Most Disastrous Performances?
Most Disastrous Performances?
Jay94
Featured Actor Joined: 4/10/11
#1Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 11:17amWhat shows have you seen where something has gone wrong on stage? For example when Debbie Reynolds fainted in Woman of the Year, when Tony Roberts had a seizure in the Royal Family or an actor forgetting their lines or a set breaking; basically something going wrong on stage.
#2Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 11:28am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCGtp5CfdvI
Kerry Ellis almost breaking something rings a bell
dramamama611
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/4/07
#2Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 11:49am
EVERYTHING about Christie Brinkley's performance in Chicago.
Whoopie Goldberg missing the opening Act II entrance in Forum. (But it wasn't awful, most the audience was unaware.)
If we're not having fun, then why are we doing it?
These are DISCUSSION boards, not mutual admiration boards. Discussion only occurs when we are willing to hear what others are thinking, regardless of whether it is alignment to our own thoughts.
egghumor
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/9/11
#3Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 12:39pm
I fear that if I (or any poster) elaborate too much, the thread might be terminated.
Two actors I saw in appallingly "altered" states (and therefore crashing into set pieces, furniture, etc.) were Richard Harris in the revival of CAMELOT and Eric Roberts in the pre-Broadway mounting of MASS APPEAL. I saw Roberts again years later in BURN THIS and he was amazing.
Three actors I witnessed being openly nasty to cast and crew during performances were Maggie Smith, Kaye Ballard, and Lily Tomlin.
#4Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 1:06pmRobert Goulets first performance in LA CAGE.
egghumor
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/9/11
#5Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 1:15pmSpeaking of LA CAGE... Who witnessed Jeffrey Tambor's 10-minute run opposite Fierstein most recently?
hyperbole_and_a_half
Leading Actor Joined: 3/21/11
#6Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 1:17pmOne of the first previews of Shrek in Seattle was close to four hours long.
#7Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 1:23pmDame Maggie?! Really? WOW! What did she do?
LegallyBroadway2
Broadway Star Joined: 8/19/10
#8Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 1:35pm
Oh I saw Tambor the performance Riedel posted about.
I saw a bootleg of the preview performance of Shrek. It was close to four hours. So so so long, was never ending. The broadway run had a way better running time.
do spider-man mishaps one might have witnessed count?
#9Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 1:36pmI saw EVITA at the Carousel dinner theatre and Eva had to sing "High Flying Adored" cupping her naked tit due to a wardrobe malfunction.
"The sexual energy between the mother and son really concerns me!"-random woman behind me at Next to Normal
"I want to meet him after and bang him!"-random woman who exposed her breasts at Rock of Ages, referring to James Carpinello
.jpg)
#10Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 1:41pm
I got three.
1) During Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the understudy for Norbert Leo Butz trashed his leg running back down from the balcony during Act I. The show stopped after the scene change and John Lithgow came out. He stepped out of character and explained that the U/S fell and had to be examined to make sure he was safe. In the mean time, Lithgow riffed for a good five minutes before the next actor came on to continue Butz' part. He then asked the audience to give the new actor a round of applause to warm him up and we were back to the show.
2) I got stuck in The Little Mermaid for 45 minutes right before Poor Unfortunate Souls because one of those monstrous plexiglass structures got stuck halfway off stage. 45 minutes of going "there's only one more song before the end of the act. Do I leave now or wait for Sherie? Leave now or wait for Sherie?"
3) In a local community theater production of The Wizard of Oz that I was in, one of the less coordinated citizens of Oz fell off the stage into the tuba. As in, she landed perfectly to have her ass get stuck in the bell of the tuba. To get out, she wound up kicking her feet against the open piano (that poor piano) and crash landing against the stage. Thank goodness there wasn't an actual pit or she could have seriously been hurt. She fell all of 3 feet off the stage.
#11Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 1:49pm
I'm shocked that there has been not one mention of SPIDER-MAN TURN OFF THE DARK yet. That first preview was a 4-hour long disaster.
Other than that, I saw a college production of BAT BOY where the entire set fell forward on top of the actors. The crew came out and held the walls up while the show went on.
"The Spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may be sure, is felt even apart from representation and actors. Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet."
--Aristotle
--Aristotle
egghumor
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/9/11
#12Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 2:03pm
Will, for BWW's sake, I'm going to keep the story rather vague. Dame Maggie was appearing in a limited run of a play on Broadway (a transfer from London). The show was not doing very good business and so Dame Maggie had appealed to the producers to close the show earlier than scheduled. They refused, and so I saw the show after the decision to continue had been made.
Ms. Smith quite blatantly did not look at or physically respond to any of the actors on stage. It was so appalling. Her performance was very robotic. To me, it was clear case of sabotage. I suppose she figured if she could make actors and audiences as miserable as she appeared to me, then she would prevail and get the show closed after all.
