Most disastrous stage performances EVER

I saw Keanu in Hamlet and he was surprisingly good. It's too bad he doesn't show that kind of range in his movies.

Nicol Williamson attacking his co-star in "I Hate Hamlet" with his sword--the co-star walked off the stage, and Williamson sulked to the audience. He never got work on the NYC stage again.

Debbie Reynolds collapsed onstage during the Broadway run of WOMAN OF THE YEAR in 1983.

Tony Roberts has a seizure onstage during a performance of the Broadway revival of THE ROYAL FAMILY.

Tony Award winner Richard Easton collapsed onstage during a performance of the Broadway show COAST OF UTOPIA

Roger Moore collapsed onstage during a performance of the Broadway play THE SHOW WHAT I WROTE.

Just collapsing doesn't seem like enough imho.

I mean, Laurence Olivier or Meryl Streep or anyone might collapse on stage if they're ill.

How about more bad/campy/awful performances?

Didn't Jasmine Guy have a pretty spectacular breakdown onstage a few years ago in a Richard Greenberg play? If I recall, she started to forget her lines, then talking to the audience and they brought down the curtain in the middle of the act to bring on the understudy. Was it THE VIOLET HOUR?

Idina Menzel, Tony Award winner for WICKED, fell through a trap door and injured herself, forcing her to leave the show 3 days earlier than expected.

Daniel Davis, of THE NANNY fame, was fired from the firt revival of LA CAGE AUX FOLLES for fighting with co-star Gary Beach and being verbally abusive to the cast and crew.

Ensemble actor Adrian Bailey was seriously injured during a performance when he fell 20 feet off a moving piece of scenery. Bailey remains injured and most likely will never perform again.

Henry Goodman, Nathan Lan'es replacement in THE PRODUCERS was fired after just two weeks of performances for giving a notoriously dark and unfunny interpretation to one of the funniest roles written.%0D %0D I saw Goodman, who played the role like a modern day Machiavellian Fagin.

Ally Sheedy was supposed to be a mess in HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH. By the time her run in the show came to an end she was doing things onstage like demanding that other actors sing her songs for her or she wouldn't continue the performance, etc.

Mary Tyler Moore quit the Broadway production of Neil Somon's ROSE'S DILEMMA after the playwright sent his wife, Elaine Joyce, backstage with a note telling Ms. Moore to "learn your fucking lines".

I don't know if this counts as a "performance," but, several years ago, there was a musical version of "Gone With The Wind."%0D %0D On opening night, during what was supposed to be one of the highlights of the show....The burning of Atlanta... the horse they were using took a shit on-stage.%0D %0D Many of the reviewers took that to be the horse's comment on the quality of the show.

[quote]Didn't Jasmine Guy have a pretty spectacular breakdown onstage a few years ago in a Richard Greenberg play? If I recall, she started to forget her lines, then talking to the audience and they brought down the curtain in the middle of the act to bring on the understudy. Was it THE VIOLET HOUR?

Yep, that was the Violet Hour. They literally throw the costume on the understudy and tossed her onstage.

My friend Keith tells this story: he was hired to play the Monster in a stage version of Frankenstein that cost $10 million to produce on Broadway (back in 1981 - at the time, it set a record for the MOST EXPENSIVE NON-MUSICAL ever produced!).%0D %0D The show opened and closed THE SAME NIGHT.%0D %0D Now THAT'S a disaster.%0D %0D [the cast included John Glover, David Dukes, Dianne Wiest, and John Carradine as the blind hermit. BTW, Keith has never worked on Broadway again since...]

[quote]They literally throw the costume on the understudy

"literally"? I hope it wasn't heavy, or that would have hurt.

Helen Lawson beat the living shit out of the boy playing Little Patrick Dennis in a Manhattan Theatre Club revival of Auntie Mame.

Some in the audience thought it was part of the show, until she picked up the actor and kicked him into the third row.

The show closed at the request of the actor's surviving family.

In "Three Days of Rain", Julia Roberts gave a pretty wooden performance. Her accent came and went, and she didn't understand what she was saying.

Geoffrey Tenant's Hamlet is legendary.

Bette Davis in "Two's Company" owns this thread.%0D %0D Who else would stop the show if they forgot their lines, do monologues from their old films and introduce the cast members?

