audience when an insubstantial drizzle of pale red goop was poured on poor Lindsay's head. The cast came on holding a bucket of blood, walked up to Carrie and dumped it on her. Yeah. Really? What about the whole tension in this? I mean, first of all, you're comparing it to the movie and that whole sequence with following the court and, you know, kind of setting up the tension of what's going to happen. Literally, it was so anticlimactic. It was most ridiculous. Literally, they walked on, dumped some blood and then they all kind of like, you know, ran around as if they were being... I mean, it was... So, A, there was no big blood, right?

I mean, it was all about the blood and there's no big blood. It's like a little pool. We're expecting, obviously, something really spectacular to happen because it's the highlight of the movie. Everybody knows it's going to happen. And he, as you know, just walks up to her and slowly just dumps the thing on her head and the audience does, in fact, boo.

[38:17] Holly Morgan: Not like a huge chorus of boos, but you hear like... But I remember thinking, oh, that's just for tonight. That's part of why we were delayed a half an hour. Whatever their thing is, it's just not on tonight. But no, this wasn't a temporary fix. Carrie's big climax, a moment of huge anticipation and tension in the movie, featured a few blobs of red syrup chucked at our hero from aside. Ken Mandelbaum describes the moment succinctly in Not Since Carrie. Chris's big moment of revenge is so poorly staged it gets laughs. Billy runs on and plunks a small bucket of raspberry topping over Carrie's head. Lindsay felt awkward having to perform a full telekinetic meltdown following a fairly ineffective splashing. At her request, attempts were made to intensify the blood dump. Night after night, she was doused with an array of different substances.

[39:11] Chris Adams: Terry and his team attempted to find a happy medium with the amount of red liquid needed, enough to make a dramatic impact, but not destroy her mic. Let's put in the bucket, when you get the bucket on your head, let's put sponges inside, soaked in blood. And then when, and I remember Lindsay, bless her, she had the bucket on her head and then she had to kind of push the bucket onto her face. And then when she took the bucket off, it looked like she had like loads of blusher. And then Lindsay just said, could you not just like throw a bucket of blood on me? Oh my God, yeah, what a great idea. Director Terry Hands was reluctant to compromise his artistic vision with an epic horror movie style soaking, wanting the audience to focus on Carrie's emotional transformation and not a tacky special effect.

He even tried to justify it as part of his avant-garde approach to staging the story. He was bemused by the audience reaction to the disappointing climax. In an interview, he reflected, I'd been trying to replace a splosh with a moment of humiliation, but they didn't want it in sophisticated character terms. They didn't want humiliation. They wanted a bright, clear impact. So we covered her in blood, head to toe, splosh. Lindsay always said it tasted very good. She used to eat most of it.

[40:28] Holly Morgan: Because I remember the taste of it, you know? No, I loved it. When we got the taste that I really was, by the end, I was like, this is like toffee apple. And I was like, oh, I can sort of handle this. So if I swallowed a bit, it was all right. By the final performance, the cast took matters into their own hands. In the last night, we said, water it down. And he literally threw it at Lindsay. She nearly fell backwards. It was with such a force. And we were all splattered. But the thing was, is that kind of what everyone wanted? And we were absolutely slipping. And so as the staircase came down, all beneath was us covered in red. The walls had blood up, everything was. And then Lindsay literally, incredibly coming through. Covered head to toe in blood, that was unfortunately our last night.

[41:29] Chris Adams: To enhance the visual image of Carrie being covered in blood, Lindsay's dress had snaps down one side so that she could wear an even bloodier version underneath. It was Charlotte's job to whip off the top layer amidst the commotion. And on the Stratford bootleg video, you can even see her flinging it off stage. Just before opening night on Broadway, Alexander Reid, the costume designer, came up with a new design for the prom dress to make this quick change slightly smoother. But that dress didn't match the one that Carrie had danced with earlier in the show. As the previews went on, her prom dress kept changing. You know, she danced with a magic version of her prom dress. She had a different prom dress in every performance I saw. It was never the one that she danced with. Because the one that she danced with had sleeves to make it look sort of human, but she never had one with sleeves.