Over the years, in printed interviews and theatrical memoirs, etc., I've read a few accounts of some of her backstage antics as well. For example, Bob Crowley shared a story about how Dame Maggie hated his set design for a production of "The Importance of Being Earnest" so much that she would strike the set repeatedly with her parasol nightly.
#13Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 2:05pm
Elaine Stritch's first performance of A Little Night Music, where she forgot half her lines, was audibly prompted, and Bernadette had to finish her Act Two speech because she was so out to lunch.
The first performance of The Starry Messenger, where Matthew Broderick practically had a nervous breakdown on stage.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
Updated On: 6/26/11 at 02:05 PM
egghumor
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/9/11
#14Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 2:16pm
It seems we have two ideas working here about the original question, both of which are legit. Many of us are discussing acting performances, while others are posting comments about onstage mishaps/calamities.
In the second category, two episodes that come to mind for me are during a very early preview I attended of BARNUM an actor was supposed to toss a bucket full of confetti onto the frot rows of the audience. Instead, the actor let go of the bucket and it bounced off the heads of several audience members until it landed around row F.
Also during a coronation scene in the dreadful play KINGDOMS, the leading lady was being crowned, but her crown kept falling off. When another crowned actor came to her aid, his crown toppled.
LegallyBroadway2
Broadway Star Joined: 8/19/10
#15Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 2:17pm
One of the spidey 1.0 performances I saw had a set glitch.
At the top of bouncing off the walls, Peter falls from the ceiling to his bed. He then unhooks himself from a vertical wire, which then gets pulled out of the scene via a hole for a cartoon light in the ceiling. Well, when the wire was being pulled up, it got caught on the ceiling, and pulled the entire thing up. The piece then crashed back down into position, with a loud metal crash.
Reeve looked up, and just in time grabbed a metal pole that could have hit him square on the head. The ceiling collapsed on the left side. The voice came up, and paused the show. Reeve released the pole and stage crew took it. The pieces were moved off stage, the ceiling lowered, and the crew came out, and put the poles back into position. It took only a little more than a minute to fix. Reeve entertained us with some harness tricks. It was scary how he could have been seriously injured by that pole though. . .
I have seen the show two other times without any issues. Reeve landed on the mezz lighting truss instead of the launch pad once. He had this 0.0 look on his face when he realized he wasn't going to hit his mark.
rougeduck
Broadway Star Joined: 6/5/07
#16Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 2:18pmDaphne Rubin Vega as fantine...in addition to horribly lowering I Dreamed a Dream, she totally failed a note in the first couple of previews of Fantine's Arrest to a point where they had to lower it also...not to mention nothing being right about anything she was doing on that stage.
#17Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 2:25pmVery disappointed. Dame Maggie is such a tremendous actress and I thought of her as being a professional. Oh well...
#18Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 2:42pm
Jessica Phillips' first performance as Diana on Broadway was a complete disaster.
Fortunately, she got REALLY good, to the point that she became, in time, the perfect Diana Goodman.
Updated On: 6/26/11 at 02:42 PM
rougeduck
Broadway Star Joined: 6/5/07
#19Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 2:44pm
It's sad that I became all alone in the Alice Ripley is the perfect Diana camp...where did everyone go? 
#20Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 2:47pmI'm with you, rogueduck. Ripley was the perfect package for the character. From the edge in her voice to the "bitch you just slipped off my hip at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade" stare, she was just wonderful. I can still playback her I Miss the Mountains performance in my mind. Just the right level of manic by the end of that song.
#21Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 2:55pmSorry i do love her but the whole of Cooks performance in Carrie here in the UK
Namo i love u but we get it already....you don't like Madonna
#22Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 3:25pm
PHANTOM (NYC Previews): The candelabras jackknifed and stayed stuck in their 'up' position through most of the second act. Brightman tried to jump over one at the end and it caught the hem of her gown, ripping it all the way across the stage as she exited. Beads everywhere.
SPEED THE PLOW (Original NYC): Madonna only had a passing acquaintance with her lines. It was a little horrifying.
#23Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 3:49pm
I never said I didn't still love Alice Ripley. In fact, I just saw her this past week in Philly (twice) and thought she was wonderful.
The point I was trying to make was that I grew to really love Jessical (because she got so much better) despite the hot mess that was her first Broadway performance.
Updated On: 6/26/11 at 03:49 PM
rougeduck
Broadway Star Joined: 6/5/07
#24Most Disastrous Performances?
Posted: 6/26/11 at 3:52pmOh no, it was just a thought I had been thinking for a while and your comment reminded me of it.
Videos