Favorite show mishap

This one. Since it's so beautifully covered. Anyone in the audience who had never seen the show before had no idea that anything was amiss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrzAKtZxK44

I was the Production Coordinator when the Theatre for the Performing Arts in Miami Beach was first renovated. (It had previously been used by Jackie Gleason for THE HONEYMOONERS.) This was in the mid-70s.

It had 3,000+ seats and sound was always a problem. We finally solved the problem (somewhat) by using body mikes, at the time a somewhat new technology in regional theaters. (Miking a star wasn't new, but it caused such an imbalance in our system that we had to mike each principal individually.)

The problem became particularly acute when Lauren Bacall came to town in WONDERFUL TOWN, because although she was terrific on stage, she started swearing like a pirate as soon as she stepped into the wings.

Our solution was to have me function as a second ASM and call the sound cues (including body mikes on and off) separately while the PSM called the rest of the cues. I did so while sitting in the sound booth with the sound engineer and was not allowed to touch the equipment since that was a union job.

(If this all sounds convoluted, keep in mind it was 1977 and made sense at the time.)

One night in the middle of Act I, the sound tech suddenly said, "The board is overheating and it's gonna blow! You take over.", and ran out of the booth. The actual board was on the far side of the 3,000-seat house.

The next scene was the one that illustrates selections from Ruth's writing and has a lot of special sound cues such as crowd laughter and, finally, a lion roaring. In those days the cues were all on one reel-to-reel tape on a machine which I had never operated.

So I missed the first sound effect trying to figure out the machine and overshot the second cue trying to catch up. That put me one cue ahead and one cue (a lion's roar) short at the climax of the scene.

Not knowing what else to do, I flipped on the switch to the theater PA system and did my best lion's roar into the mike. The sound echoed through the house and stage.

I was quite proud of my ingenuity at the time, but the PSM refused to speak to me for the rest of the week. Ah, show biz!

Updated On: 4/14/14 at 06:42 PM

Original production of Les Miserables. Javert never made it to the stage for One Day More as he was locked in the men's room.

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My favorite one that I've witnessed was during a preview of Women on the Verge where a set piece wouldn't come on right before "Model Behavior" and the show was stopped for a few minutes. Laura Benanti proceeded to come out onstage and play charades with the audience in character, and then once the number started, she referenced her charades clues by making an exit while flapping her arms like a bird and another one by using her arm as an elephant trunk. It was hysterical.

Very recently, I remember a performance of Kinky Boots when Lola's heel breaks off right in the middle of the "Sex is in the Heel number. God love him, Billy kept singing and dancing without missing a beat...including kicking off the shoe, dancing with one shoe on, and getting a new replacement shoe on brought on stage by a "factory worker" and put on his foot. He got extra applause for that one.

Also at Kinky Boots, I don't know if I would call it a mishap, but at one performance when the factory workers are talking about the ability to make a strong heel for a boot to be worn by a man, saying. "we can do it", some guy from the upper balcony yelled out, "Yeah you can do it, I know you can do it"..and the entire cast cracked up.

Most recently, at a recent performance of Matilda, at the very end of the show Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood, their son ...and Rudolpho.. run out down the left side aisle of the audience to get away from the Russian Mafia. The librarian is setting up the touching ending with Matilda and Ms. Honey. Mrs. Phelps says that the Wormwoods have left..and then we hear yelling from the back of the house "AND RUDOLPHO". Well obviously this standing room audience member had no idea this was happening.. so when"AND RUDOLPHO" was yelled right behind her, she was startled and screamed soooo loud out of fright. It took a few moments for everyone to get back into the ending..you could see Ms. Honey and Matilda sort of waiting a minute before they said their final lines, to make sure all was well.

Updated On: 4/20/14 at 08:32 AM

I have two. 1) at CABARET (the '98 version of this revival), when the front part of the set flies up during the finale, it got caught on the music stands left by the orchestra, lifting them in the air, then dropping them and causing them to shatter, as the poor chorus girls tried to keep straight faces while dodging chunks of metal.

2) Some dinner theatre in Orlando about 20 years ago. One of the actors completely forgot his lines. That alone isn't anything that funny, but he started ad libbing and wandering out into the audience, bumping into a table and spilling coffee all over an audience member in the process.

During the Aida tour, the giant museum tomb got stuck during the transition to Fortune Favors The Brave. All the actors had to dance around it until finally a group of stagehands came out and pushed it off.

Another time during the Legally Blonde tour, somebody's jump rope kept getting tangled during Whipped Into Shape.

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Updated On: 4/15/14 at 01:09 PM

During How to Succeed with Nick Jonas, an ensemble member fell into the pit during the Heidi La Rue mermaid TV number.

Ha! How funny, MCfan2! I should probably see a less eventful (in that way) performance of Les Mis at some point....

At Nice Work if You Can Get It during a scene change a bed is lowered into the stage, but it didn't work correctly and a gaping hole was left in the middle of the stage. The next scene was supposed to be outdoors, so Michael McGrath improv-ed a great bit about putting in a pool. Then when the set finally worked a pillow ended up left on the stage and he picked it up and just looked up at the "sky" as if to ask "where the hell did this come from?" Funny moment.

At a regional production of GYPSY (with Lansbury) in the mid-70s, there was a wardrobe malfunction during the climactic strip number. The actress playing Louise, Nana Tucker, ad libbed: "My clothes don't want to come off me. Can you blame them?" and brought down the house.

She was 19 at the time and, I thought, showed amazing composure.

If we're gonna talk Nice Work If You Can Get It mishaps, you could write a book. But my favorite was when after "Delishious", there's a scene between Cookie and the police officer and eventually Billie in the foyer of Jimmy's house. Except...the giant pink bathtub used for Delishious remained onstage, the lift was broken. Michael McGrath was a PRO, he scrubbed around it with his mop for awhile, clearly waiting for it to disappear, and finally looked up at the audience and said: "Why the hell is there a bathtub in the living room?" Everyone lost it, and he began to ham it up, it went on about four or five minutes, but it felt much longer than that. I remember him shouting at the back of the house to open the bar, and from the side, you could see the whole cast in the wings, watching him. When it finally went down under the stage, he said: "Alright, that was what's called improv, now just like in rehearsal, let's take it from the top!" And the scene was reset and restarted.