Biggest mistake you've witnessed on stage. — Page 4

well i didnt see this happen, but Kristin Chenoweth was on david letterman in april, and she told him this really funny story. she hurt her neck doing the constant galinda hair flips, and her doctor gave her vicodin (sp?) for the pain. but he didnt tell her to cut in in half when it didnt hurt as bad, so she took a whole one right before the show! this was her talking.....
"so i came out in my little bubble and i saw little bubbles all around me, and i saw the 2000 people in the audience and i was just so happy! and one of my first lines was the wicked witch of the west is dead, it came out 'the widded wid of the wed ee woo. the wed e the woo.' I never did get it out. I dont even remember the performance but people who came to see the show all the time said it was my best show ever, that cant be good!"

I was laughing sooo hard when i saw this, and it was like 12:15 AM and my parents were sleeping...WHOOPS. hope you all enjoyed that as much as i did.

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Updated On: 8/5/05 at 09:00 PM

all in high school-

during annie (our most mistake laden musical)
- one performance the sound board hit the wrong button and drowned out "maybe" with someone backstage singing a particularly foul rendition of "tomorrow"
- another our miss hannigan was almost knocked out after being pulled out of the mansion in her final scene (myself and that actress always stood behind the mansion doors to "help" the onstage singers with the last song... i even dubbed warbuck's solo) well drake flung the door open into her face, it was covered with warbucks ad-libbing "i said get her ouuuuut!!!"
- one night the conductor got distracted and started the hooverville music about halfway through the song...and made us start over.
- and of course there was our rooster's nightly adlib about the mudge's farm... he loved to make our hannigan and lily crack up by going on forever about the animals on the farm things like "we have cows, chickens, elephants, wildabeasts, llamas, coyotes, marsupials.... oh yeah and a ROOSTER"

and in our version of sorry wrong number the climactic ending failed both performances since the train sound effect and the blackout never occured remotely on time

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Funny mistake in my own show:

We did "Cabaret" my freshman year, and had the bare minimum as far as sets went. For our bar, we had a board with a picture of a bar taped on it, and plastic goblets as our drinks. Well, the biggest mistake was that someone forgot to secure our "bar," and it fell on the bartender's head. (He was ok, it was light). And then, the bottoms of all of the goblets started falling off.

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So this is my first message ever on the board... i've been looking around for a few months and finally decided to participate... so hello.

I have two "flubs"; one during a show and the other during a technical rehersal:

I was doing a summer workshop at the Orpheum Theatre in Memphis and the tour for CATS opened the same week. Well a few cast members came and spoke about life on the road and yada yada yada... well they also offered to give a tour backstage, so a few people took them up on it (me included). Well they were opening that night and needed to test the tire lift for the ending. So they had a few people stand on it while they raised it and pushed it out. Well it rose fine but when they went to push it out, it went a little too quickly and it jolted a few people off. Again not during the show, but funny none the less...


the other was during a tour of ragtime. For those who don't know, the son opens both acts as narrator. Well the his mike didn't work either time. The first time you missed his opening and the second time it cut in about half way through

I got a Producers one from the Chicago tryout - when the chorus girls are lined up passing wine/martini glasses down the line to Matthew Broderick, and they're supposed to be "full," one glass dropped. They just kept going as if nothing had happened, but that meant the glass just sat there on stage throughout all of the choreography and no one picked it up until the black out when everyone had gotten offstage.

Another Chicago tryout - Spamalot! story:
After the Lancelot is gay number, I forget the actual title, all the knights come back onstage together, so this means Hank Azaria has a quick costume change offstage from flamenco/flamboyant to knight. So what happened when I saw it was that Hank came running on with the other knights in full knight costume - except he had the orange purple flower sticking out of his helmet on his ear. He says his line, something like, where has everyone been, or what happened, and all of the knights just stare at him and the flower for about three minutes. Meanwhile, the audience is cracking up, and you can tell it's getting to some of the knights too, especially Tim Curry, who's sort of giggling at this point. Hank doesn't get it until about three minutes later when he spots the flower out of the corner of his eye and tucks it under the helmet. It was hysterical!
Also, when one of my friends saw it, Hank just cracked up for about ten minutes long when he meets Prince Herbert. My friend said he was doubled over, laughing, and the audience laughed with him the entire time!

When Branagh did "Hamlet" with the RSC at the Barbican in London, during one of the matinees, in the opening scene the curtain didn't pull all the way across stage, only about a quarter or a third. Unfortunately, in this particular production, the curtain was apparently supposed to draw across the stage as the opening scene begins, so they didn't realize this until the opening scene had already begun. So the Ghost is marching around the stage and the audience can barely see him, and Horatio is flailing about trying to look around the curtain (I think he entered from the audience or something like that) and convince the audience that he's seeing the Ghost.

