Getting sick in the theater

[yarn769fink034]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 12:39pm

When Phantom was in it's 2nd year My choir director took a group to New york and some of her students got drunk before the show and vomited in the theater,the show had to be stoped and the seats and floor had to be cleaned!Has any thing like that ever happened to you?

[Chrysanthemum62001]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 12:43pm

Yes. When I ushered for Cabaret, this girl came who was quite drunk. Then, she starts ordering drinks. Well, half way through the show, show vomited and everyone sitting in front of her started freaking out (with good reason). It was disgusting. They didn't stop the show, maybe it was because we were sitting in the mezz. I felt sooooo bad for the people who had to clean it up.

Updated On: 2/12/05 at 12:43 PM

[wildcat]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 12:58pm

A recent production of Chekhov's THE THREE SISTERS opened to appalling reviews at the Opera House in Sydney. At one performance someone in the audience actually died rather noisily of a heart attack, but the cast knew that if they stopped the show the audience probably wouldn't return, so they doggedly kept acting while the poor victim was carried from the middle of the third row out of the theatre.

[Joshua488]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 1:31pm

When I saw LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS at the Virginia Theatre, I had second row mezzanine seats. There was a family in the first row mezzanine, and during Act II, this little boy begins to throw up on the floor.

I was so captured by the show (it being my favorite), so I didn't even notice this boy until my friend Jessica pokes me and goes, "Ew, he's throwing up!"

[yarn769fink034]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 1:32pm

I find that funny,I'm a bad person.

[Thesbijean]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 1:42pm

I remember a year ago or so, a woman suffered a heart attack in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on Broadway right, and an actor in the show was an RN, right???

[apdarcey]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 2:03pm

yeah, i remember that cat rumor too, i think it was margo martindale, not sure though.
last year during a performance of the goat my friend got sick and had to be rushed out but the show kept going.

[yarn769fink034]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 2:05pm

I remember during Frankie and Johnny someone got sick and Stanly Tuchi(sp) stoped acting and asked if there was a doctor in the house.

[WISHIHADATONY]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 3:23pm

Matt Lauer told the story of a child throwing up in the second row on the aisle while he and his family saw THE LION KING.

He said that the performers continued to traipse through "the soiled area" even though audience members were warning them....this spread the disgust and odor further.

Matt Lauer said that during intermission the "Lysol Brigade" rushed out...........and I believe he said this just added another sickening layer to the already stenchful situation.

I guess one must be careful when attending a show with lots of kids in the audience. :)

[jjdude2000]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 3:26pm

At one performance of Annie Get Your Gun, someone had a seizure...

[muscle23ftl]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 3:31pm

i didnt need anyone getting sick when i went to see "the lion king" the show made me sick...and i left after the first 30 minutes...all my friends left with me...we thought it was some kind of joke.that was not a musical...i would call it a circus tho.

[CJR]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 3:50pm

When Chicago was still at the Shubert some woman in the mezz threw up over the railing onto someone in the orchestra....

Thank god I wasn't there. That's horrible

[whenyoureajet]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 6:42pm

me blacking out during the 'nyc' tapdance number from 'annie' is the worst i've seen... does that happen all that often? i havn't heard much of it, but it seems like it would...

[melissa errico fan]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 6:48pm

I thought that Stanley Tucci performed the heimlich (sp?) during "Frankie and Johnny".

On to a sickness story... "The Crucible" revival in 2002 at the Virginia Theatre. Really sick but wanted to go anyway. Threw up at intermission, but made it to the end.

RIP Arthur Miller!

[pab]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 6:55pm

I was watching a preview performance of "Six Dance Lessons In Six Weeks" when I heard a woman yell "help him!". This woman was sitting in one of the first three rows of the theatre (I can't remember which one but it was very close to the stage) and she was sitting next to an older man who had just had some sort of attack. The action on stage stopped and the actors went into the wings as some of the stage crew came from the wings and jumped off stage and into the audience. They lifted the man out into the aisle and a few minutes later the paramedics came into the theatre, put the man on a stretcher and took him up the aisle and out of the theatre, while the woman who was with him walked behind them apologizing to the audience. The actors came back on stage and the play continued. Unfortunately that was the most memorable thing about that evening of theatre.

