Make ’em Laugh

So there I was in the Opera House at the Kennedy Center, watching a Saturday matinee of Hairspray, enjoying John Pinette (Edna) getting romantic with Stephen DeRosa (Wilbur) in “You’re Timeless to Me.” Suddenly, Pinette wheeled around and said to DeRosa, “Carry me upstairs.” It’s a great joke because Pinette is a big as a House of Representatives, and the slim DeRosa would soon be a big truss customer if he did as Pinette asked. But the three previous times I’d seen Hairspray, I don’t think I heard either Harvey Fierstein or Michael McKean say the line. Was it an ad-lib?

DeRosa seemed to take it as such. Immediately following, he turned his face to the curtain to hide the fact that he was uncontrollably laughing. Though he tried hard to get back into character, the line was just too funny, and he couldn’t do anything but let it play out. Or could he? I guess I could have gone back on Saturday night to see if Pinette would say the line again and also to see if DeRosa would once more break up. Most of us who’ve been going to the theater for a while would doubt that what I saw was happening for the first time; we’ve seen this gambit again and again.

Ah, the planned “spontaneous” breakup! When and where did it all begin? Maybe in 405 B.C., when an actor in the original cast of Aristophanes’ The Frogs ad-libbed during rehearsal, causing the actors to crack up and the director to demand, “Leave it in!” In The Season, William Goldman’s landmark book about the 1967-68 theatrical year, he makes two references to an actor ad-libbing and his castmate spinning out-of -control. First, Eddie Fisher and Buddy Hackett at the Palace: “They ad-libbed some more and Hackett is so riotous, he keeps breaking Fisher up. Fisher simply cannot keep a straight face. Hackett is so fresh and original Fisher gasps, giggles, and staggers around helpless.” Next, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme in Golden Rainbow: “She seems to laugh, suddenly, out-of-control, and Lawrence stops and grins, and waits for her to get control, and the audience is delighted at seeing the two of them so loose and having such fun up there on stage.”

But, as Goldman went on to write about Hackett and Fisher, “It’s all vegetarian chopped liver phony because there’s a whole orchestra on stage behind them, and during all of Hackett’s ‘ad-libs,’ the boys in the band just sit there deadpan, not one of them so much as even starting to smile. They’ve been there already.” As for Gorme, he branded her a “phony” as well: “Eydie could giggle; her television experience had taught her that, so twice in the show she does her break-up.”

How well I remember when I saw Half a Sixpence at the July 21,1965 Wednesday matinee. During the production number “If The Rain’s Got to Fall,” a straw boater hat suddenly fell off a dancer’s head and onto the Broadhurst stage. It just sat there until mid-number, when star Tommy Steele, during one of his spins around the stage, picked it up and Frisbee’d it over to the performer who’d lost it. As the actor replaced the hat on his head, he nodded in thanks and we all applauded in ecstasy. Months later, my buddy Jimmy MacDonald went to see Half a Sixpence and reported afterwards, “The most amazing thing happened at my performance! A dancer lost his hat in the middle of a number and, a little later, Tommy Steele managed to pick it up and toss it to him without missing a step.” For me, it was the theatrical equivalent of finding out that there’s no Santa Claus.

This bit became such an important moment in Half a Sixpence that in 1978, when the American Dance Machine did an evening of exciting Broadway numbers, they included “If the Rain’s Got to Fall” with the hat trick. Some years later, when my buddy Josh Ellis told me he so loved Half a Sixpence at a Saturday matinee that he ran to the box office right after the performance and bought a ticket for that night, I said, “You must have been the person who learned the truth the fastest — in less than six hours time.” Josh looked sheepish and said, “I must have been very young and very naive. When the fellow lost his hat at the evening performance, I thought, ‘That poor guy. Messing up twice on one day. What are the chances of that? I hope he doesn’t get fired.’ I didn’t fully realize it was part of Onna White’s choreography until I saw the national company in Philadelphia. When the chorus boy lost his skimmer, that’s when the light went on in my head.”

But here’s the thing: The Hairspray audience went wild with glee when DeRosa lost it. Every time I’ve seen a performer break character and break up laughing, the audience has adored this supposed meltdown. Doing live theater is a high-wire act, whereas there are no mistakes or ad-libs in movies and taped TV shows. True, Carol Burnett did this sort of thing, but her show was taped in front of a live audience. True also that “bloopers” are sometimes included at the end of films and TV series episodes. Clearly, people love to see the humanity of an actor making a mistake or dissolving in helpless laughter.

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