Has anyone heckled during a show?

[Gmerchant123]

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

I'm not talking just shouting out something im talking done stuff in the aisles or gotten up on stage!

[bobs3]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 1:17am

I had a friend who was at a performance of SPEED THE PLOW where a deranged fan jumped onto the stage and ran toward Madonna. Joe Mantegna grabbed the guy and threw him at a security guard who suddenly appeared from the wings.

[Leadingplayer]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 1:33am

I saw a preview of Miss Saigon and somebody stood in the aisle between the front and rear mezz. and yelled "racist" "racist" over and over again in a rather rabid manner at Jonathan Pryce....and then was quickly removed.

[Leadingplayer]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 1:33am

I saw a preview of Miss Saigon and somebody stood in the aisle between the front and rear mezz. and yelled "racist" "racist" over and over again in a rather rabid manner at Jonathan Pryce....and then was quickly removed.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 1:41am

What. The. Hell.

[ClapYo'Hands]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 4:15am

When I saw Hair, loads of audience members stormed the stage at the end. None of the cast seemed to care. I was shocked.

[binau]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 5:47am

Wow we must have been at the same performance ClapYo'Hands. The cast were so frightened they started singing with the hecklers.

[ClapYo'Hands]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 6:30am

I know right!? Crazy!

[Quiche2]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 8:05am

I saw a community theater production of AVENUE Q and it was a great show, but just after the show ended and they were doing the curtain call, some random guy in the second row got up out of his seat and ran on the stage and starting clapping and attempting what was some of the most god awful opera I have ever heard.

[once a month]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 9:23am

I never had, but I was downright embarrassed after hearing heckling when I saw Once on this Island (high school kids) and The Rink...they hated Minnelli!

[lynnespocktoo]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 9:45am

I aw the Rink and wasn't crazy about Minnelli either.

[emo_geek]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 1:03pm

What an interesting/terrifying thread!

[dreaming]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 1:25pm

Updated On: 9/12/12 at 01:25 PM

[johnpressman]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 2:32pm

I heard a story that when Pia Zadora was appearing as the title character in a revival of "The Diary of Anne Frank", as the Nazis walked in to the house in the last scene, someone yelled "she's in the attic"!

[Johnnycantdecide]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 3:14pm

Last summer I was in a production of Seussical as The Cat in the Hat right in the middle of The Bible Belt.

During the auction scene, the script gave me the liberty to improv with the audience a bit.

And every night I would try to sell Horton the Elephant to the audience and no one would respond and I would say, "That's okay. The White House didn't want an Elephant either."

And some nights there would be deadpan people with scowls looking back at me. On those nights, I would follow with, "Looks like we've got a red crowd tonight!" On other nights there would be applause and out of control laughter and I would say, "Looks like we've for a blue crowd tonight!"

One night during the middle of the run there was polite laughter and then a few people just started to boo me. I'll never know if their booing was a joke or if they where seriously offended. But it did throw me off for a second and really amuse me.

[ClumsyDude15]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 3:28pm

One of the times I saw Hair, this woman behind me kept going on and on about the show was like her life before the show. Once it began, she began to scream out random things - the cast was eating up at first, which was obnoxious given how annoying she was to be seated near. However, her interesting behavior didn't sit well with everyone, because Andrew Kober (when he was dressed as Margaret Mead) turned to look at her once she screamed out and said "It's my turn to interrupt..".

Once that occurred, the woman (and her fast asleep companion) had enough - she spent ALL of Frank Mills giving away the ending of the show and asking "Where's Berger? I wanna go with Berger!". Finally, she got up and tried to head down the stairs of the box to leave, which is where the cast had been changing into their Be-In outfits and the usher had to stop her.

It was certainly interesting and obnoxious.

Updated On: 9/12/12 at 03:28 PM

[ComingUpRoses2]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 6:48pm

There's that infamous story that Elaine Stritch tells about Ethel Merman escorting a heckler out of the theatre during her run in Call Me Madam.

[bobs3]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 7:00pm

During the run of COCO, Katharine Hepburn once broke character and yelled at a woman who was taking flash photographs from the balcony, "Get out! Get out now! I will give you twice what you paid for the ticket. Just get out!" The woman reportedly left the theater in tears.

[JayKurnitz]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 7:01pm

I seem to remember Patti Lupone telling a story (possibly in her book) about her run in Master Class. Apparently, a man stood up midway through the show and began yelling, "THIS PLAY IS S**T! THIS PLAY IS S**T! F**K YOU, TERRANCE MCNALLY!".

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 7:30pm

Could I get that heckler's name and address, Jay? Not that I ever condone doing that to actors, but I'd like to applaud his opinion of McNally.

(On second thought, never mind. It was probably just some Callas fanatic.)

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 8:00pm

"I heard a story that when Pia Zadora was appearing as the title character in a revival of "The Diary of Anne Frank", as the Nazis walked in to the house in the last scene, someone yelled "she's in the attic"!

The Pia Zadora story is an urban legend that had actually been told about a good number of actresses before becoming almost exclusively attached to her after her rise to fame, such as it was.

http://www.snopes.com/movies/actors/zadora.asp

[mybigsplash]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 8:51pm

Yes I have done the unforgivable....

The one time I actually heckled during a Broadway show was during the horrendous and excruciating revival of Bye Bye Birdie. I had such a miserable time, I couldn't contain myself this time, and it has never happened before or since. But I do believe at one moment I shouted "Kill me now!!" and at another moment "Does anyone have a Sudoku I can borrow?!" No one said anything to me during intermission or after, and there were no Shhhhhhes. I felt justified at the time.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 9:04pm

I can understand that some productions deserve heckling, but I just can't do that to actors. Heckling a film is another matter.

I thought Edward Albee's adaptation of LOLITA was the most vile and misogynistic play I had ever seen.

But I waited until the curtain came down on the final bows before hurling my Playbill at it. The actors didn't write that crap.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 9:14pm

Funny, I've always been curious about his Lolita, and now I wanna read it even more... Gaveston, I grant you that McNally is at the least an extremely uneven writer, but do you dislike his musical librettos as well?

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 9/12/12 at 9:57pm

Eric, I'm not dodging your question, but my feelings about McNally's musical librettos are complicated. I think KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN THE MUSICAL is almost as vile as Albee's LOLITA (but I was older when I saw KISS and past my throwing-Playbills period).

But Kander & Ebb are just as much to blame. And probably Prince as well.

The novel (one of my all-time favorites), the straight play and even the film (despite the unfortunate miscasting of William Hurt) all tell the story of two very different men who are brought together by circumstances and form a partnership based on mutual love and respect. Each is made better by the other (even if it costs Valentin his life); each absorbs a little of the other's world view.

The musical is the story of a political con man who hoodwinks and betrays the stupid fag. It is utterly offensive and condescending to Latin American liberal politics as well as to any gay person who is tired of trite stereotypes that portray gay men as too effeminate to do anything but weep at the feet at the straight men who hate them.

Have I made it clear that I really, really hate that show?

***

Back to Albee's LOLITA. I've never read it; I only saw it and that was 30 years ago. Perhaps it isn't so bad on the page. The production went out of its way to make all female characters nasty and ugly, IMO.