[42:17] Holly Morgan: After being splattered by the blood, Carrie predictably goes apeshit. As her castmates laugh, either in real life or in her mind, she starts to pick them off one by one. The destruction number itself is packed with musical references to other songs in the show, creating a spiraling sensation that replicates Carrie's total meltdown. What about the finger lasers? Well, this scene really allowed Terry, who, remember, had also designed the lighting for the show, to go to town. An arsenal of lighting effects and laser beams illustrate Carrie's destruction of the gym, illuminating the theatre like a rock concert. It looks very 90s Vegas.

[43:14] Chris Adams: But laser beam massacres come with strict safety regulations. Do you remember the laser beam issue, where in Stratford you were allowed to fire laser beams directly at us because we didn't have health and safety in Britain? In America, the moment we got to Broadway, they said, we can't use that now. We're allowed to use laser beams, but they're not allowed to hit anyone. So every time we were shot with a laser beam, where we'd done these amazing deaths that Debbie sort of got us all to improvise these deaths one day, you weren't allowed to kill us anymore. So we had to do it even though the laser beam had completely missed us. We still had to die.

[44:01] Holly Morgan: As the destruction concludes, there is an exhausted silence and Carrie is left standing on a tall pedestal, dripping blood. And then something truly jaw-dropping happens. And then all of a sudden, the pedestal rises and at the same time, the ceiling jackknifes down from the back. So it's hinged upstage in the ceiling and comes down. And it's this white stairway with Betty Buckley, Mrs. White, the very top of the stairs. And there's a cutout so that Lindsay literally slides.

[44:30] Dean Pitchford: The Descending Staircase was Terry's attempt at replicating the kind of memorable, spectacular moments seen in mega musicals like Les Mis, where the height of 80s engineering was employed to make an enormous set of barricades rotate onto the stage. The staircase that comes down and crushes everybody is extraordinarily dramatic. I know you've probably seen photos of that big stairway to heaven at the end. Well, but what you don't realise is how it came down. I mean, maybe you've seen footage of it, but it just, it really looked like people were being crushed beneath it. And, you know, she was sort of in a cutout and it sort of went around her. It really was dramatic.

[45:31] Sally Ann Triplett: And that, I mean, wow, it looked amazing. And I watched the whole thing because my character was outside this huge staircase and I watched the whole ball and it was amazing. At the top of the staircase, transported there in a very expensive backstage lift, appeared Margaret White. One audience member on Broadway is said to have shouted, "Betty Buckley, come on down." I mean, they were really losing it by this point, weren't they?

[46:44] Lindsay Haitley: I remember the gasp of the audience as you started seeing Betty Buckley come down that giant white staircase saying, "What is this going to be? Where are we?" Basically, she descends the stairs and Carrie stabs her. I don't know where Carrie, she must have had it on her, the knife. I don't remember how she got the knife, but it must have been in her wardrobe because the prop was there and she, you know, kills the mother. At some performances, another malfunction. Betty Buckley's got a knife. That also didn't work. People laughed at that. And then Lindsay Haitley sort of rolled down the stairs. People laughed at that. It was, I didn't, it was mean, but like, that's what they did. And, you know, it was kind of sad.

[47:38] Dean Pitchford: Back in Stratford, the staircase had been at the centre of yet another feud. In fact, it had been high up on Barbara Cook's list of official reasons to leave Carrie the Musical. Of course, when this staircase came in, it was painted brilliant white and above it was a whole lighting rig, which was all in brilliant white as well. And Barbara's down at the top, of course, just couldn't see the stairs because there were no edges to the stairs. So she said to, quite rightly, said to Terry, "I can't see anything. You know, this is impossible." Terry agreed to do something about it and asked the RSC's technical department to build a metal handrail down the centre of the staircase, allowing the ageing Barbara a chance of descending without breaking a hip.

[48:20] Sally Ann Triplett: He had it painted white to blend in, but set designer Ralph Coltie was less than impressed when he arrived the next day to discover his very expensive, very metaphorical staircase had been blemished with a crude health and safety measure. I mean, of course, of course he's furious. I mean, I would be furious. What he designed, you know, a set that you've been looking at for two hours and then suddenly the whole reef caves in, sort of hinges from the back wall down to fill the stage. And it's just a massive staircase. And that in itself is an incredible visual gesture. It's the sort of, you know, halfway to heaven sort of moment, isn't it? The kind of, you know, I mean, absolutely the stuff of Greek tragedy.

