Carefully Planned?

Remember my recent experience watching Hairspray in Washington? John Pinette’s Edna ad-libbed “Carry me upstairs” to Stephen DeRosa’s Wilbur during “You’re Timeless to Me.” DeRosa lost it, broke character, giggled, and turned away from the stage, much to the audience’s delight. I was skeptical that the moment wasn’t carefully planned, and Ron Fassler wrote to agree with me: “I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that the ‘ad lib’ was phony. Most are.

“However, my buddy David Garrison told me of a real one that happened when he was in A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine. When the Margaret Dumont character rang a bell to summon a servant, the clapper fell out and hit the floor with a thud. In a nanosecond, Garrison as Groucho Marx said: ‘I told you if you played with it long enough, it would fall off.’ The line stopped the show, and neither player could continue. Garrison claims to this day that he doesn’t know how he came up with the line, but he thinks the ghost of Groucho came down and gave it to him. The actors were tempted to put it in the show permanently but resisted. I’m not sure if they consulted management, but I’d say that wiser heads prevailed; the ‘planned spontaneity’ of an ad-lib in the theater is wrong.”

Christopher Totten wrote about what happened when he saw Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: “Not long after John Lithgow had established that he has an expensive jeweled ring, we in the audience heard a clank-bounce-bounce-clank-clank. Lithgow stopped in his tracks and said, ‘I believe I’ve lost my jewels.’ As the audience roared, Lithgow and co-star Norbert Leo Butz looked as if they were desperately trying not to break character while searching for the ring. The best part was that, after the show continued, Lithgow referenced the incident twice more. A seasoned actor knows that good comedy comes in threes.”

Many readers who attended The Producers in L.A. multiple times wrote to say that Jason Alexander used to pretend to crack up at the same line that Martin Short would throw him eight times a week. But only John Conti reported on seeing one of Beverly Sills’ final performances (in The Barber of Seville) in Boston. “She stood on a balcony,” he wrote, “removed a note from her bosom, trilled to her lover, and then dropped it to him on stage. But the note went over her lover’s head and into the orchestra pit. Hundreds of eyes darted to Sills, the feeling of ‘uh-oh’ palpable. Sills smiled slyly at the audience, tucked her thumb and forefinger back into her breast, and plucked out a back-up copy, which she held up with a little flourish. The audience went crazy. As the note fell into her lover’s hands, her second trill was met with thunderous applause and great delight. I’ll try not to think of this as the time I got taken by Beverly Sills, but file it under ‘Suspension of Disbelief.’ ”

Steve Lieberman wrote: “In 1975, I saw Liza (Minnelli) sub for Gwen (Verdon) in Chicago. After Chita (Rivera) did that amazing ‘When Velma Takes the Stand,’ Liza broke character and encouraged the audience to cheer. I assumed this was an ad-lib that day. Do you know if she did it at every performance?” No, Steve I don’t. But I will tell you that I attended Chicago many times and, after that number, Ann Reinking would always say “It stinks” to Lenora Nemetz, as the script dictated. But on Nemetz’s last night in the show, Reinking said, “That was really good.”

Every now and then, of course, an ad-lib is the real thing. Rob Bullock wrote, “The Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis is a converted church. When they did Urinetown, during the scene when Hope and Bobby are becoming acquainted, a bat swooped over the stage. The audience thought it was part of the show, but when the bat kept returning, they realized it wasn’t. The actors got nervous because they knew that the actress playing Hope (Emily Ristine — remember that name ) is deathly afraid of bats. Just as she put her head on Bobby’s chest to listen to his heart, the bat took a dive right at her; but she didn’t flinch, and when Bobby asked ‘What is my heart telling you?’, she didn’t miss a beat. She said, ‘I don’t know, that bat flew right at me. But ask me again.’ The crowd went crazy and the actors sighed with relief.”

Interesting stories all. So, I daresay, is this one. Last week, while I was walking north on Eighth Avenue, I saw a heavy-set guy wearing a Hairspray baseball cap walking south. It was John Pinette, who is now playing Edna on Broadway. Let’s see what he had to say about his ad-lib and whether or not DeRosa really cracked up. “I’m Peter Filichia,” I said — to which he replied with delight, “Peter Filichia.” Ah, I thought, he reads TheaterMania, or at least he was shown the column that I wrote about him. But no. He said, “You’re the guy who wrote Games, right?” I was stunned. Games was a play I wrote for high schoolers in 1973 that won the New England Drama Festival. It won not because the play itself was good but because the production was great. Pinette then said, “I was performing in another play in the festival and you came back afterwards and told me, ‘I just have to let you know how terrific you are. You’re going to be a big star.’ And it meant so much to me that the guy who wrote Games said that to me.”

Who expected that? I was so bowled over by the coincidence that when Pinette told me that he does try to do something different at every performance in hopes of cracking up DeRosa, I didn’t even have the presence of mind to ask if DeRosa lost it after the line “Carry me upstairs.” But I think we know the answer, don’t you?

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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@theatermania.com]