[melissa errico fan]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 7:01pm

At least something was going on during that horrid show...

[mleshawn]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 8:52pm

Not to be forgotten but "Sister of Jerome Robbins Dies at Fiddler's Opening Night"
http://www.playbill.com/news/article/84638.html Updated On: 2/12/05 at 08:52 PM

[Feathah]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 9:12pm

At Mamma Mia I was in the standing room section at the back of the orchestra when a woman ran to the back and started throwing up. It was the most entertaining part of the evening. :o)
Sorry - I'm a little bitchy today!

[TheaterGeek91]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 9:17pm

Once upon a time, a family went out for dinner before opening night. They went to a lovely Chinese place, and then went to the theatre. During the closing number of the first act, the 4 year old brother, who by that time was a seasoned performer, suddenly ran off stage. He through up all over the tiny backstage of the theatre. It is rumored that it still smells like Chinese back there.



Of course, this could only be my family!

[broadwaystar2b]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 9:30pm

ignore, previously posted Updated On: 2/12/05 at 09:30 PM

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 2/12/05 at 9:36pm

Is the story true that Irene Ryan died backstage?

[Biggins]

Posted: 2/13/05 at 11:01am

I got sick in a theatre recently. I went to a reading of the self-proclaimed "fabulous composer" Scott Alan's unproduced (and seemingly never to be finished) PIECES. I felt the urge to retch about two minutes into the first song. That urge became overwhelming and I rushed from the theatre with vomit streaming out of my mouth. It was terrible. Do not go to a Scott Alan reading unless you have refrained from eating or have waited at least two hours after your last meal. Don't say that I didn't warn you!

[jim]

Posted: 2/13/05 at 11:22am

Christmas week,I was sitting in the front mezz at New Ambassadors in London for SWEENEY TODD. A young woman in her mid 20s-early 30's started to get up as if she was exiting the row. She slumped over and fainted. Her friend was able to revive her and they did start out of the row. She fainted again. By this time,the ushers and new Ambassadors house manager were there to assit her out. Didn't stop the show but I know the cast was aware of the commotion going on upstairs. That theatre is fairly small so there was no way the cast could not have noticed. This took place right before the end of Act One. At the conclusion of intermission, the woman and her friend returned. They chose to sit the rest of the show in the two side seats on the far curve of the front row...I did overhear her telling her friend, she wanted to be in a place where she could get up without disturbing patrons. Fortunate for her, she appeared to be feeling much better and was able to make it through the rest of the matinee without incident.

[pab]

Posted: 2/13/05 at 11:37am

"Is the story true that Irene Ryan died backstage?"

71-year-old Irene Ryan suffered a stroke while performing in the Broadway musical "Pippin" and died six weeks later.

Cyril Ritchard suffered a heart attack during a performance in Chicago of the musical "Side By Side", causing him to slip into a coma from which he never recovered.

Arnold Soboloff suffered a heart attack during a New York City performance of "Peter Pan".

While giving a comedy performance at the UC San Diego campus, Dick Shawn fell and struck his head on the stage. The comedian lay there for nearly five minutes before the audience realized it was not part of his act and an ambulance was called. He died forty-five minutes later in hospital, apparently of a heart attack.

Richard Versalle a 63-year-old tenor died onstage at New York's Metropolitan Opera immediately after delivering the line: "Too bad you can only live so long" in Janacek's "The Makropulos Case". It was the first performance and Versalle, who was playing the legal clerk Vitek alongside Jessye Norman, climbed a 20 ft ladder to file a legal brief, but had a heart attack and plunged to the ground. Janacek's opera is about the secret of eternal life.

Updated On: 2/13/05 at 11:37 AM

[CJR]

Posted: 2/13/05 at 12:06pm

As long as we're mentioning actors as well as patrons, Greg Mitchell (of Chicago, Man of La Mancha, et al) sufferred a heart attack onstage at the Kennedy Center in November. He passed away a week later in a DC hospital.