When Theatre Goes Wrong

The theatre Boxes that move on and off to form the Opera House stage in The Phantom of the Opera are masked off with huge black serge drapes when they're off stage. Sometimes the boxes have been known to catch on the drapes on their way on causing much visual disturbance and stopping the boxes from moving on, or halting them completely half on/half off.
The drapes that reveal the proscenium during the Overture also get snagged and stuck fairly regularly, so much so that's almost part of the show now.

We'll try not to mention too much about Groundhog Day's run on Broadway that encountered so many show stops they probably had more shows with issues than hitch-free performances. Was it the first preview where the revolve(s) stopped working to the point, they eventually decided to continue with just a concert version, un-staged. Would love to read the SMs show reports for that run - it's probably in chronicles.

I saw Man Vs Superman with Ralph Fiennes at NT. There was a little cabinet/table with glasses/decanters on it that came up to the stage from below.

The lift(?) bringing it up to the stage kinda violently snapped into position. And all the glasses and stuff just shattered/flew across the stage a bit. Lots of broken glass everywhere.

Actors were like D:
and there was a curtain call for 5 mins. 😅

I've seen a Goes Wrong show properly Going Wrong, when Dave Hearn dislocated his shoulder in the middle of Act 1 of The Play That Goes Wrong back in March 2019. They had to stop the show but most of the audience thought that it was part of the show. Being the original cast, they did style it out pretty brilliantly. Rob Falconer was Max u/s as well as playing Trevor so he had to swap roles but he still played it as Trevor, so for the only time ever we got Cecil Haversham done with a Norther accent rather than RP. Len Cook took over as Trevor but playing him as his stagehand characer Phil. Henry Shields did a speech in character to explain this. Much as seeing someone getting injured isn't a good thing, the way they worked round it made it one of the best Mischief performances I've ever seen.

Also a couple of good ones from The Comedy About A Bank Robbery. Once with the original cast the wall scene had to be cancelled at the very last minute as the bungee cord that Warren uses broke. Greg Tannahil, Henry Shields, Dave Hearn Charlie Russell had already started the vent scene when they're all lined up across the front stage so they improvised among themselves for a bit before evidently getting signalled from the wings to get off & the show proceded minus a scene. Goodness knows what those seeing it for the first time made of the rest of the plot. The second TCAABR one was when Laurence Pears, playing Cooper, injured his arm when doing Cooper's death drop & had to be sent to hospital to be stitched up. Therefore Mike Bodie had to do Cooper's final brief appearance but didn't do it as Cooper, instead changing the line to "This is Simon, and Deborah, and Cooper's over there". Improvisors are the best people for getting round show problems!

The worst non-Mischief one I've seen was in Lend Me A Tenor (the musical rather than the play). There was a scene where Michael Matus tossed Damien Humbley a bottle of wine. At one performance they got their timing/positioning off so Damien dropped it, the bottle smashed (I was sitting front row & could feel the force of the smash) & Damien fell on top of it. It quickly became apparent that it wasn't safety glass but real glass, as through the rest of the scene his shirt sleeves got increasingly bloodstained. I was expecting the show to be stopped & an understudy take over but he kept going, got temporarily patched up the next time he was off stage & managed to finish the show before being taken to hospital to be patched up properly. Amazing dedication.

By comparison with the above incidents, the various show stops I've seen over the years for technical reasons have all been pretty dull!

Also - witches didn't fly in "Witches of Eastwick".

Sweet Charity at the Royal Exchange used mirrors descending from the ceiling for the nightclub setting, but one of the mirrors got stuck. One of the women had to mime putting on makeup and getting ready in a mirror that wasn't there. Halfway through the scene the show was stopped to try to free the mirror, but they couldn't so carried on without using the flies. All this was during the song Big Spender. It's the only mistake I've seen that has ever annoyed me.

Another time the set went a bit wrong was Merrily We Roll Along at Theatr Clwyd. There was a circular bench wheeled on, which musn't have had the brakes on properly because it started slowly rolling toward the front row, and got quite far before Simon Thomas (Franklin) noticed, and went chasing after it, shouting "whoa!" as he grabbed it.

In The Pajama Game at the Shaftesbury Theatre, there was a scene where Joanna Ridings was chopping something with a knife, then left Michael Xavier alone on stage. The knife fell off the counter and got stuck in the stage right in front of Michael Xavier's foot with a really loud twanging sound. He looked out at the audience and wiped his brow with a "phew". I was never quite sure if that was a mistake or part of the show though. Did it happen any other time?

