EFX was a Las Vegas Strip production show residing at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino which opened on March 23, 1995[1] and closed on December 31, 2002.
Performers in the lead role were Michael Crawford, David Cassidy, Tommy Tune, and Rick Springfield.
Merlin and Morgana duke it out as giant dragons in a fiery on-stage battle before Arthur pulls the sword from the stone and defeats the evil sorceress.
Mishaps and hilarity abound as the intergalactic ensemble perform, and, led by the assistant Vladimir, eventually try to upstage the ringmaster Barnum.
The card trick was quickly cut from the show, and Bull Run was reworked to become part of a human cannonball stunt, which gets botched up nicely by Vladimir.
Barnum was also supposed to dance the entire Irish jig with the cast, but a hip injury sustained during one of the many stunts left Michael Crawford unable to dance for long, and the number was re-staged to feature just the ensemble performing the jig while Barnum tries in vain to catch Vladimir in an effort to stop his assistant from upstaging him.
Wells agrees, and uses the time machine to enter the far-distant future, an effect achieved through a 3D music video projected onto a scrim during the scene change.
EFX was originally conceived as a showcase for performer Michael Crawford, who was fresh off his four-year run in The Phantom of the Opera and enjoying a successful solo career at the time.
Tina Walsh and Kevin Koelbl doubled-up on a few supporting roles, while Jeffrey Polk, Stewart Daylida, Rick Stockwell, Lisa Geist, and over seventy ensemble members rounded out the rest of the cast.
EFX was originally created by Gary Goddard and Tony Christopher, with additional material and dialogue provided by Michael Crawford and Bruce Vilanch, respectively.
The original music was composed by Don Grady, Ted King, Gary Goddard, Andy Belling, B. A.
Robertson, and Michael Crawford, and featured lyrics by Doug Brayfield, Ted King, Gary Goddard, Andy Belling, Marty Panzer, and B. A.
One rehearsal of the Merlin act even resulted in his costume catching on fire, with half of it reportedly burned away before the flames could be extinguished.
In the end, a fall from a zip-line during the Barnum act required hospitalization and a hip replacement, causing Crawford to leave the show permanently in August 1996.
Bootleg recordings of live performances of Crawford's EFX surfaced around 1997, possibly in response to fans of the original version's poor reception of David Cassidy's re-write of the show.
While the video featured the majority of the show, several elements had been cut out of the tape, most notably the songs "Nexus", "Merlin Ballet", "Counting Up to Twenty", and all act introductions made by the Masters of Magic, Laughter, Spirit, and Time.
Two audio recordings of the entire show, one of the March 23 opening night performance with Crawford and another with the 1996 post-Crawford/pre-Cassidy cast, circulated in Germany.
While it largely remained true to the original version, all of the lyrics for the Masters of Magic, Laughter, Spirit, and Time were rewritten, and some scenes were edited down.
Barnum's entire stand-up routine was cut and replaced with a group ensemble number that featured a tumbling troupe and later, a flying trapeze act from Russia.
The resulting book focused on David the bus boy, a character that it was felt the audience would identify with more, rather than an EFX Master who ruled a world of dreams.
David reveals that he's lost something in his life since losing his love Laura (an audience member selected by the cast before every performance).
Just when it seems that Merlin is about to lose the battle, Arthur understands the lesson that the old wizard was trying to teach him, and pulls the sword from the stone to defeat Morgana.
The Masters of Magic, Laughter, Spirit, and Time became the main characters of the world of EFX, and are responsible for leading the audience through the show.
The lead role written for Cassidy was that of a bus boy who's brought into the world of EFX by the four Masters, and it's his story that the audience witnesses.
It was included on the cast album as a bonus track; however, it was erroneously labeled as having been "inspired by the Houdini Scene in EFX" instead of being credited as part of the original set list.
While most of the initial technical issues that plagued EFX's original run and forced Michael Crawford to leave his contract early had been ironed out by 1996, the show was still not without risk.
Sal Salangsang stayed on to perform the pre-show, and at Tommy Tune's insistence, was formally recognized as a cast member during the curtain call.
The Tommy Tune version of the EFX original cast album was released in 1999 by the MGM Grand and, like its predecessor, was available only through the hotel gift shop.
The Masters were written out of the show, along with scenes that featured dancer Andy Pellick and the Flying Kaganovich, a trapeze troupe that had joined the Barnum ensemble in 1996.
Despite becoming the newest victim in EFX's long history of performance-related accidents, fracturing his arm and spraining his wrist early on in his run, Springfield renewed his full contract and stayed with the show until it closed permanently on December 31, 2002.