Caught in the Act

I was privileged to witness a lavish Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ Night of the Iguana, in which they had created a lush tropical jungle onstage. There was a much-acclaimed rainstorm scene, where thousands of jets of water pelted down on the actors, dramatically served up with thunderclaps and a zig-zag lightening effect. Suddenly, halfway through, a nozzle shifted position, drenching two bejewelled matrons in the front row, with unerring accuracy.

I will never forget the sight of those two elderly dowagers, soaking wet, shaking their fists at the befuddled actors, and uttering shrieks that would have put Maria Callas to shame. Needless to say, the play fell apart after that.

During a production of Julius Caesar, two of the conspirators, played by Joseph Mahar and John Tillinger, were about to murder Caesar, daggers at the ready, when the stage manager’s phone rang just offstage, and was heard throughout the auditorium. In a misguided attempt to retrieve the situation, Mahar said in a low Elizabethan growl, "What shall we do if it is for Caesar?" You can imagine the outcome. Henry Miller was back in Pittsburg, playing in The Great Divide, a show that had originally been panned by the local critics.

He was still smarting from the earlier reviews, so, when in the middle of his big love scene, he heard some of the audience members moving towards the exit, he stopped and came to the front of the stage.

"Get back to your seats," he raged, "you have already insulted me once, the last time I played this oversized smudge-pot, and I won’t let you do it again!"

Some of the people did as they were told, but a few moments later, when others rose and tried to leave, Miller began screaming, "Knaves and Varlets!" When his co-star grabbed his sleeve: "Stop acting like a jackass, Henry," she said, "the theatre is on fire."

Jimmy Durante was starring in Jumbo, a 1936 extravaganza. One night, Tuffy, the elephant, forgot that he had been toilet-trained, and proceeded to decorate the stage with a mark of his own. Durante got the greatest launch of the evening when he turned around and said, "Hey Tuffy, no ad-libbing!" Oscar Wilde once said, "The play was a great success, but the audience was a total failure." Strangely enough, this little bit of buck-passing does occasionally hold true. On one occasion, a touring company took Oliver Twist to a small town in Massachusetts.

When the curtain fell, the audience retained their seats for several minutes, till the stage manager appeared before the curtain and said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, I wish to inform you that the play has terminated. As all the principal characters are dead, it cannot, of course, go on." The audience members reluctantly cleared the hall.

A California rustic, who was apparently not used to theatrical gimmickry, went one night to see The Robbers. When the shooting commenced, he flung himself under his seat, much to the amusement of the audience, and only resurfaced when the smoke had cleared. He retained his seat till the climactic stabbing scene, when he uttered a howl of terror, and made a break for the door, knocking down an usher, and vanished, screaming, into the night.

I recently saw a videotape of famous German Operatic goof-ups. The most memorable occured during a production of Tosea. The ensemble had apparently been driven to distraction by the leading lady’s star tantrums, and had decided to play a joke on her. In her climactic death scene, she sings her aria and then casts herself off the battlements of a castle, presumably to fall on a thick feather mattress hidden by the ramparts.

Unknown to the Diva, the cast had substituted a trampoline for the mattress, so after her suicidal jump, the audience was treated to the sight of her head and massive bosom repeatedly bouncing up and down from behind the wall, accompanied by very alive’ shrieks of fury. Ah, the joys of live performance…

Sohrab Ardeshir is a theatre actor.