Inappropriate audience laughter

Humor is subjective. Just to reference another thread, some people might find it hard to resist the urge to snicker seeing John Simon fall on his face stumbling up the theater steps in the middle of a show.

Yes, during many moments in the Les Miserables movie.

But the movie kind of asks for it, they apologize for the singing so badly, that after 4 spoken words, using a sheepish vibrato on the 5th feels so incredibly out of place that one can only laugh.

They did everything they could to act in spite of song, instead of through song.

That results in a funny bunch of actors battling between acting and attempted singing, looking miserable while doing it.

Any fool could see that that's laughable so I'm not sure if it was unintentional, but for me personally the movie was a mix between laughter and feeling seriously violated and belittled.

^^^ Couldn't have been the fact that Maria was in her 50s and still hadn't made "nun" level, could it?

I laughed all through the pre-Broadway tour of MARTIN GUERRE because, to me, the homoerotic subtext was so not "sub". I was among the minority, however, so I did my best to stifle my amusement.

I was doing a production of Hunchback and people would crack up every time Frollo said "You don't want to hurt me" and the Gargoyles would reply "Yes you do." And we could never figure out why that was funny to people..

RippedMan said: "I was doing a production of Hunchback and people would crack up every time Frollo said "You don't want to hurt me" and the Gargoyles would reply "Yes you do." And we could never figure out why that was funny to people.."

Even reading your description made me laugh.

I'm working on a show right now, and there's a line like that. In the context of the show, it's terrible and sad, but unless you're specifically thinking about it, it feels like it should be a humorous line. I pulled the actor aside and said, just so you know, it is likely that people will laugh at this line. They're going to laugh as a knee jerk reaction, then they're going to feel like jerks for laughing.

I saw last year's revival of Sunset Boulevard five times. During one performance, several philistines laughed at Norma Desmond's mental collapse in the final scene. I was offended for Glenn Close.

With all due respect, Glenn did indeed play for laughs this time around in SUNSET BLVD.

Having seen her a handful of times back in 1995 in the original Broadway production where she played Norma Desmond with serious tones, I was utterly disgusted when I saw this concert-style revival last year and watched her mug and milk the laughs upon her first entrance. She continued this throughout the performance therefore of course the audience laughed when she made her final scene descend from the staircase and uttered her dialogue.

One moment that immediately came to my mind is "Room Where it Happens" with the current Hamilton cast. My biggest grapple with Daniel Breaker's take on the role has been that he plays Burr in a comedic style and kind of makes him seem childish and jealous rather than collected and threatened.

This different interpretation of the characters becomes clearest in this song when everyone is singing to him "what do you want Burr, if you stand for nothing Burr, what do you fall for?" And it's supposed to be a big climactic dramatic moment for Burr's character development and we slip into his thoughts in that moment when the music cuts off and Burr responds more to himself than to the others with "I want to be in the room where it happens"

I've seen it with Leslie Odom Jr and the moment is just chilling and super dramatic. I've seen it with Daniel Breaker 3 times and ALL 3 TIMES PEOPLE HAVE LAUGHED AT THAT MOMENT! I have never been able to process how all the character development could lead to that moment and be played for laughs!

The most uncomfortable case of this I ever witnessed was when I saw Cabaret and a lotttt of people laughed at the end of If You Could See Her. It felt...wrong.

Same with the most recent production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, there was a lot of laughter during the scene where Valmont assaults Cecille. Perhaps it was the result of how awkwardly the scene was staged (I liked the production overall but this scene was done horribly), but people laughed several times and it made me feel just a bit sick to my stomach.