When Liza filled in for Julie Andrews during "Victor/Victoria" she supposedly just stood on the stage in a stupor.

[quote]I saw Goodman, who played the role like a modern day Machiavellian Fagin.

I wish I'd seen that.

Arte Johnson fell on stage during a dance number in "Cabaret." The curtain came down and the audience sat there for about ten minutes. Finally there was an announcement that he would continue with the show, however he stayed seated for the rest of the time and was taken off in an ambulance at the end of the show. Don't recall if he broke a leg or hip.

Hey 23....

The cast STILL liked her better than Raquel!

THIS one takes the cake, bitches!!!! Get ready to squirm:

in a performance of "Tosca" at the Minnesota Opera, Tosca is supposed to throw herself out a window to her death. A friend who saw the performance from the front row found it odd that when she did, from offstage, she seemed "fall" quite realistically, usually a net or something is in place. Apparently she DID fall and fractured her spine needed years of therapy afterwards.

Stephen Fry had a breakdown during a play and fled the country for a while.

Sarah Bernhardt threw herself from a scaffold during a performance and had to have her leg amputated. I think she wins the award for dying for art.

[quote]in a performance of "Tosca" at the Minnesota Opera, Tosca is supposed to throw herself out a window to her death%0D %0D There was a classic episode where a Tosca took her suicidal dive and landed on a springy mattress that bounced her up into the air and right back onto the platform from which she had jumped.

r29, Simon Gray, the author and director of the play that Stephen Fry notoriously crapped out on, gives a very different account of the incident in his book "Fat Chance." According to him Fry had overloaded himself with commitments, couldn't keep up with it all, then suddenly said "Fuck it" and went on vacation without telling anybody.

Don't forget the infamous performance of "Flower Drum Song" when Miyoshi Umeki suddenly walked onstage during "You Are Beautiful" and took a dump in front of a horrified audience to show her displeasure with Ed Kenney's and Juanita Hall's singing.

Beat this...%0D %0D Not only live on stage but being watched live on one of the main networks in the UK...%0D %0D

The absolutely worst was Jake Pavelka having an epic meltdown on "Dancing With The Stars" after being eliminated.%0D %0D Had to be seen to be believed.

Philip Casnoff was almost killed by falling scenery in previews for Shogun.

Liza Minneli's performance in Victor, Victoria and Lauren Bacall's in From the Wings were pure performance disasters.

In terms of catastrophic behavior back stage, don't ever ask Toni Collette what it was like playing opposite Mandy Patinkin in The Wild Party. Toni is too much of a pro and too much of a lady to tell you what it was like.

"On opening night, during what was supposed to be one of the highlights of the show....The burning of Atlanta... the horse they were using took a shit on-stage."%0D %0D %0D %0D %0D %0D ROFLMAO!%0D %0D

Daniel Day Lewis' breakdown in Hamlet occurred while doing the scene with the Father's ghost. He started seeing his own dead father (what was he smoking that night?) and started doing the scene FOR REAL.

His understudy had not rehearsed the scene in three months and was sitting backstage reading a book when he heard the stage PA go nuts and then silent. A dresser threw open his door and threw Hamlet's costume at him.

The understudy was Jeremy Northam.

As they pushed him onstage he was crying. All the other cast members had the book and were prepared to feed him the lines. He had a rocky 15 minutes and then it all came back to him.

He ended up getting great reviews!!!

that can't be for real, R34

Was it John Gilbert or John Barrymore who threw up in the face of his leading lady during the death scene in 'Othello'?

R39 - absolutely true. Saw it with my own eyes.%0D %0D It was, I think, on a Sunday night and we, like so many others were laughing away...%0D %0D The show finished, and was followed by the nightly news - and the last item was that Tommy Cooper had collapsed on stage, and couldn't be revived.

Two words - Lee Radziwill

Not ONE mention of Michael Crawford in DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES? Really?

R43

I'd be more interested in hearing what NPH is like in the sack, Max.

43 messages, and nothing about me?

R39, absolutely true. It's a very famous death.

That was really disturbing, R34.

Suzanne Somers' "The Blonde in the Thunderbird" was said to be pretty horrendous...