[49:02] Dean Pitchford: And yet, when it came down, right in the middle of it was this, what looked like a, yes, I mean, a sort of remedial railing that had been poked right down the middle of it. And, you know, you're asking Barbara Cook, legend of Broadway theatre, to start at the top and virtually get to the bottom, probably while singing, I imagine. I would say that was a big ask. I'd want a railing. Ralph was so furious that he had put this handrail in for Barbara that overnight, the following night, he painted it red. So, of course, you now had this enormously brilliant white staircase with a red handrail right all the way up the top of it, right through the centre of it. Amazing. Very, very funny. But, yes, it got repainted.

[49:52] Lindsay Haitley: Dean and the writers were frustrated that such an enormous amount of focus and resource had been placed on the show's design. They felt it sacrificed a powerful, clear story, particularly the ending. My collaborators and I were not happy with the design that the show took. We were constantly being assured by Terry Hands that, oh, it's going to be brilliant, it's going to be brilliant, it's going to be wonderful. And a lot of what was on stage, or what wasn't on stage, I mean, the stage was a big blank space with a couple of units that rolled on. And for the most part, it was in preparation for the final reveal, when, after the destruction, an enormous staircase lowers down and Margaret walks down that staircase.

[50:46] Dean Pitchford: It was a lot of everything being pushed out of the way in order to make one moment happen.

[50:54] ♪ Musical number: "Love is so deep, oh Carrie" — performed by Lindsay Haitley ♪

[51:16] Dean Pitchford: Eventually, Margaret plunges the knife into Carrie's back. She retaliates by using her powers to stop her mother's heart. This method of dispatching Mrs. White was based on the closing chapter of the novel, not like Piper Laurie's memorably orgasmic death in the movie, which was caused by a barrage of flying knives and other spiky phallic utensils. So, again, if you're unfamiliar with the source material, like much of the audience, chances are you'd struggle to understand what had happened. Margaret just sort of flops over. It's worth noting that all of the above happens extremely quickly, making it even harder to comprehend. Where the prom sequence in the movie takes up 18 minutes of its runtime, here it takes barely five from start to finish. That's the climactic moment that the whole show has been building to. Done and dusted. Barely five minutes.

[52:04] Lindsay Haitley: We hear the closing notes of the show and the lights go down, leaving the audience confused. And then, in the darkness, that extraordinary moment that Lindsay recounted. I don't know whether it was a first preview or whatever, but at the end of it, the lights went out and there was a mixture of boos and cheers and it was just like, "What the fuck is going on? Do they like us? Do they hate us? What is it?" And Betty sort of rushed down to the front and she held my hand in the dark and I looked at her and she just went, "Let's see." And the lights went up and they went up and then literally the audience erupted and stood on their feet. It was a terrifying moment for Lindsay and Betty.

[52:50] Kenny Linden: I remember his frustration at how the audience was led to react. There's a way to make the audience feel comfortable enough to react in the way that you want them to rather than just the way they feel. And I think Terry maybe missed some of that. And allowing you and Betty to have that insecure moment should not have happened. It should have been something really clever to make them go, "Wow."

[53:11] Bob: But that ending when audiences were booing and cheering at the same time, I remember I was sitting across the aisle from Michael Rupert, who had just finished doing Sweet Charity with Debbie Allen and thinking, "What the hell is he going to say when he sees her backstage?" It's one of those moments where you have to think quick and say, "Wow, that blood was really red, wasn't it? Those kids are really sweating up a storm up there, weren't they?"

[53:38] Lindsay Haitley: On Broadway, Betty Buckley had been able to join Lindsay for a bow. But in Stratford, Barbara Cook, quite frail, had been left stranded further up the staircase. It was better that she stayed where she was and we did a bow there and then some of the boys helped her down to the front. And I think that when we got to New York and Betty was a lot younger and a lot more sprightly.

[54:01] Dean Pitchford: Despite their awkward placement on the staircase, the leading ladies, who would usually be rewarded with the final bow at the curtain call, were in fact the first to appear. The rest of the cast were left to file on in the middle of the standing ovation. And I think that's what threw the audience as well, because the staircase was in, we were all off in the wings and we all just had to trail on in a straight line from the edge because there was no way to... Nowadays you would never do a finale where people just walk on from the sides and bow and then exit. And we all walked on from the sides, bowed, turned upstage, there's Lindsay and Betty and they would do their bow and then we'd all just walk off. So it had a very surreal... I don't... I think we all came on in a straight line to start with.

