Breaking Character.

I don't know why people are up in tithers about this, especially in a show like Chicago.

Wendy Williams has recently done Chicago and her entrance line was her famous "how you doin'?" which is her daytime TV shtick.

I've seen multiple final performances of actresses in Chicago, and they ALWAYS break out of character. On Ute's last show ('98!) Ruthie, in a British accent says, "I would sure like to see that last bit again!" and they do an encore of I Can't Do It Alone.

The two ladies from the Vienna production of Chicago temporarily did a stint in London before Chita Rivera and Valarie Pittiford took over, and on the last matinee, the chorus boys did "When Velma Takes the Stand" in German.

I also saw Ruthie's last on Broadway and there was a lot of improv.

This is something that is not out of the ordinary on a performer's last day. I think the reality is, the outrage was from a bunch of elitist theatre fans who are completely unwelcoming to an "outsider". If this was a bona fide theatre actress, this wouldn't be news. Notice how the outrage is also from people who were not in attendance at the show, but rather from people who just heard about this.

They should remember they are there because they are being paid to play a character, not to promote their own material.
Incidently i couldn't watch more than ten seconds of that video above as I just wanted to punch that irritating presenter

I think people forget to put things into context. The producers have been so happy to compromise the quality and integrity of the show with their stunt casting. Secondly, this was her last show-- she's kept it together for her entire run.

The West End has a tradition of muck up matinees whenever a cast changes or when a show is closing, so I don't know why we're being so narrow minded about this. Fans expect a little something special and off script on a performer's last show- especially Chicago.

You realize it was one line, right? She goes into "so here's the story from A to Z"..which is really not such a huge deviation from the opening lines of Roxy's monologue, essentially she is going to get into her story from beginning to end.

Roxie Hart would absolutely sing 'Wannabe' because that's exactly what she is. A wannabe who will do anything to keep her name in the papers.

I don't think Daniel was restricting the discussion to Chicago though. We were talking about this in the La Cage thread yesterday because John Partridge is doing it every night it seems. 

Funny Girl, with the moustache and the "oops I just walked into the wall (again)" business. 
I agree Emi and we're going to look like killjoys again but fir me that's kind of disrespecting the audience. 

Oops! Too late!

I'm in agreement, especially about the Funny Girl scenes. The mustache especially took me so much out of the performance, that it stopped being an enjoyable number, and just became annoying to watch. Actually, at the show I saw, Sheridan did corpse (it looked genuine), during the 'You Are Woman, I Am Man' scene. She bounced rather awkwardly on Chris Peluso's knee, whilst they were on the chaise lounge, and she dropped her head, started to crack up, and then couldn't stop. They finished the scene whilst both giggling slightly (which set the audience off, and in turn, made them laugh even more!), kissed and the set darkened...... and then there was a set problem! The sheer curtain, supposed to draw over them, got stuck, and they ended up kissing for waaaay longer than I think they expected, and then just had to get up and scurry off in the semi-dark. 

The house brought down the safety curtain, and there was an announcement that the show would continue shortly. The problem was, we were no more than 4-5 minutes away from the interval anyway (only Don't Rain On My Parade to go), and people started to dash out to the toilets, hoping to get there whilst they fixed the technical problem. This led to the ushers having to march around to tell everyone to go back to their seats - utterly disastrous! They performed the Act 1 finale as normal, once the curtain was back up (10 minutes later) and then had the interval as usual. Bit of a giant mess, not really helped by the fact that the corpsing had totally messed up the last scene we saw. I had presumed that that scene was a genuine corpse moment, but I would be extremely cross to discover performances where it was 'planted' to get audience laughs.

Happened in Throughly Modern Millie UK tour when I saw the matinee in Liverpool a few weeks ago. Fake corpsing....