Breaking character… acceptable?

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 9/10/25 at 10:12pm

I don't see it very often, but when I do, I never like it.

Some recent(ish) examples…

Christian Slater in Curse of the Starving Class. The sheep was not co-operating, being somewhat awkward. Nothing major, but enough for Christian to turn to the audience, raise his eyebrow and gesture "see what I've to put up with?". He got a laugh, and carried on.

Matthew Broderick in Plaza Suite, act three. Despite playing it eight times a week, Matthew found the physical comedy so side-splittingly funny, he could not control his own giggling, enough so to break character. He repeated his line, but broke again, to increasingly voluminous gales of laughter from the audience. I think he did it a third time only because he could see what it was doing to the crowd. Maybe the whole thing is something he has repeated from the first preview to evoke hilarity.

I didn't see him, but Billy Porter's comic asides as the Emcee.

Am I right or wrong to disapprove?

[BorisTomashevsky]

Posted: 9/10/25 at 10:29pm

Hugh and Sutton did it every night in The Music Man, pre planned and rehearsed and all.

I don't like it but I guess I don't see it often enough to think about it.

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 9/10/25 at 11:14pm

Such fakery. That's the part that irritates me, it's a con. Is this a valid method of theater? It's only funny if it's real.

[TotallyEffed]

Posted: 9/10/25 at 11:24pm

I don’t like it.

[The Bandstand]

Posted: 9/10/25 at 11:29pm

He also would indicate to the audience to “give them some love.”   Begging an audience to clap and cheer was just as bad as the “breaking character.”  It’s just all so gimmicky and cheap, dear theater gods please send us something new and exciting and technically sound.  The only ones I see are Michael Jackson and Bess Wohl and Joshua Harmon

[John Adams]

Posted: 9/11/25 at 10:14am

I enjoy it in improv comedy where it's organically spontaneous and unexpected, but I don't care for it in scripted book shows.

I like that the Brits call it, "corpsing" because it implies that it could somehow be "deadly".

[macbeth]

Posted: 9/11/25 at 10:29am

I don't like it either, but have also enjoyed it in the moment continually. Tough one. 

[Wick3]

Posted: 9/11/25 at 11:04am

It depends on the moment.

At the last performance of the recent Hello Dolly! revival back in 2018, Gavin Creel broke character during his song "It only takes a moment" and it was endearing. Audience was fine with it.

[kdogg36]

Posted: 9/11/25 at 11:12am

I enjoy it when it's spontaneous, as when one actor's microphone broke during Mean Girls during an important conversation and she had to go over talk into her scene partner's microphone, provoking laughter on and off stage.

I really don't like it when it's pre-planned, as in The Music Man (as discussed above) and, as I recall, Hairspray. It kind of feels like a joke at the expense of the audience.

Welcome back to BWW!

[morosco]

Posted: 9/11/25 at 12:13pm

Will Rogers Follies had a moment with a runaway dog from the previous number. It is so fake and goes on for so long it makes me cringe.

Will Rogers Follies Runaway Dog

[BorisTomashevsky]

Posted: 9/11/25 at 12:21pm

I’ve never felt more experiential juxtaposition than when I was rolling my eyes at Hugh and Sutton’s break and the entire crowd at the Winter Garden was swooning and guffawing and lapping it up.

Such hacks.

[morosco]

Posted: 9/11/25 at 12:32pm

Carol Channing had a staged moment in HELLO DOLLY where she made the actor playing Horace break out of character in hysterical laughter. It happened at each and every performance.

[saxpower]

Posted: 9/11/25 at 12:44pm

I do think its a different situation when there is some mechanical problem with the set, or something else thats already taken the audience out of the moment. A humerous ad lib could actually make things less awkward, and it may not be possible to make a comment in character.. 

 

[jagman106]

Posted: 9/11/25 at 1:46pm

I personally don't care for it, but there are times when I find it forgiving, especially when it's spontaneous. I recall a scene in The Constant Wife at Roundabout about 20 years ago when Kate Burton's character was declaring her independence from her husband, played by Michael Cumpsty. An audience member yelled out, "Take that, John!", causing the audience to break out in laughter. Burton and Cumpsty  both paused until they could resume the scene, but they both couldn't help form a brief grin, as suppressed as they were. Another time was in Putting It Together - the last performance of 1999. The lights went out in the theater and Carol Burnett came downstage and engaged the audience in questions and answers as she did on her old TV show until the electricians fixed the problem. (I supposed this last example is  more forgiving). I don't recall any show where the performers broke character intentionally.

Updated On: 9/11/25 at 01:46 PM

[AC126748]

Posted: 9/11/25 at 1:54pm

Earlier this summer, I saw Duke & Roya at the Lortel -- a truly risible play in just about every respect. Early in the second act, an audience member did something that distracted the leading actress, who literally burst out laughing, walked off the stage for a minute, and then walked back and restarted the scene. It was already a surreal afternoon -- the supporting actress was out and the understudy barely knew her lines, the audience was tiny and the rest of the actors totally checked out -- but that was really something.