R44: Sweet, tender, bit my ears a little bit when he came in me. What you'd expect.%0D %0D Marc Kudisch, on the other hand... I couldn't walk for DAYS after that hairy, greasy, sweaty four-hour pound-session...

What happened, r17? Was it just a horrible performance by everyone?

Of Jane Alexander in GOODBYE FIDEL, in April 1980, Douglas Watt in the Daily News said "she's about as latin as a New England boiled dinner."

Brooks Atkinson on Farley Granger in the musical of PRIDE & PREJUDICE" -- "Farley Granger played Mr. Darcy with all the flexibility of a telephone pole."

More details r41, please. So he collapses, as seen in the video, then what? Did someone go check on him? What was said to the audience?

"NO NO NANETTE is trivial, banal, mendacious and stupid beyond the rights of any show, however escapist, to be in this day and age."%0D -- John Simon

Ian McKellen as Hamlet at the Cambridge Theatre in 1971:%0D %0D "The best thing about Ian McKellen's Hamlet is his curtain call."%0D -Harold Hobson

Geez, let's limit it to truly horrible performances, not performances that got one bad review

In April 1973, Irene Ryan suffered a stroke onstage during the Broadway performance of Pippin.%0D %0D Several days after she fell ill, Irene Ryan died on April 26, 1973. She was 70.

David Burns (the original Horace to Carol Channing's Dolly) collpased and died onstage during the Philadelphia tryout of 70 GIRLS 70. Much like Tommy Cooper, when the audience saw him fall to the floor they continued laughing merrily thinking it was part of the show. Burns was famous for blustery manner, ranting and raving as though he would have a stroke so it's no surprise they didn't catch on until the curain came down abruptly.%0D %0D p.s. In Burns' case (and probably also in Cooper's) people who knew the man said he would have loved to go out that way, making people laugh even as he died. %0D

October 28, 1979 Arnold Soboloff, who was playing Smee, the sidekick to Captain Hook, in Peter Pan at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, dies today a heart attack after finishing a song in Act II. He was 48 years old.

March 12, 1971 - Actor David Burns, the original Horace Vandergelder in HELLO DOLLY, Senex in ...FORUM, and Mayor Shinn in MUSIC MAN died of a heart attack onstage during an out-of-town tryout of Kander and Ebb's 70, GIRLS, 70.

Anyone in "In The Life". What a pile of crap THAT was. When I see ANY of those "actor"'s in anything, I still get the creeps.

Stephine Block in "The Pirate Queen". At the start of act two, if you stayed, she gives birth on stage, them proceeds to have a duel, with baby in arms, and singing. Stephine Block as Liza Minnelli in The Boy from OZ. Isn't ONE Liza (and all the drag queens) enough? Stephine Block as Violet in 9 to 5. Singing soprano? What? Nothing against Stephine Block, but come on now.

Henry Goodman did suck in PRODUCERS. I saw him and he just sucked.

This didn't involve anyone famous (as far as I remember), but when I was a kid my parents took me to see Man of La Mancha at the Melody Tent in Hyannis. About half way through the play, the lead actor pointed his sword toward an exit and he and the rest of the cast went running up the aisle out of the tent. Never to return. Apparently he took ill but managed to weave it artfully into the scene.%0D %0D Speaking of Hamlet, I mentioned on another thread that I saw Stephen Lang (of Avatar fame)as the lead in that play. His acting was so over the top and overwrought during one monologue that ended with him screaming and dropping to the stage floor that one theater goer burst out in loud laughter in the other wise quiet theater.

John Barrowan shat his pants during some performance in a musical, and when he lifted his leg in the dance number, sprayed shit on the audience. This is a true story - he told it in his book.

Leigh Bowery also sprayed shit on the front row of his audience at one of his performances.

R53, I'm not the guy you were talking to, but the story goes that the curtain came down after Cooper collapsed and he was dragged backstage. Wikipedia says an assistant of his laughed at him, thinking it was a joke, but others came out to help revive him. It was during the time he was backstage before the ambulance got there that he died, apparently, although he wasn't declared dead until the hospital.

There was a rumor for a long time that you could still see his feet sticking out under the curtain while the show went on before the ambulance arrived, but I can't find any footage to confirm or deny that.