I had a similar feeling of not knowing if something was intentional or not at Fiddler on the Roof at the Everyman in Liverpool. It was done in the round so the cast were using the same aisles as the audience. As Dean Nolan was entering down the steps just to my left he fell flat on the floor. (I saw it a second time and he did it then too, so obviously part of the show.) I think it was supposed to show the character as clumsy. It was a horrible moment though because people think he's really hurt. I was close though so I could sort of make out that he had elbow pads on. But what made me question that the first time was the drops of blood appearing on the sleeve of his shirt.

In a weird way I kind of enjoy it when an actor breaks character. I remember seeing Billy Liar at the Royal Exchange one afternoon and there was a guy in the audience who was laughing at everything with a really loud "haaaaaaaar haaaaaaaar haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" And just for a second or two Harry McEntire got distracted and broke out in this huge grin. He recovered straight away, but it's always made me really like him. (Man with the booming laugh was also heard at Rough Crossing a few months back. It wasn't hard to hear him as he was pretty much the only person laughing for most of it.)

During The Ruling Class, when James McAvoy was dressed as a monk and facing the audience, someone's phone went off. He said "are you the second coming? Because this happened last night too."

I remember Lucy Briers taking a rather spectacular slide in Top Girls at Trafalgar Studios. It was after the food fight when they get up to leave, except Pope Joan's legs went skywards!
She did land with a thud but I don't think any serious damage done.

Billy Elliot where the screen that showed the newsreel failed to fall properly at the start and was draped over half the stage and the little kid who was watching it. Show had to be restarted.
Priscilla at the Palace early in the run when the bus refused to work. We were kept outside for ages then when they let us in explained they were going to work around it and we got a full refund too. Similarly Joseph at the Adelphi. Act 2 late starting and frantic activity around auditorium then announcement that the set wasn't working so act 2 would be performed concert style. Again a full refund!

Oh another one

At Company, Jennifer Saayeng covered for Rosalie Craig and sang every note of Being Alive off-key

Considering the large amount of plays/musicals I've seen over the last 20 plus years, very few spring to mind. I'll discount Pantos as often "deliberate" mistakes are put in.

Only once have I seen a show need to be stopped and an Understudy bought on that was during a performance of Hay Fever when Stephanie Beacham had a migraine which suddenly got worse. Stephanie had come to her line and had put her hand up and said something like "Sorry, I've got a migraine which has just got worse, I cannot really carry on and think it's better if the understudy took over". She was clearly distressed and one of the male leads stepped in and said to the audience "Sorry again, we'll need to reset". The lady covering Stephanie was playing a servant so she had to change costumes and the understudy covering the ensemble prepared. The Company Manager came out and explained what was happening, who was changing roles and that the show would pick up at a suitable place just prior to where Stephanie had had to pull out.

Ironically in another Coward play Present Laughter one of the actresses lost a shoe coming down the staircase.

In a Brian Rix type farce doing a summer Rep season, one actor had to swing a piece of string to try and lasso it over a beam, he was supposed to miss once then get it. But missed several times, prompting jokes from his cast members and him saying to the audience "Who wants to have a go".

At the recent tour of Ghost the sound system couldn’t handle how loud the mics were turned up, so started crackling towards the end of act 1. Show stopped and took about 15 mins for them to get the backup sound ready.

The Matilda tour was all kinds of weird. Stage manager appears in the middle of Miracle and tells the cast to get off stage. Curtain down. We wait 20 mins and it starts up again. Then after School Song it stops for the second time, and we wait like 45 minutes until they go from the classroom scene onward.

I have no idea what was wrong with Matilda but I’d imagine it’s due to sets

I have has the horrible experience of that happening twice. The first was many years ago at Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf when midway through the first act, somebody called out from the circle 'is there a doctor in the house', it's such an overused cliche that for a moment I think people thought it was a joke or those who hadn't seen the play previously, part of the action. It was handled majestically by the actors and the theatre staff.

More recently somebody collapsed during Network at the NT which was handled so shoddily by all concerned it was embarassing. They laid the individual on the floor between two rows of seats after announcing that the house lights were coming on. All the actors scarpered off stage like they thought it was a fire drill (at WAOVW, they stayed on stage). I was actually riven with anxiety for the affected person who was on that, let's be honest, filthy floor and trapped between those two rows of seats with the added bonus of people now leering at them from above. NT staff appeared and hovered around doing precisely nothing but of course were additionally hampered by how the person had been positioned. What I think were first aid kits were unopened Eventually someone appeared on stage and said an ambulance had been called and we would take a break of at least 30 minutes and then recommence. We were about 20/25 minutes from end. Sadly I had to leave as the delay could have been much longer and I couldn't stay. Horrible experience, I still shudder when I think of that poor soul on the floor.