We were in the audience thinking, hmmmm, this is a really interesting interpretation of King Hamlet's Ghost.

Anyway, eventually, they finally put poor Horatio out of his misery and stopped the show for almost half an hour to fix the curtain. The thing was, that day "Hamlet" played both a matinee and an evening show, and since they started late, the cast and crew only had a half an hour before they had to do the 4 1/2 hour play all over again!

on the most recent tour of rent, the opening night in Portland OR the projector turned on early during the finale and wouldnt turn off so a stage hand unplugged it, then when it was plugged back in at the time it was supposed to be on it didn't work at all. not really a mistake more of a technical problem, but i have seen one of the mark's (forget which one it was) ride the projector on wheels all the way off the front of the stage into the front row.

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I found the picture of that amazing chorus girl from Lion King, but I can't figure out how to post it for you, sadly. I thought all I would have to do was paste in the jpg file path from my computer, but it ain't working.

Can someone tell me how?

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Updated On: 8/6/05 at 03:56 PM

I'll tell you how to post the picture...

Go to photobucket.com or another photo album site and you have to upload the picture to it, then go to the picture, properties and come and paste the URL.

Or if you want, you can give me the picture through an email or IM or somethin and I'll do it for ya.

Just tell me which, and if ya want me to do it I'll give ya my email or somethin (and if there is PMs here, PM me bout it)

I do wanna see the pic tho... that story is so awesme.

Hi, JayKid. Thanks much! Great suggestion.

Here she is, for those of you who are interested... The talented chorus girl from the OBC of "Lion King" who stepped up to the plate and finished that performance so successfully for Heather Headley.

I don't know her name, or what she's doing now. If any of you reading this know her, please tell her... she's a champion.
Lion King chorus girl

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The biggest mistake I saw was during a production at the National Theatre in London. I forget the production, but the director had the brilliant idea of sloping the stage. Not slightly, mind you, but at least at a 45 degree angle. The staging had the actors perform their scenes and then step off the sloped stage onto platforms where they would freeze and remain still until their character reappeared in the play. The actors wore evening attire, so all of the women were in high heels. It was a disaster waiting to happen, and in the middle of the first act, one of the actresses lost her footing and did a half-gainer down the stage. She stopped before she hit the orchestra.

Another mistake was having center seats for Oscar Wilde's Salome done in overemoting and slow motion at the National. It's an one-act play that was stretched over an 1:40 without an intermission. The theater had no center aisle, so to escape, I would have had to climb over about 30 people in either direction. (I was there with a class, so I couldn't sneak out discretely). Imagine being tied down and forced to listen to someone dragging their nails down a chalkboard for nearly two hours and you'll might begin to understand how painful that was.

I'm also curious about the mystery choir girl. I did a little sleuthing and found this list of the ensemble singers from the OBC:

Ensemble Singers ... Ntomb'khona Dlamini
Ensemble Singers ... Sheila Gibbs
Ensemble Singers ... Lindiwe Hlengwa
Ensemble Singers ... Vanessa A. Jones
Ensemble Singers ... Facu Kulu
Ensemble Singers ... Nandi Morake

Lindiwe Hlengwa was listed as one of the two understudies for Nala, so I assume she was not the mystery chorus girl. Do any of the other names ring a bell?

ETA: I think this list is slightly different from the one before, because I didn't include the ensemble dancers.

Updated On: 8/6/05 at 07:55 PM

When I saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in April, during the scene right after the dogs, where the two villians are talking, a poodle ran across the stage barking, and obviously someone was trying to get it to come into the wings, and it turned back around, and did that little back and forth, barking act. After it got offstage, one of the villians said 'What was that, lunch?' It was the ONLY time I laughed in Act 1 of that show.

When I saw Mame in New Hope in June, more than a lot went wrong. Twasn't terrible, mind you, it was very funny. For one thing, it was opening day and apparently the actors were unsure of what to do. Some highlights were: A martini glass breaking <- not intenional, Linda Dano knowing...none of the choreography especially in the Act 1 finale, and Anna Stewart forgetting some lines in the middle of a scene, so Linda Dano told it to her and they re-did the scene, which made me laugh. There were some minor ones as well. It was funny, afterwards our director (it was a cast trip) said he was never going on opening day again, lol.
Also, for our Spring Musical our dress rehersal was...terrible. Our stage manager was clueless and she was supposed to stand behind a moveable door and relocate it when an actor walked through it. However, she started moving it as he was walking through the door. He tripped through it. One of my good friend's totally forgot his line, it was something along the lines of "And like I always say: the best of us get the worst in us who have the best in us." Instead he said, "And like I always say...I forget what I always say!" Good times though.
Geez, that was long.

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