Susan Richardson at the Globe Theater in San Diego, in Other People's Money. She threw a fit and spat at the audience, then walked off stage leaving her co-stars to ad-lib for five minutes. She re-entered the scene, and start gibberish that was not in the script and then addressed the audience that her co-stars did not like her and they had not rehearsed with her all week. Very, very strange.

Ann Reinking apparently shit down her leg during a performance of CHICAGO while standing on the ladder.%0D %0D Replacement Sandy Duncan hooked her foot in the same ladder furing the same number and sprained her ankle.

How are so many of these people spraying their shit over the stage and audience?

How? Why? is more like it. Jeeps, does the stage cause incontinence?

[quote]How are so many of these people spraying their shit over the stage and audience?

The body involuntarily responding to the material, my guess.

[quote]THIS one takes the cake, bitches!!!! Get ready to squirm:%0D %0D [quote][see YouTube video]%0D %0D Why are they using a TELEVISION tray?%0D %0D

Glynis Johns forgot her lines in the 1990 Broadway revival of THE CIRCLE and became so distressed she ran offstage. Rex Harrison turned to another actress onstage playing a neighbor who was Johns' understudy and said "Well, it's up to you now, luv." The curtain came down, we waited for ten minutes or so and then they started the play again, this time from the understudy's character's entrance. Johns returned to the production the following night.

Patty Duke forgot her lines in the middle of FOLLIES in an LA production a few years ago.

A couple years back I read that Cherry Jones, who had already been playing the lead in DOUBT for some months, totally went up on one of her longer monologues, rambled for a while, and then called for the stage director to bring her the script, which she read from during the rest of the scene (followed by great applause from the audience...I hate when they do that.) She didn't need the script for the rest of the play. Apparently she just had a really bad night.

Well, at least it was applause and not boos.

All this shitting on stage. Has no one heard of the shitbra?

Marisa Mell in the final scene of the musical MATA HARI previewing in D.C. in the 60's. Hari (Mell) has been shot and was all sprayed out on the stage floor while the final ultimo was being sung. Guess she had an itch. Miss Mell scratched her nose while playing dead.

During a number early in the run of DANCIN' Ann Reinking injured her back and crawled off stage while the cast continued to perform "Sing, Sing, Sing." She was out of the show for a few weeks.

Betty Buckley almost missed her entrance one matinee day during SUNSET BLVD. She was giving a blow job to one of the stage hands.

L*I*Z*A %0D %0D %0D in%0D %0D %0D VICTOR VICTORIA owns this thread.

[quote]Hari (Mell) has been shot and was all sprayed out on the stage floor while the final ultimo was being sung.%0D %0D Death by areosol can squad?

When I saw the Mary Poppins tour, she flew right above me at the very end. I looked up her skirt and she wasn't wearing any panties!

She must have gotten off to that r84.

Leonard Warren dropped dead on the Metropolitan Opera stage in 1959 during a performance of Verdi's "La Forza del Destino" ["The Forces of Destiny"]. The last words he sang are translated into English as "To die is a tremendous thing". He then pitched forward, dying on the spot of a massive heart attack.

Somebody posted that in a thread several months ago, r86. He had been in the audience. He never returned to the thread to give further details.

Does ANYTHING Whitney Houston has done on a stage in the last 3 years count? Cuz, if it does...bitch OWNS this thread.

Years ago during THE APPLE TREE, Barbara Harris was in the scene with Alan Alda where Eve names all the animals "Lion, lamb, wolf" whatever it is, then she lost it, stopped, paused, and pointed into theatre: "Audience . . . Lights . . . Actor . . . Proscenium." %0D %0D The curtain was quickly drawn.

Another story about Barbara Harris- During one matinee perf. of THE APPLE TREE, Barbara rushed off stage screaming that she could not continue.... her understudy Carmen Alvarez took over for the end of "The Diary of Adam and Eve" which was Act One. Phyllis Newman, who had been hired to do the Wed. and Sat. Matinees for Ms. Harris was due to go on (start performances) the following week. Phyllis was in the audience taking notes on Harris' performance. She went backstage and told the stage manager she was ready to do the show. Newman went on for the final two acts "Lady or the Tiger" and "Passionella."

r81, did Grayson McCouch know about this?

