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

[Cape Twirl of Doom]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 7:25pm

CORAM BOY, end of Act 1 when they unearth all the baby skeletons. Just WTF!? And I was sitting in the front row for that.

[James2]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 7:35pm

"The Illusion Wedding Show" in LoveMusik

[The_Jackal]

Posted: 12/4/07 at 8:10pm

I saw this murder mystery play that involved a stage actress and her husband. The play was pretty good, but they had the weirdest thing going on with the set. So the main set just looked like a living room in a house, but then on either side of the stage, high on the walls, there were these big squares that you could kind of see into. Every so often, they would randomly bring the lights up in the boxes so you could see more clearly into them and they both looked like a backstage area at a theatre and some of the actors from the show were sitting there, pantomiming getting ready and talking and things like that.
I thought the show itself was pretty good, but to this day, I do not understand what they were going for with that...

[jwsel]

Posted: 12/6/07 at 1:44am

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).

[justabwaybaby]

Posted: 12/6/07 at 2:24am

Not exactly a "the Hell?" moment, but it was amusing:

I went and saw a production of WSS at a community theatre.
So I was watching the show, and suddenly, at the end of a scene, I saw a hand come out from under the bed. It then dragged the bed off stage. It sort of reminded me of Thing from the Addam's Family.
My sister was in one of the director's acting classes, so she told us that he didn't want to have people moving the set on stage, and he didn't want to dim the lights for extended periods of time during the set changes. Apparently a stagehand was kept under the bed throughout the entire scene.

[BudFrump23]

Posted: 12/6/07 at 2:48am

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.

[Josh Freilich]

Posted: 12/6/07 at 9:48am

I saw my friends' production of DAMN YANKEES in Long Island, and they added a couple of "Oy"s to the script whenever people back in Chevy Chase, Maryland, would speak. I don't remember them saying "Oy" at all. I thought their names were Joe and Meg Boyd and Doris and Sister Miller. If they were going to talk like that, they should've just changed their names to Joe and Meg Finkelstein and Doris and Sister Schwartz.

[bwaygal1]

Posted: 12/6/07 at 10:05am

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".

[dancingthrulife04]

Posted: 12/6/07 at 12:34pm

A certain giant lemon comes to mind. As a matter of fact, that whole show was one big "what the hell?" moment.

In the production of Cabaret that I was in, our bar (for the club scenes) was a photograph of a bar. The bartender seemingly kept pulling glasses out of thin air. That left the audience scratching their heads. Then, no one though to fasten the damn "bar" to the wall and it fell over on the bartenter. Silently. That also left everyone thinking.

[B3TA07]

Posted: 12/6/07 at 12:36pm

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

[Mealz1042]

Posted: 12/6/07 at 2:51pm

Peter Parnell's "Romance Languages"
doesn't matter who directs it that play is so screwed up.

[OtherDaryl]

Posted: 12/6/07 at 4:46pm

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.

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

[Juliash]

Posted: 12/6/07 at 4:54pm

One time I saw Babes in Toyland.....

Enough said.

[DRSisLove]

Posted: 12/6/07 at 5:12pm

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.

[waddledee524]

Posted: 12/6/07 at 8:23pm

The "Act II" opener in the Drowsy Chaperone... At the beginning, before we realized what was going on, it was one gigantic "...the HELL?"

Hilarious, though.

[TheatreGal614]

Posted: 12/6/07 at 8:33pm

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

[TheFriarsDruggist]

Posted: 12/6/07 at 11:54pm

One of my non-graduated friends was in my old high school's version of Jesus Christ Superstar just last month...

Well when they finally got around to the King's musical number...He came out wearing a gold speedo-not kidding-a gold cape, gold sandals, and a ton of gold chains, with his hair spiked up to unnatural heights-and sprayed gold, along with tons of gold eye make-up and lipstick. I was sitting there thinking, "What the hell is that?"

It took me until like halfway through the song to figure out they were attempting to make him look like Xerxes from the movie 300. Although he wound up looking like a go-go dancer...

[buffyactsing]

Posted: 12/7/07 at 12:42am

"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.

[InfiniteTheaterFrenzy]

Posted: 12/7/07 at 1:02am

All of In My Life, all of Mimi Le Duck...

[Urban]

Posted: 12/7/07 at 11:26am

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).

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 12/7/07 at 11:46am

Well when they finally got around to the King's musical number...He came out wearing a gold speedo-not kidding-a gold cape, gold sandals, and a ton of gold chains, with his hair spiked up to unnatural heights-and sprayed gold, along with tons of gold eye make-up and lipstick. I was sitting there thinking, "What the hell is that?"

That's nothing compared to the horrible tour that circled the country for about ten years. King Herod in drag makeup, brightly feathered sleeves and buttless leather chaps strutting back and forth wiggling his ass at the front row every now and then. Add the misconceived set design made up of metal platforms that clanged and thumped any time an actor set foot on them, the huge inflatable Jesus head and hands for the temple scene, the original leads from the film who could do nothing but scream anything above the middle of their range and everything amplified to deafening ear-splitting volumes. But the ultimate WTF moment was the finale. Jesus on the cross. Got it. He dies. Ok. Then for his ascent into Heaven, Jesus suddenly LURCHES his body forward and we hear a loud rip of velcro as he detaches from the cross and sort of sways his way back and forth and around into the flies. Then the cross burst into a colorful monofiliment light display a la Spencer Gifts.

I'm actually kind of thankful I saw it. That particular show taught me so much about what makes a bad production. Luckily, I had already seen a gorgeous production of JCS a few years earlier.

Updated On: 12/7/07 at 11:46 AM

[sydney23]

Posted: 12/7/07 at 11:50am

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

[gvendo2005]

Posted: 12/9/07 at 4:35pm

Hey, the A.D. Tour of JCS was brilliant, go to hell! And btw, it has nothing on the JCS I saw about 5 years ago. First of all, the whole style was changed to a more hip-hop/gospel vein, and that could have been very interesting if it didn't consist entirely of organ and record scratching for no apparent reason (let me tell ya, their Herod was an awful rapper).

Half the cast was black, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it was a bit off-putting that every now and then all the black people would group into one section and sing a gospel or even just a random number after a JCS song (I lost count of how many I heard - "The Blood," "Calvary," "When Doves Cry," "Stairway to Heaven, "Crying," etc.)

And that's not even counting Jesus singing "Hey Jude" to Judas as the curtain call. Oy...

[LifeofTheParty2]

Posted: 12/9/07 at 5:56pm

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.

[VonTussleGirl]

Posted: 12/10/07 at 12:09am

I saw a production of a musical version of Uncle Vanya that utilized "shadow dancers" for each of the main characters. The acting was good and the voices were okay, but the dancing was ridiculous. At one point they climbed into what looked like a cheerleading formation while Astrov sung about saving trees.