| I took part in an opera performance on par with "A Night at the Opera" Marx Brothers film | |
| Last Edit: PlayWiz 03:09 am EST 12/21/17 | |
| Posted by: PlayWiz 03:02 am EST 12/21/17 | |
| In reply to: What are the 'best' onstage mishaps that you've seen in live theater? - GrumpyMorningBoy 10:15 am EST 12/20/17 | |
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| I was part of a rather hilarious “performance from hell” of an opera I was performing in years ago. It was Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” with the arias in Italian and the recitative in English. I was playing Doctor Bartolo, a stick-in-the-mud older doctor and ward of Rosina and my costume had me in a fat suit and a bald wig, with another wig with hair on top of that with a skull cap attached. It was meant at one point for Figaro to remove the skull cap, and thus revealing comically the bald wig on me. However, since I was moving around during the act, the costumer had placed two bobby pins on either side in the wig to steady it, but which later in the act I was to move and turn upstage and secretly remove the bobby pins. But, they were stuck – I couldn’t get them out. I returned to the chair where I was supposed to be in my blocking where Figaro starts to shave me with a basin on my lap filled with shaving cream. At the right point, he starts to grab the top wig by the skull cap, but since the bobby pins were still there, he not only yanked out the wig with the skull cap, but also pulled the bald wig right off, revealing my very youthful thick head of hair. I could hear the costumer (the conductor’s wife) in the wings call out “Oh my God!” I ad-libbed by immediately tossing the basin with shaving cream over my head to try to have some shaving cream cover up my hair and continued singing and doing the blocking for the rest of the scene with Figaro. As I made my exit, as there was some dialogue, I added an ad-lib to my exit line “….and I’m going to get a new wig-maker!” Got a big laugh. That wasn’t all. For one thing, the very cute tenor’s moustache kept falling off and hitting the floor, and he kept trying to reattach it on stage. This must have happened about 4 or 5 times (at least when I could see him). Another time in the show, I’m singing and saying some dialogue directed downstage and I'm supposed to be unaware that Figaro is upstage of me, and Rosina and the tenor are making kissing noises right behind me. I have some line about “birds in the theater” about the sounds they are making, and when I turn around, the Figaro had gotten so close to me, that my lips literally were on the bridge of his nose kissing him! At least I was supposed to be outraged by his presence, and since the guy playing Figaro started laughing uproariously, I just got angrier and angrier in character. It was very funny though – the audience ate it up. There were some missed cues, and things were dropping throughout the performance – I mean it was almost out of a “A Night at the Opera” – we didn’t need the Marx Brothers to mess things up. While “The Barber of Seville” is a comedy, it became a farce that night! |
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