Phantoms have been coming and going for 23 years, but one thing never changes: Usher Sylvia Bailey has been seating people at “The Phantom of the Opera” since Day One.
By her own count, the former Roxy girl has seen Andrew Lloyd Webber’s indestructible musical some 9,000 times since it opened on Jan. 26, 1988.
On Feb. 2, 2012, the week before “Phantom” plays its 10,000th performance, she’ll turn 87.
INSIDE BROADWAY’S LONGEST-RUNNING MUSICALS
PHOTOS: BROADWAY’S LONGEST-RUNNING MUSICALS
She plans to celebrate by handing out more Playbills.
“If I stayed at home, I don’t know what would happen,” says the widowed mother of five.
“How many times can you wash clothes? I’m not great for cooking, either.”
The former singer, dancer and War Bonds purveyor arrived at the Majestic Theatre two years before “Phantom” did. The show was “42nd Street.”
She and the other ushers were out of work for nine months while “Phantom” unfurled, she says, but she hasn’t been bored since.
Nor has “The Music of the Night” ever intruded on her dreams. Still, she finds herself singing — in a sweet soprano — that indelible love song: “Say you’ll share with me/One love, one lifetime.”
“I love that song,” she says. “That sticks in my brain. When I lug my bag onto the bus, I’ll be humming that song.”
She’s a celebrity on the Academy Bus line, which she rides five days a week from her Jersey Shore home to Midtown.
At the theater, she has her own little lair, one floor down from the lobby.
“I get my Sanka, the newspapers, listen to my radio, do the puzzle,” she says. “By that time, everybody’s in.”
When the curtain goes up, she takes a seat in the back row, if there is a seat. She keeps a folding chair in the back of the orchestra just in case.
Theatergoers sometimes ask her if the show has changed.
“It’s been the same since Day One,” she tells them. “No changes. Just different people.”
Despite the occasional set malfunctions — like the time a winch broke, stranding the Phantom over the orchestra during intermission — the only glitch she can remember was when a doctor died right before the curtain rose.
“He had a heart attack, and they took him out in an ambulance,” she says. “But you know what they say — the show must go on.”