Most Disastrous Performances? — Page 3

I am not one to usually say this, but Chester Gregory was horrible in sister act.

I second the Women on The Verge chaos. The show was stopped several times. The cab was pushed around stage by crew while Danny and Sherie did their scenes (awkward). The burning bed didn't go out and Sherie ran away from it mid-scene when it flared up and crew came out with fire extinguishers and the whole theatre smelled like burnt hair. The odd possesed TV rolling around and squeaking. There were just too many flubs to mention.

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^ was that the first preview?! I haven't seen the how onstage, but I have "seen" it somewhere else... I cannot imagine what it would be like for all that to happen at once. That show has so much technology and set pieces going in and out and up and down and sliding to and fro. I can't even imagine what those first previews were like.
When I saw the 25th Anniversary tour of Les Miserables, one of the curtains fell on the side of the scaffolding set pieces that make up the proscenium and slide in and out. The set also clunked and clanked as pieces were awkwardly tracked on and off. I don't know if it wad the venue or what but that set was just loud, slow, and awkward. During Fantine's death I could hear them getting the inn set piece tracked on for the next scene. It was a disaster.

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and was Sherie Renee Scott really booed in Rent? I wasn't aware she was in that show, whats the story behind that one?


Idina Menzel left the show. The ReNt-heads, who at the time could have given their liver for the love of the OBC, swore it would be Kristen Lee Kelly to take over Maureen. Sherie was cast instead and they might as well have thrown stones at her.

When she asked the audience to "moo' with her, they "BOOED" her -as in, "get the f*** out of that stage now!" It was so embarrassing.

Sherie describes it as one of her worst experiences on the stage.

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Any performance of THE FIRST WIVES CLUB. Seriously.

On that note, I remember a performance of FIRST WIVES where one of the cabinet doors kept popping open during a scene in Barbara Walsh's kitchen. It simply wouldn't stay shut, and at one point Karen Ziemba discreetly leaned over and closed it. Of course, within seconds it popped open again and Ziemba sighed, then resumed her place in the scene. I like to think that little sigh symbolized not just her frustration with the cabinet but with the entire show, so it was a neat little moment of "star, meet flop."

@ABB2357, I found it odd that a kitchen was in Barbara's shower in the first place.

Second preview of TITANIC in 1997.
Production team had just cut a scene, and had yet to replace it effectively. However, to keep the show "moving", there was simply an announcement "There will be a seven minute delay". Now, at this point in the Second Act, the orchestra was playing the score which WAS completely orchestrated, but frequently, a piano-bass-drum trio would be carrying on (most nobly -- it's a difficult score) through what had NOT been...already a tricky thing. It was a Monday night, and so there were a lotta theatre folks there to support what was rumored to be a troubled show. (The opening number, totally in place and flawlessly performed, got one of the biggest ovations I'd ever heard in a theatre anywhere.) But it had been a very rainy and cold day in town, and so the room seemed to resonate the chill which might have been semi-like the frigid air on the ocean in 1912. The houselights came up to 1/2. (This was not the first time this had happened, albeit in shorter increments.)

Finally, in the balcony where I sat, a woman's voice spoke loudly over the mumbling in the auditorium.
Very Neww Yawk.
"Oh! Now I get it. The SHOW and the SHIP are a metaphor for EACH OTHER."
Silence for a second.
Hellacious laughter.
The show continued.
The "ship" sank.
But to make it worse, this was (as I said) early on, when the final scene wasn't a "scene" at all, but a living "diorama" of the TITANIC on the FLOOR of the OCEAN, over which hovered Robert Ballard's mini-sub which discovered the wreckage.
Silence.
No laughter.
NO APPLAUSE.
When the actors reappeared, the house broke into that wonderful, supportive, "I've been through bits like this", and loving applause which only comes from respect for the work, if not the "work".
A-MAZ-ING evening.
And then, of course, it won the Tony.

Skip2, I'm sure quite a lot of people here will disagree with you on some of the performances you consider "disastrous".

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It struck me that it was just a list of performances he didn't like.

Esparza was "DISASTROUS" in Company!? Really? no other word to describe him?

To me, Sherie Rene Scott getting booed during ReNt. I can't believe she finished her run, must have been awful.

I never heard about that. I wonder when it happened. She received raves the night I saw her as Maureen.

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I attended a performance of "Wicked" where the bubble got caught in Glinda's wig and dragged her a couple of feet backwards before one of the Ozians rescued her. I'm blanking on who was in the role at the time, but she gave the bubble a devastating look, cleared her throat, and went on. It got a big laugh.

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Updated On: 6/27/11 at 11:57 AM