Don't bother wasting your time with R86 video. It doesn't show him pitching over with a heart attack.

Does dying on stage even count? As dramatic as it is, it's not like it's an conscious choice to wreck the show.

[quote]Does dying on stage even count? %0D %0D Someone dying on stage certainly would not be a disaster to a play. It's a valued performance and it happens all the time. The audience loves to know there's a real dead body who should be singing, dancing, or delivering lines. It adds so much to the overall performance.

/

Bump for more Barbara Harris stories.

bump for more Minnelli in Victor Victoria stories. I heard that when she was in The Rink she had little pockets of coke hidden in her costume.

Love that Liza!

In Barrowman's case, r71, it was because another actor who was jealous because he felt JB had stolen his role, drugged JB with large amounts of laxatives.

I saw Henry Goodman in The Producers. He played Max as a fast-talker -- someone you'd meet at a racetrack rather than in show biz.%0D %0D %0D Max Bialystock is a larger than life character; he's theatrical. Henry Goodman is a skinny guy and I felt he played Bialystock with no personality whatsoever. Worse, he played him with no humor.%0D %0D Zero Mostel, with his performance as Bialystock, gave permission for anybody playing the role to be ridiculously over the top. Goodman was well under the top. He was practically underground.

Uta Hagen in CHARLOTTE. The role of her sexy lover was played by Charles Nelson Reilly!

Truly horrible performance, by the brilliant actress who brought us Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

In the mid 70's, I went to New York with my drama class from high school. We were all so excited because we got to see a Broadway play every night. One night we went to see a performance of St. Joan starring Lynn Redgrave. Redgrave was playing Joan of Arc. Of course the production was full of tragedy. Every time Redgrave opened her mouth through all the drama, gobs of spit literally fell out of her mouth. All over the stage. Each time the audience would gasp at the sight of the spit. It was GROSS!!!

Gwen Verdon in a disaster thriller called CHILDREN! CHILDREN! which was later made into a movie with Christian Slater and Lois Smith about a babysitter and the older child be a real terror. Movie had a different title. CHILDREN! CHILDREN! closed in one night. It was the first production at the official reopening of the Ritz (now the Walter Kerr).%0D So much cutting went into that piece that by the time it opened the running time was 60 minutes.%0D %0D Another play from the same era, WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM where a band of terrorists enter a theatre and take the audience and actors hostage.%0D By the time the bad reviews were published and the plot was revealed, audiences laughed and booed when the actors playing the terrorists seized the theater.

FIVE KINGS, Orson Welles's legendary - and disastrous - climax to the brief comet, the Mercury Theatre.

One of the highest-profile fiascos ever was Peter O'Toole's 'Macbeth' at the Old Vic. This was way back in 1980.

By most accounts it had the depth and menace of a 'Carry On' film. Not that this harmed business, as coach parties turned up to witness the glamorous debacle. It sold out.

Apparently the bubbling laughter surged one night when, right after a blood-soaked scene, an ambulance siren was clearly audible from the street outside.

[quote]When Liza filled in for Julie Andrews during "Victor/Victoria" she supposedly just stood on the stage in a stupor.

I saw her. People make fun of her shhhh s's here but I have to say it was so strong I thought she had a stroke. It's the only show I ever walked out of at intermission and never looked back.

When I was a kid I saw "Annie" at a Saturday matinee with Allison Smith and as she sat on the floor singing "Tomorrow" Sandy the dog starting heaving. Yup, before the big final note Sandy vomited lunch on the stage and the little trooper, Allison never missed a beat. As the song ended, the set had a moving belt and a guy in full costume came out on the belt, got off, wiped it up, back on the belt and off the stage he went.

I have posted this before, but I was at the ON THE WATERFRONT performance when the actor collapsed on stage, struck his head on the steel plate on the set, and was rushed to the hospital.

The curtain was lowered, and the show did not resume for ninety minutes.

But given the dire state of the production, that was not the worst of its disasters.

I did a play with Jane Adams. She just spaced out on stage and became fascinated with the fringe on a pillow. She was alone onstage and so the whole play stopped for what seemed forever. Also, the theater did not have a curtain. The stage manager decided that the only way to deal with this was to make the telephone ring, which was not an actual cue. Well, it brought Jane back to reality, but see was completely disoriented. Finally, the actor who was to make the next entrance barged into the apt (through an apparently locked door) and took over the scene. He was eventually able to shepherd he back on track, but it was very painful to watch.

