Friday, December 22, 2006

Hair Raising!

Considering that "Beauty & The Beast" is an enourmous show with a big cast, tons of props and costumes and numerous complex scene changes involving two different pieces of a moving stage, very little has actually gone wrong. Last night, however, was doozy.

At the top of Act II, Belle is running through the forest when the wolves set upon her and the Beast arrives to save her. During the wolf fight, one of the wolves accidentally pulled off the Beast's wig, leaving him with just the beast mask and the actor's very, very, short hair. There was nothing they could do but go on with the scene.

So, when Mrs. Potts, Lumiere and I enter, we were a bit stunned since we couldn't see what had occured. My first thought was, "Who's that guy with Belle?".

The Beast was a rock and was determined to continue to play the scene as though nothing was wrong until he had a moment to get offstage to have his hair replaced. Lumiere, on the other hand, could barely keep it together. Everytime I looked into his eyes, I could see that the slightest little thing might just send him into a giggle fit.

This torture dragged on for a good 10 minutes until the Beast, finally, managed to quickly run off stage during a scene and get re-haired. Then, however, I had the unenviable task of singing the lyrics, "Perhaps there's something there that wasn't there before", at which point I though Lumiere was going to explode. And Mrs. Potts had to repeat those lyrics ..... TWICE!!!

We couldn't wait to get off stage and break loose.

The magic of live theatre.

No comments: