Theater Mess-ups

Have you ever been to a professional show and something very obviously went wrong? I love those kind of stories. How did the actors deal with it? Even if it wasn't profesional but worth postifying--post! (Ex. a set piece falling, a wrong cue, something interesting like that)

One time I was at Wicked and Kristin farted in the middle of "For Good", but Idina and her were professional about it and kept a straight face and kept on singing.

That is obviously a lie.
Idina and Kristin staying in character? Puh.

---

Updated On: 8/27/04 at 01:26 AM

and im assuming type a tiff that youre kidding.

Mess-ups are what everyone remembers. When I was Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls, Nathan was running out of somewhere while being chased and he ran into a door and it broke off its hinge and was swaying in mid-air. I couldn't let it go so in the scene after while I was onstage I had a line then I said "What the hell did he do to the door?!" And got 2 minutes of applause. People tell me now it was the only thing they remember from the show. After all, if you see The Boy From Oz, what do you remember the most? When Hugh interacts with the audience!!

The giant moon at the end of Mamma Mia! came down, lit up, and for some reason, randomly shut off. As the scene is lit, there was only dark blues with the moon, so you couldn't even see Sophie & Sky kiss, as well as the bridge rising.

---

I wasn't there that night, but Frank Langella had a cute story about a goof up on stage during "Fortune's Fool". In an interview on Theater Talk he said that a chandelier on the set had come crashing down. It was right in the middle of a scene and instead of stopping, the cast just continued the dialog as if nothing had happened.

Various characters were entering or leaving the stage and they would just step over the chandelier. He thought this was pretty stupid because the audience could obviously see the thing laying there, so why pretend it wasn't? So his character, very much IN character, was supposed to order his servant to go do something for him. After delivering the order he ended the line with "and move that chandelier before someone breaks their leg". So, the fellow playing the servant exited the stage - by walking over to the prop and picking it up and carrying it out with him. The audience loved it.

---

I saw HURLY BURLY in it's pre-Broadway premiere at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. The cast: William Hurt, Christopher Walken, Harvey Keitel, Jerry Stiller, Sigourney Weaver, Judy Ivey and Cynthia Nixon!

In the first act, Walken and Hurt screwed up some of their lines, and ended up laughing and ad-libbing for at least 30 seconds. In the second act, Walken was holding on to a balcony railing that was supposed to look like wrought iron, and one of the pieces broke off in his hands (it was really wood). Once again, the actors broke up on stage.

my buddy saw LSOH and Audrey 2 apparently "broke-down" right before the finale. that would have been a bit of a bummer. "When this plant is working it is very evil and impressive...goodnight."

---

During the finale last night of "Turandot" (the opera), they had this odd hanging thing down that was for the scene before that hadn't been removed. This threw the set crew off so considerably that when it was time to let the confetti fall, they let it go all @ once, so it came down in this downpour.

When I was Annie in Annie, Lily, who at that time was Shirley, said, "Yeah. We don't want any money for our little Shirley." Oops.

Wicked- Popular scene, one bed comes out. I think someone else wrote about this in another thread.

---

I was doing Carmen (the opera) and Carmen is in her big aria, and she was supposed to sweep all the placesettings off the table (including these thick wooden goblets) and jump on the table at the end of the number.

Well, she did. A goblet flew through the air and hit a guy standing in front of me right between the eyes. He fell over...completely knocked out. We rolled him off stage. He got stiches and was back singing the next show.

SWEEET cause i thought i was the only one for a while. I mean if she is that dumb she would just paint over the briefcase and not touch the wall

When I was in Annie Get Your Gun Sitting Bull forgot her cue. Buffalo Bill collapsed into laughter and couldn't talk.