As a PS, Jane was a total bitch back stage about the situation. When props replaced the pillows with ones without fringe, she demanded that the originals be put back. In general she was a mess.

R80, are you sure you're not talking about "Over Here"? Reinking broke her back during one of lifts in the jitterbug number and crawled offstage.

Try topping this, you bitch Mary Martin.

Oh my god!

Madge in "Speed-the-Plow" owns this thread. It appeared that she literally could not move and say her line at the same time. Wooden doesn't begin to describe her.

[quote]Nicol Williamson attacking his co-star in "I Hate Hamlet" with his sword--the co-star walked off the stage, and Williamson sulked to the audience. He never got work on the NYC stage again.

That actor was Evan Handler who went on to be Charlotte's husband Harry in "Sex And The City" and a co-star on Duchovny's "Californication"

R68, is that Susan Richardson from Eight is Enough fame? Or was that chick Susan Richards?

R76, I remember at the time Ms. Jones blamed it being in the throes of menopause.

R110- I also thought it was DANCIN' when Reinking hurt herself and crawled off stage. %0D When I saw that show, Reinking returned after being out of the show for sometime. But it was OVER HERE? Maybe you are right about that. Chris Callen was in for Ann when I saw that one.

Another one from the Met: Opera singer Richard Versalle died onstage at the Metropolitan Opera during the company%E2%80%99s premiere performance of The Makropulos Case when he suffered a heart attack while standing on a sliding ladder attached to a file cabinet. He was stricken after singing the line, %E2%80%9CToo bad you can live only so long.%E2%80%9D

January 7, 1996

[bold]Richard Versalle, 63, Met Tenor, Dies After Fall in a Performance[/bold]

By LYNETTE HOLLOWAY

Richard Versalle, a tenor with the Metropolitan Opera whose silvery voice was known mostly in Europe, died in New York on Friday night after an accident on stage during the premiere of "The Makropulos Case," by Leos Janacek. He was 63.

The cause of death has not been determined, said Mr. Versalle's manager, Tony George.

Mr. Versalle, who, in the opening scene, was singing the role of Vitek, an elderly clerk in a law firm, fell 10 feet from a sliding ladder he had mounted to place a file for a century-old legal case back into its drawer. [bold]As he sang the words "Too bad you can only live so long," his voice faltered and he fell to the floor, landing on his back. [/bold] Opera officials initially reported that he died of a heart attack.

Damn you, R116!

Wasn't Mary Martin nearly senile during the tour of "Legends"? I seem to remember her totally unable to remember her lines. And strange chemistry with co-star Carol "Corn?" Channing, too. I think it was headed for Broadway but never made it, but I'm really fuzzy on the details.

R119- I saw it. It wasn't very good. James Kirkwood wrote a book about the experience working on LEGENDS. I believe it was called DIARY OF A MAD PLAYWRIGHT. Worth reading if you can find a used copy. Martin allegedly wore an earpiece so that her dropped/ missed lines could be fed to her.%0D The book mentioned that she was picking up police car transmissions.

OP did you fly all the way to Edmonton to see Keanu Reeves as Hamlet?

If not, why say his performance was disastrous?

Martin was well into her dotage, and in desperation the producers fitted her with a small radio earpiece in order to feed lines to her when she started to go up again.

However, it seems that taxi services and traffic dispatchers also operated on the same frequency as this device, so.....

that earpiece shit is shockingly common. You can actually see Brando's in Apocalypse Now, if you look for it.

[quote]Every time Redgrave opened her mouth through all the drama, gobs of spit literally fell out of her mouth. All over the stage. Each time the audience would gasp at the sight of the spit. It was GROSS!!!

No uncommon at all. Jonathon Groff spit so much in "Spring Awakening" they should have issued ponchos to the first few rows like a Gallagher concert.

The only review of Keanu's performance in Hamlet I recall is "He remembered all his lines, and yes, he looks good in tights."

