"...The HELL?!" moments in productions — Page 4

"The Illusion Wedding Show" in LoveMusik

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I have seen a lot of What the Hell productions/moments.

The Black Rider -- the entire thing (well, until intermission, when I left with about 3/4 of the audience) was a what the hell moment. Imagine being locked in a theater with caterwauling creatures in ghoul makeup walking across the stage. Every time the music seemed to veer into the lyrical, someone on stage screeched.

A Steven Berkoff directed a version of Salome at the National Theatre in London. The entire production was done in slow motion. Nearly twenty years later, I can still hear the guards saying, "The moooooooooooon looooooooooks straaaaaa-aynge toniiiiiiiight."

A RSC production of Midsummer Night's Dream where Puck walks onto the stage in one of the middle acts reading from a Penguin Shakespeare version of the play, reads a few lines, shrugs, and tosses the book into the orchestra.

Beauty and the Beast when it first opened in the pre-Broadway run in Los Angeles. When the wolves attack Belle's father, someone in the audience yelled, "Get him!" (Not an urban legend; it did happen.)

The Master Builder (another RSC production). The whole play was done before this large brown upright platform. In the final scene, the platform comes down and reveals the town -- in miniature. Or as we all referred to it -- "Toy Town."

The Man Who Came to Dinner (also RSC -- sensing a theme here). Every actor adopted an American accent, but they were all different. In a play set in a Midwest town, the ingenue spoke like a southern belle, the young male lead spoke like Jimmy Stewart, and other characters sounded like California surfers and Yankees fans.

A production of Hamlet where the director thought it would be a good idea to remove all of the foreign/political aspects of the play from the story. So no Fortinbras, no thought of war with Norway.

And in the WTF opera category -- Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogonny -- coming soon to PBS stations near you. Patti Lupone is horribly miscast and Jimmy is so incredibly unattractive that you want to cover your eyes. The biggest what the hell aspect is that the LA Opera turned that production into a DVD and it is being broadcasted on PBS when it was by far the worst production of the LA Opera last year (especially in relation to phenomenal productions of L'incoronazione di Poppea, Porgy and Bess [now why could they get Audra McDonald for that?], and Luisa Fernanda).

Going into the show, I thought I'd have a "...the HELL?" moment -

but in 2000, at Williams College, seeing Into The Lake Of Fire . . . an original musical written about Susan Smith, the woman who in 1995 roller her car into a lake with her two children strapped in the back seat.

But...it wasn't THAT bad of a production.

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I was in a production of "A Christmas Carol" that had many WTH moments!
(I was a Cratchit child-it was a long time ago)
Bob Cratchit came in during the Christmas yet to come scene (Tiny Tim is dead) and is smiling as he says how sad he is. (It took all my energy to keep from laughing at the guy-or to grab him and shake him. Heck, I'd taken enough acting classes to know you weren't supposed to act happy. It looked ridiculous, especially when everyone else was so upset, to have Bob Cratchit acting like he's happy. And at curtain call, they played the Eurythmics' version of "Winter Wonderland".

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When every ****ing scene used the elevator in "Legally Blonde"

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Lyric Opera of Chicago - Verdi's Macbeth set in a men's room.

A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that had these two ghosts wandering the stage throughout - it seems they owned the estate before Big Daddy and were supposed to parallel the relationship between Brick and Skipper.

Then there was the A Chorus Line where Music and the Mirror came and went and Cassie never moved - well, she wiggled a bit.

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Updated On: 12/6/07 at 04:46 PM

When I saw High Fidelity, which I love, when Ian had that weird song when he came through the floor on a bed (I believe its "Ians' Song"). It was so out of place.

LOL Babes in Toyland

i was in a community theatre production of Taming of the Shrew, and time travellers came to help tell the story of a futuristic Petruchio and Kate... it was like Shakespeare on Acid... (in fact, my character did acid)

I have witnessed Footloose done with 40 yr olds as the kids

"Bob Cratchit came in during the Christmas yet to come scene (Tiny Tim is dead) and is smiling as he says how sad he is."

Wow, the same thing happened in a production that I was in. The entire cast wanted to hit the guy. He also couldn't remember any of his lines.

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My 'the hell' moment weas in a (frankly terrible) production of "Carmen" I saw, the cigarettes girls all came out smoking real cigarettes (I was in row J and the smell was powerfully that far back! I pity the poor orchastra and first few rows!)

Not to mention there was a good two dozen cigarettes girls as well (thus two dozen lit cigarettes on stage).

jennifer - WHERE did you see this fabulous Scrooge production? Please tell me it's near NYC - i HAVE to see it!

I was in a musical the summer before my junior year of high school. It was an original production called "Straight Ahead", one of those super inspirational things that is really a cross between every Very Special Episode of Family Matters and Full House that you've ever seen. Well, the director/playwright liked to add scenes in at the last second whenever she could. The whole show took place in a high school, and I was cast as the teacher. At one point, there was a scene where a girl who is having trouble at home breaks into homeroom early in the morning...to get drunk. And I walk in and bust her, but she runs away. And I just let it go, even though I see her about ten minutes later when homeroom begins. And then there was the scene where everyone just finished doing a big dance number, and I suddenly start talking to this guy about how I think he might have dyslexia. And, of course, the big finale to "I Believe I Can Fly" where me and three other dancers had to come running out of the wings and dance around holding giant squares of poster-board with tassels on them that were supposed to represent graduation caps..... *sigh*

We really only performed for kids at summer camp, or girls in juvenile detention centers, so I'm sure they didn't notice this kind of stuff. But friends gave me such grief for it after they saw the show.