[54:40] Todd Graff: The final audiences on Broadway, flocking to see the show they had heard so much about, were aware they had been part of theatrical history. As the last performance came to a close, at about 10:30 PM on May 15th, 1988, an extraordinary thing happened. Last performance. The whole audience stood. It was completely sold out and they wouldn't leave. And they wouldn't leave, they'd put the lights up, we all just stood on stage, they kept clapping, nobody would leave. The cast didn't leave, they didn't leave. There were just standing ovations at the end because it was so silly. They loved it. And then we all went next door to... Is it Delaney's? What's that place called? There's like a very famous sort of... And then all the cast and all the audience all went there.

It's like no one wanted to let it go, you know. But literally they stood and stood and stood and they couldn't get back to theatre. And that was it. Carry On Broadway had closed after just 16 previews and five performances.

[55:38] Lindsay Haitley: I remember sort of walking up the stairs at the end of the show and leaving a trail of everyone slipping all the way up. And we, in the Virginia Theatre, we were limited in the kind of showers. And I was like, "Please let me have mine first." Ah, Carrie. There's never been a musical like her. That's not the end of our story, though, because we'll be checking in again with the cast to find out what they did next and how this extraordinary experience changed their lives. And we'll be speaking to some of the incredible people who, decades later and against all odds, brought Carrie back from the grave. Coming up on Out For Blood.

[56:19] Dean Pitchford: You know, one of the dancers in the show taped a camera up in the balcony and just had this brilliant idea to just get it down somehow. And there are bootleg recordings of it and stuff. That it was like a person who was not interested in trading. They were like, "I will sell you this Carrie audio for, you know, it was probably $100." It was like, I remember this, it was like expensive. So I kind of went on this crazy mission. I just wanted to know everything I could about Carrie. Anyway, I bought a blank videotape with me and I decided if I got the opportunity, I was going to leave with the Carrie tape and leave them with the blank tape. And I did. And so I'm in, I was probably, you know, a freshman in high school at this point.

Literally get a call one day from Betty Buckley's attorney. Without even hearing it, I remember thinking, of course we have to sing a duet from Carrie. Of course we have to sing Carrie because, you know, I do have a strong streak of wanting to give people what they want as much as I can. And I know people want to hear that music. This is back then in the nineties. I just thought, wow, we should do Carrie. It's the perfect show for stage door. I traded my original Broadway poster for the score. And he came to my boyfriend at the time's apartment with this score. And like, we did an extra, like a drug deal for that score. And then I remember getting it and like running to campus being like, "I have it, I have it." So to this day, people still say to me, "Carrie White eats shit" because that was my line. And I'm the one that said that.

[58:58] Holly Morgan: Out For Blood is a proud member of the Broadway Podcast Network. For more information about us and the podcast, please visit us online at bpn.fm slash Out For Blood. If you enjoyed Out For Blood, please leave us a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you downloaded from. And don't forget to subscribe. Find us at Out For Blood Podcast on Instagram and Facebook and Out For Blood Pod on Twitter. Out For Blood was hosted and produced by me, Holly Morgan. And me, Chris Adams. Edited and produced by Tom Moores, he's a very nice boy. Paddy Jervis is our audio consultant. Original music by Odin Ornhill-Marson and artwork by Rebecca Pitt. Thanks this week to Dean Pitchford, Lindsay Haitley, Sally Ann Triplett, Charlotte D'Amboise, Georgia Otterson, Michelle DuVernay, Shelley Hodgson, Suzanne Thomas, Joey McKneeley, Kenny Linden, Eric Gilliom, Michelle Nelson Manne, Audrey Lavine, and Jeremy Sturt.

Thanks also to Peter McIntosh, Todd Graff, Bob Sembiante, and Keith Butler. And our super fans, Kim Criswell, Peter Michael Marino, Stephen Dolginoff, Mark Silver, Kate Moira-Ryan, and Scott Briefer. Oh, and you can see that spine-tingling performance of "When There's No One" by Lindsay Haitley online at theatrecafe.co.uk slash channel. See you next week.

[59:07] Chris Adams: Oh, Tom?

[59:08] Tom Moores: Yeah?

[59:10] Chris Adams: Shit! Look at all these pigs!

[59:13] Tom Moores: Press the button!

[59:14] Chris Adams: Press it!