Hugh Jackman told a story on Jay Leno's 'Tonight Show' about being in his acclaimed production of 'Oklahoma!' where he had to desperately take a piss.

He had to sing a big high note in one of his solos, and his bladder just let go. He repeatedly described how "urine was running down my leg."

Kinda hot, in a kinky way.

Why did Jane Adams become fascinated with the fringe r109? That's a weird one!

Emily Taplin Boyd and her habit of saying "and now I will recite" before each of her lines in the Height's Players production of Hamlet

OMG!!!%0D %0D "We Interrupt This Program." My friend and I saw it in previews. Beyond awful. There were these "terrorists" in the theater, with guns...and they were gayer than the color pink. I remember this one hot, hot guy posing and pointing this rifle. Too weird. %0D %0D This is why I love Dl. I had not thought of that preview night in over 35 years.

Judy Garland and Steve Allen singing songs from his broadway bomb "Sophie".

That was great R128. You made me lol.

I saw "We Interrupt This Program" and when they "chained" the doors shut (which it was painfully obvious they didn't actually do) people started laughing and several audience members just got up, pushed the "terrorists" aside and walked out.

R127,

I have no idea why she became fascinated with the fringe. She just started twirling it as a school girl might absentmindedly twirl her hair. Otherwise, it was if someone hit the off switch on her. She had definitely gone to "another place".

R111, that's hysterical. What a mess!

The Jane Adams fringe thing is crazy.

The blind woman @R27, just climb up and started performing again and that was a BAD fall she took.

Daniel Travanti of HILL STREET BLUES fame had, shall we say, a petit mal onstage during a performance that was so bad, co-star (and mother of us all) Sada Thompson had to coax and escort him into the wings.

"Henry Goodman did suck in PRODUCERS. I saw him and he just sucked."%0D %0D And guess who cast him? That brain trust whose initials are S.S., that's who!%0D %0D

[quote]OP did you fly all the way to Edmonton to see Keanu Reeves as Hamlet?

It was Winnipeg, not Edmonton. I was there. He did a decent job. Remembering all that Shakespearean dialogue is an accomplishment in and of itself. How many of Keanu's Hollywood peers could even do that much? Or what about the newbies? Can you picture Zac Efron as Hamlet?

I admit, that when I am picturing Zac Efron, it is not as Hamlet.

I'm pretty sure I remember the critic for The Times (British) giving a shocked keanu 'is in the top three hamlet portrayals I have ever seen' review.

I found Tori Spelling to be a tad too vivacious as Catherine Sloper.

A 70's off Broadway production of "Make Mine Miniver!" starring the twee Karen Valentine in a musical hybrid of "Mrs. Miniver" and "The Miniver Story".

Daniel Radcliffe

Reeves sold out every night. Great for the theater. A critic from London gave Keanu a great review for his Hamlet. Reeves said he thought he got it right at least three times. He said he was terrified the first night and could only recite his lines.

They had to bring down the curtain on Richard Burton when he was too drunk to continue in Camelot.

I saw Martin and Channing in LEGENDS! also. By the time I saw the show Martin knew the lines without an earpiece.

But, she should never have agreed to do the play. It was awful, and Martin playing a bitchy, unlikable character was one time casting against public persona just did not work.

But LEGEND! would have come to New York after 13 months on the road, if Martin had agreed. I guess by then, she realized her mistake early on...but wanted to fulfill her year's contract.

Saw Legends! in Chicago at the Schubert. It was all right if you'd never seen Carol Channing or Mary Martin before but, of course, it wasn't much of a performance. I remember Channing seemed to throw her arms over her head an awful lot, just about every line.

I remember Jane Addams in the abysmal Resurrection Blues at The Old Vic in London. Spacey must've been thinking "Arthur Miller! Robert Altman! How can I go wrong?!" By producing Resurrection Blues by Arthur Miller, firstly, and then perhaps hiring Robert Altman to direct it. The play starred Addams, Neve Campbell and Matthew...Modine. Just dreadful. It had already received the worst reviews ever; a friend and I had already booked tickets. We left at intermission. We read the next day that right after the performance, Addams got in a cab, went to Heathrow and left the country. Her understudy finished the run, I would imagine.