[nasty_khakis]

Posted: 9/11/25 at 2:15pm

Wick3 said: "It depends on the moment.

At the last performance of the recent Hello Dolly! revival back in 2018, Gavin Creel broke character during his song "It only takes a moment" and it was endearing. Audience was fine with it."

I love when he realized he was saying the line "today I'm out of a job." It was very sweet and funny. 

[Highland Guy]

Posted: 9/11/25 at 4:55pm

In the late 1960's, I saw Carol Channing on the London stage in "Carol Channing and Her Ten Stout-Hearted Men".  While singing "Hello, Dolly," she stopped the orchestra because supposedly she had stumbled over the lyrics.  The audience loved it.  Over the years I've wondered if she did the same thing at each performance.

While singing "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend," she threw fake diamond jewely into the audience.  A diamond ring landed in my lap.  I still cherish it, of course.

  

[nasty_khakis]

Posted: 9/11/25 at 5:10pm

I feel like a lot of examples are done to help get the audience on their side. They want the audience to walk out with a "you know when I saw it..." story and since the majority of audiences aren't people in these boards who see a lot they likely won't ever compare notes. Spelling Bee had a bit where they made up words for the last speller and no matter what they said they'd say it was right, they'd sit back down only to be called up again to be given another word they'd then get wrong. Audiences loved saying "oh man, can you believe they couldn't get that person out!!?" but it happened 3-4 shows a week. 

However, I've seen it happen for real when a prop breaks, a mic goes out, wardrobe malfunctions, a line is flubbed, etc and it is very funny and again, I walk away going "One time when I saw..." and have a funny story of that night. 

There's a great video compilation of Kevin Del Aguila in the wings of Some Like it Hot during a serious moment for Christian Borle and every night he tried to get Borle to break by doing ridiculous things and sometimes Christian breaks a little and it's funny the audience never knew why. 

[MidWestTheater]

Posted: 9/11/25 at 5:51pm

I think when it's in the moment it can be really fun and special.

I remember seeing Chicago with Marilu Henner and after Bebe Neuwirth finished "I can't do it alone", Marilu asked if she could see the last part again, and Bebe did the end of the dance with the cartwheel, which was very cool.

My favorite one was the revival of Rocky Horror, where they encouraged the audience to yell back from the Audience Script, but one moment broke Tom Hewitt. It was right before he sings "Whatever Happened to Faye Wray?" and he's just appeared in this fabulous gown and there was applause, then silence. And during that silence, someone yelled out "You look like Rupaul!", it came out of nowhere. The audience started laughing hysterically and Tom Hewitt could not keep a straight face, and then had to tell the audience to shut the **** up, before he started singing. 

Recently, at Dead Outlaw, there was a scene where Andrew Durand, before he dies, was walking from one of end of the stage to the other and the audience was silent, someone sneezed. And Andrew Durand while walking across stage turned and said "Bless You", which was pretty funny.

[Kad]

Posted: 9/11/25 at 6:04pm

For me, it's acceptable- sometimes even necessary- when it's to address something unexpected or that has gone wrong that most of the audience could realistically be assumed to have seen. It breaks the tension and creates a "magic of live theatre" moment and then everyone can move on.

Some shows also create moments for performers to ad-lib and since that's part of the production, sure.

But "fake breaks" or performers trying to make a moment happen? No, thank you. 

[Jarethan]

Posted: 9/11/25 at 6:38pm

Kad said: "For me, it's acceptable- sometimes even necessary- when it's to address something unexpected or that has gone wrong that most of the audience could realistically be assumed to have seen. It breaks the tension and creates a "magic of live theatre" moment and then everyone can move on.

Some shows also create moments for performers to ad-lib and since that's part of the production, sure.

But "fake breaks" or performers trying to make a moment happen? No, thank you."

In the 70s, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme were in a show called Golden Rainbow, which was the ultimate guilty pleasure.  Pretty mediocre show with a pretty enjoyable score that somehow managed to be a fun experience..  Tickets in the second balcony were as low as $3.00, so I saw it a few times.  The first time, in Act 2, they are out in the desert when she started laughing and could not control herself.  That caused him to ad-lib, which lead to 'married repartee.' The audience loved it.  I discovered that it was in the script when I saw it a second and third time.  Even though it was enjoyable, you realized it was a cheap way to get laughs when the actual script was not good enough.

I also saw Zero Mostel shamelessly ad-lib in a revival of Fiddler at the Winter Garden a few years after the original production closed.  It was as if he just didn't feel like being there that night, so he did whatever he felt like (and actually detracted from the enjoyment of the show).  (I also still remember that the orchestra seats were $20, which was obscenely more expensive than everything else opened at the time).