That reminds me of a performance of THE MOUSETRAP in which I was playing Christopher. If you don't know the play, the actor playing the Inspector arrives on skis to a snowbound inn full of guests and proceeds to speak for several pages to the entire rest of the cast about the reason for being there (There's a killer on the loose). It's a long scene full of extremely necessary exposition.
So, one night, this actor makes the entrance and we're all assembled around the set for the long speech and it becomes apparent that the Inspector had no idea where she was (the role was played by a woman in this production, which is a topic for another day), had lost her place in the speech and was circling round and round trying to find a foothold in the text to pull out of her misery and go forward. And not a single one of us on stage could do a damn thing to help her because every fact and piece of information in this speech is something that no other character could possibly know or guess. We all started stealing sidelong glances at each other as we all tried to think of a way to help.
Luckily, she was able to find a familiar place and escape the whirlpool and go on. And I'm sure the giant exhale on the stage from the rest of us was probably audible from the first row. The rest of that scene was all of us collectively trying to figure out what, if any, important information had gotten skipped and how to re-insert it later. |
