Actors Breaking Character — Page 2

Hideous, juvenile behavior but it does happen, like getting the giggles at a funeral. That doesn't mean it should be celebrated. Unprofessional and unacceptable.

Idina broke when I saw If/Then also. She forgot to bring a cell phone on stage when she was to take a call. She announced that she did not have a phone, and waited until someone threw her one. She then hammed it up, and then redid that section of the show. I was one of the few people in the audience who seem less than impressed.

A few years ago, during the production of Cyrano de Bergerac with Kevin Kline, he was performing a scene with another actor. I believe in the scene, the characters were supposed to be in an empty theater. As they were doing their dialogue, an old man in the audience yelled out "Speak up!" to the actors. Kline acted shocked, looked around the set, and said "There must be a ghost in this theater!"

At the end of the show, after the actors took their bows, Kline stepped forward to thank the audience for being wonderful, "with one exception".

I've only seen an actor break character once in such a prominent fashion, and it was due to a pair of related technical problems (on the Les Miz tour, 13 years ago). It was embarrassing for the actor and all/most of the audience felt for him. He got a huge ovation. I still wince about it, but I think he did the best he could.

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If/Then tickets can go as high as $217 per seat. When a person is paying those prices, they don't want to see Idina screwing around.

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Nobody has anything in a wad. Opinions aren't panties.

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'I was there when..' sort of thing-it's almost like that moment is more important than the whole. If a ballerina slips--what do you talk about-that 5 seconds or the other brilliant 95mins.?
The worst is the 'pretend' losing it-that's just insulting.
Sure-the actors are real people, just like their audience and unexpected things happen to throw them off balance or out of the moment but try to recover or mask the problem-not turn it into a 3 ring circus.

I saw Cabaret last week. I was impressed and appreciative that Alan Cumming, even after so many performances, was giving it everything he had. I would not find it charming if a star were to break character to tell the audience how weary they are from toiling in the salt mines of Broadway.

Bless me father for I have sinned. I am about to agree with After Eight


Do the show as written. If you screw up a quick comedy moment is ok but if you can't get it together you are not 'the biggest star on Broadway'

I saw If/Then back in July, and it was the seen before What the F**k and Idina was trying to say probability, but it didn't come out quite right. Her and James both start laughing and James says how much have you had to drink and he then takes the wine glass away from her. They regroup and continue with the scene as if it didn't happen. Later in the show LaChanze was in her "classroom" talking to her class about heroes, before the song No More Wasted Time and something dropped/fell backstage and she in response to that she said get in the circle and settle down now or something like that. These mishaps have shown me how important improv is. They knew exactly what to say and made the show really good. I laughed so hard and I really enjoyed the show!

Updated On: 10/9/14 at 09:48 PM

What about classic cases like Zero Mostel? As the anecdotes go, him announcing baseball scores, etc, during FORUM kinda worked (though I could argue that it gets in the way of the classic element of the comedy to make modern references,) but when he started doing it in Fiddler, it was a big problem...

Eric, in the Mostel revival of FIDDLER in 1975, we did the last pre-Broadway leg in Miami Beach. I promise you that announcing baseball scores was the least of it! Zero played Tevye as if he were all Three Stooges rolled into one. He literally added almost an hour to the running time.

I was told that only Jerome Robbins could control him and an extended rehearsal period with Robbins was scheduled for after the show closed in Miami and opened on Broadway.

(This is childish on my part, but frankly the experience soured me on the show itself. And I had seen a very good national tour of FIDDLER when I was a teenager.)

So, basically, everything you've heard was true--and then some!

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BTW, Milton Berle also announced scores and made references to Joe's Crab Shack when he did Pseudolus for us. And, yes, somehow it worked without unraveling the tight farce of the book. (It helped that the rest of the cast was excellent!)

Updated On: 10/8/14 at 11:07 PM

I've seen If/Then many times and have seen Idina go off twice. Once was pretty big, where she was coming into the subway train and messed up her line. They all laughed, could not regain, and she asked the audience if she could do the scene over. Everyone applauded, nobody complained. She said she had messed the same line up at the matinee. She exited and re-entered and did the scene closer to script.

The other time I saw her go off, Idina choked on the cereal in the scene with James, coughed and coughed and they had to bring her water. James, reading the paper, said "there's a sale at Macy's" while Idina was trying to stop coughing, now laughing, and Idina said the drink was bourbon. They laughed so hard, James kept laughing and Idina said "where were we? we have a show to do."

Both times the audience understood that things like that happen, applauded, laughed, and then we went on with the show. No big deal. In fact, some people see it as special when the show strays from the same old same old. You realize these "stars" are just human after all.