Went to see The Odd Couple a couple of weeks ago, and the most unusual, well, outrageous thing occurred. There is a scene where Oscar (Lane) knocks a plate (has a sandwich and pickle on it) out of one of his poker buddies' hands. Said sandwich and pickle landed in the audience. Lane goes on with the scene - he's now sprawled across the table speaking. Well, this moron on the aisle picks the pickle up, and proceeds to throw it back on stage toward Lane, narrowly missing him (it flies over him). The audience laughed quite a bit, and Lane had to sort of stop and wait for the laughter to fade so he could continue. You could tell he was a bit stunned at the projectile produce.
Anyone else ever witness such bad behavior from an audience?
The pickle is intentionally pitched into the audience. At the performance I saw, there was one left on the stage in the middle of act 2, before the Pidgeon Sister date scene. Nathan threw it to Matt, who threw it to a guy in the front row. A good laugh was had by all.
Ah, that explains a lot...I thought it was a prelude to a food fight or something. Lane did look kinda stunned though.... I guess he was thankful it wasn't a watermelon :)
"Chicago is it's own incredible theater town right there smack down in the middle of the heartland. What a great city! I can see why Oprah likes to live there!" - Dee Hoty :-D
Lane should have had an ad-lib. I can think of quite a few that he could've used.
David walked into the valley
With a stone clutched in his hand
He was only a boy
But he knew someone must take a stand
There will always be a valley
Always mountains one must scale
There will always be perilous waters
Which someone must sail
-Into the Fire
Scarlet Pimpernel
The pickle scene is a standard and is done in every performance, but now that the audience has started throwing projectile pickles back on stage, I guess the cast will have to perform with catcher's masks.
:)
Seriously, the ad lib is probably something Lane would have done in another show but as he has said he is loathe to change a word or any timing in this show because he feels the writing is perfect, I would doubt he would ad lib unless he had no choice but to do so to get out of the situation.
Weird that the audience is starting to THROW things back at the actors. But then audiences are definitely strange these days.