Favorite quips from shows?

[pacificnorthwest]

Posted: 7/10/13 at 6:51pm

So many great one-liners in theater, and yet I forget so many of them by the time I've absorbed a whole show. One line I loved recently was from "Cinderella," stepmom to Lord Protector: "Are you implying what I'm inferring?"

Would love to see what others think are some of Broadway's cleverest quips.

[aaronb]

Posted: 7/10/13 at 6:55pm

"I swear, if you existed, I'd divorce you." From VIRGINIA WOOLF.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 7/10/13 at 6:58pm

"She's wearing the lime green gloves of a dead woman." Crimes of the Heart

[jnb9872]

Posted: 7/10/13 at 7:11pm

I'm partial to Jemima Kirke's line from ONE MAN, TWO GUV'NORS (which I've heard she deadpanned herself in rehearsals and it stuck) when she checks her clothes after a few days hiding in her dead brother's suit: "I smell like a doctor's finger!"

[all that jazz]

Posted: 7/10/13 at 7:26pm

I like "You're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!" from 42nd street.

[pacificnorthwest]

Posted: 7/10/13 at 8:50pm

Good ones! Especially like the Virginia Wolfe line. I just thought of another that made me laugh recently, from "Ann" (which I loved). In character as the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards, Holland Taylor (who also wrote the play) jokes about her memory lapses:

"Pretty soon I'm going to be able to hide my own Easter eggs."

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 7/10/13 at 9:26pm

"Greatest generation my ass! Are they really counting all the generations? Maybe there are some generations from the iron age that could compete" August: Osage County

"Heaven knows it's marvelous being able to spread out in bed like a swastika." The Women

"Fantasy floods in where fact leaves a vacuum." Lettice and Lovage

“To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” The Importance of Being Earnest

"The line is immaterial. Mr. Worthing, I confess I feel somewhat bewildered by what you have just told me. To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution." The Importance of Being Earnest

"Me, sir! What has it to do with me? You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter - a girl brought up with the utmost care - to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel? Good morning, Mr. Worthing!" The Importance of Being Earnest

"Mr.Worthing, is Miss Cardew at all connected with any of the larger railway stations in London" The Importance of Being Earnest

[Jane2]

Posted: 7/10/13 at 9:31pm

My favorite, from The Producers:

Actors are not animals! They're human beings!
Max Bialystock: They are? Have you ever eaten with one?

[PTOPhan]

Posted: 7/10/13 at 9:49pm

Eliza Doolittle to Henry Higgins: Colonel Pickering treats a flower girl as if she were a duchess.
Higgins: And I treat a duchess as if she were a flower girl.

Alfred P. Doolittle: I don't eat less hearty than a deserving man and I drink ... oh, a lot more.

Higgins to Alfred Doolittle: You mean you'd sell your daughter for 50 pounds? Have you no morals man?
Doolittle: No. Can't afford 'em. Neither would you if you was as poor as me.

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/10/13 at 10:03pm

"It's not the heat, it's the humanity." - Brigadoon

"My first husband. He is so difficult to remember. Even when you're with him." - Company

[SuperSecretBoyband]

Posted: 7/11/13 at 8:51am

From the OLC of Miss Saigon

Bar girls: Tonight I will be Miss Saigon
Gigi: Tonight you'll be Miss Jumped Upon
Bar girls: I'll meet a GI and be gone
Gigi: He'll screw you with your crown still on
Bar girl: What happens when the Kong attack?
Gigi: They'll rip the hot pants off your back

[givesmevoice]

Posted: 7/11/13 at 9:00am

I've always been a fan of "Why don't you open your eyes, instead of your mouth?" from Gypsy.

[jnb9872]

Posted: 7/11/13 at 9:06am

Pretty sure that should be Cong, not Kong... unless I grossly misunderstood the plot of MISS SAIGON.

If I can be optimistic about the upcoming adaptation, I sure hope this gem from BULLETS OVER BROADWAY survives into Woody's book:

"I don't think her spinal column touches her brain."

[wicked1492]

Posted: 7/11/13 at 9:08am

Jack's Mother: "You be careful with your children."
Baker's Wife: "I have no children."
Jack's Mother: "That's okay, too."

[quizking101]

Posted: 7/11/13 at 9:29am

I don't remember the full context, but in THE NANCE, during a sketch where Chauncey and Hiram (in character) are talking about Shakespeare and The Nance breaks out with the (innuendo-loaded) line..."Is that a dagger I see before me?"

[dreaming]

Posted: 7/11/13 at 9:43am

My favorite line from "Bullets Over Broadway" [film] is:

Helen: She's perky all right, she makes you want to sneak up behind her with a pillowcase and suffocate her!

Cabaret:

Sally: "I think people are people, I really do, Cliff, don't you? I don't think people should have to explain anything. For example, if I should paint my fingernails green, only it just so happens I do paint them green, well if anyone should ask why, I say, 'I think it's pretty! I think it's pretty, I reply'. So, if anyone should ask about you and me, you have two alternatives, you can either say, 'oh, yes, it's true we're living in delicious sin, or you can simply tell the truth, and say..." (goes into "Perfectly Marvelous")

The whole first 'notes' scene in Phantom is pretty good, too, with the wordplay in the dialogue between the notes.

[PTOPhan]

Posted: 7/11/13 at 8:21pm

I just thought of a few more.

From Fiddler on the Roof (Dream Scene):

Golda: Grandma Tzeitl? How did she look?
Tevye: Not bad, for a woman who has been dead 30 years.

I can't remember if this is from Fiddler also, or it's just an old Jewish joke (said to God): I know we're the chosen people, but once in awhile, can't you choose someone else?

A clever, but sad line from Fiddler, said from Tevye to Chava, who hints that she's in love with the non-Jewish Fyetka: A fish and a bird can fall in love, but where would they make their home?

[Gothampc]

Posted: 7/11/13 at 8:23pm

^^^ Fiddler on the Roof is so wonderful.

I always laugh at:

Is there a proper blessing for the Czar?

May God keep the Czar far away from us.

[Kad]

Posted: 7/11/13 at 8:23pm

"Gigi: They'll rip the hot pants off your back"

Borderline-nonsensical lyrics like that are one of the reasons I can never take Miss Saigon seriously.

[bdn223]

Posted: 7/11/13 at 8:30pm

For some reason I just always break into hysterics after I hear these 2 lines from Wicked:
Galinda: Unusually and exceedingly peculiar
And altogether quite impossible to describe

Elphaba: Blonde

[N2N Nate.]

Posted: 7/11/13 at 8:42pm

From Wicked:

Fiyero: I've been thinking.
Elphaba: Yes I heard.

Sunset Boulevard:

( Norma after she finishes WITH ONE LOOK)

Norma: Now Go!

[Queen of the Night]

Posted: 7/11/13 at 8:57pm

From Pippin: "Sometimes I wonder if the fornicating I'm getting, is worth the fornicating I'm getting". That show has a few other gems as well and it seems like Charlemagne and Berthe get the most and the best.

[binau]

Posted: 7/12/13 at 3:07am

You're as sexy as a wet cardboard box.

[AwesomeDanny]

Posted: 7/12/13 at 3:50am

"All I said was that our son, the apple of our three eyes, Martha being the cyclops..."

Virginia Woolf is full of so many great one, but that one is my favorite.

[Ed_Mottershead]

Posted: 7/12/13 at 10:25am

"Life is a banquet and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving themselves to death" -- Auntie Mame, stage version.