Michael Crawford in Dance of the Vampires takes the cake. He AND the show are tied for first. The legendary Jean Arthur in a preview of The Freaking Out of Stephanie Blake turned to the audience at a matinee and said "I cannot go on." The equally lengendary producer, Cheryl Crawford, bellowed from the balcony, "Oh yes you can!"

Sarah Paulson + A Stage = Shit!

The end.

Michael Crawford in Dance of the Vampires- he looked like a Lucky Charms vampire.

Michael Crawford's make-up and wardrobe in that show were hysterical. His jaw line shadow was so pronounced you could see it from the balcony but it still didn't help his waddle. And whatever pre-Spanx girdle he wore make him look like a capon so much fat was squeezed upward towards his neck.

No one died, but the worst stage performance I've ever seen was Suzanne Sommers one-woman show. I remember at one point she wandered around stage singing in a baby voice "If I Only Had a Brain" while someone offstage playing her father insulted her. It was surreal.

Liza in Victor, Victoria.

Hands. Down.

R151, I cherish my memories of THE BLONDE IN THE THUNDERBIRD and that scene with Suzanne plaintively warbling 'If I Only Had a Brain' with the ominous rumblings of her father's threats in the background was one of many highlights from that evening.

[quote]Arte Johnson fell on stage during a dance number in "Cabaret." The curtain came down and the audience sat there for about ten minutes. Finally there was an announcement that he would continue with the show, however he stayed seated for the rest of the time and was taken off in an ambulance at the end of the show.

I saw that happen. It was in Long Beach CA.

[quote]Helen Lawson beat the living shit out of the boy playing Little Patrick Dennis in a Manhattan Theatre Club revival of Auntie Mame.

Omg, seriously? I didn't know Helen Lawson was a real actress.

Helen Lawson invented theatrical performance.

(Helen Lawson is a fictional character, very loosely based on Ethyl Merman.)

In the new DL format, we can blot out everyone who ever posts anything about Lawson, G, and M.

[quote] The play starred [...] and Matthew...Modine.

What, no role for Charlene Tilton?

[quote]"NO NO NANETTE is trivial, banal, mendacious and stupid beyond the rights of any show, however escapist, to be in this day and age." -- John Simon

What kind of fool thinks a notorious asshole's bad review of a huge hit qualifies as as a disastrous performance? Pay attention to the thread title, for pity's sake.

Didn’t Vivian Leigh have some kind of violent psychotic episode while on stage, during the run of her only musical, “Tovarich”?

A very young Elizabeth McGovern was doing a stage play (maybe MY SISTER IN THIS HOUSE?) where she was supposed to light a birthday cake on a bed. The bed caught fire. She managed to put it out while continuing her speech, but stagehands with fire extinguishers then burst on the stage.

She discusses this at the 14:00 mark

God, Jane Adams! I did a play with her. At one point she got mesmerized by the fringe on a pillow. She just blanked out and played with the fringe. She was alone on stage at the time and the stage manager had to come on stage and snap her out of it.

Has anyone mentioned Leonard Rossiter, the British actor best known for starring in the tv comedy series The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin ? He died off stage during a production of Joe Orton's Loot in 1984.

I recall him doing a commendable job as King John in the Shakespeare play in a BBC production.

By the way, when Keanu Reeves acted Hamlet at the Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg in 1995 he got favourable reviews and standing ovations.

Dick Shawn had a heart attack and collapsed on stage to the roar of the audience. As he lay immobile for 10 minutes, the audience just kept laughing and applauding. Finally the stage manager realized he wasn't acting and brought down the curtain.

Shawn possible could've been saved if he had received help sooner.

Wasn't there a performance (at the Met?) of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, where they had to bring in a different tenor for each of the three acts?

I saw Terrence McNally's "Master Class" in Boston, with Faye Dunaway as Maria Callas. Not only did she forget her lines, but the way she mispronounced the Italian phrases her character was frequently called on to say was nails-against-the-blackboard painful to the ear.

Eldergays, do any of you recall the onstage breakdown of Stephanie Mills in The Wiz?

My theater-queen uncle once regaled us kiddies with the recounting of having witnessed her having a full upstage crying fit punctuated with shrieks of "I can't take this any more!" before they escorted her offstage pulled the curtain.

He swore this happened, but I never heard anyone else who heard of it.