Ian McKellen had a slightly stronger performance than he intended this week.
The 85-year-old actor fell offstage while playing dashing knight Falstaff in Player Kings at the West End’s Noël Coward Theater on June 17 and was taken to hospital to have his hip treated. Fortunately, it is said that he has recovered and will return to his duty soon.
But acting accidents are as old as the theatrical form, and as these famous examples show, the show must go on.
Spider feels the tingling
McKellen got off relatively lightly. Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark on Broadway was billed as the most expensive musical in history, costing $75 million (£47 million at the time) to stage, but was beset by disaster from the start. Christopher Tierney, who plays Spider-Man, suffered life-threatening injuries when he fell more than 30 feet into the orchestra pit in December 2010; His replacement, Richard Kobak, was so injured during his role playing the comic book hero that he sued the producers for $6 million.
23-year-old dancer Daniel Curry suffered a crushed foot when he got stuck between the elevator and the stage in 2013. “I wondered if I was going to die. At those moments, I was praying and trying to stay as calm as possible. As alert as possible. I didn’t want to faint in case I had to respond to people trying to help me.” In surgery, about three-quarters of his foot was removed and replaced with other tissue. The show soon closed.
Similar stories happened here too. Adam Salter, actor in the flashy 2007 version of The Lord of the Rings, used the catchphrase “break your leg” almost literally when he wedged his leg between two parts of the hydraulic stage. Salter was taken to hospital after collapsing in front of 2,300 punters as the shows were cancelled. Luckily his leg wasn’t actually broken.
Is there a doctor at home?
Michael Gambon, who died last September, once struggled to get a role in Alan Bennett’s 2009 play The Habit of Art, about WH Auden and Benjamin Britten, at the National Theatre. Nicholas Hytner, the theatre’s manager, recalled receiving letters comparing Gambon’s elusiveness to the clarity of Simon Russell Beale.
Gambon’s health deteriorated during a rehearsal, Hytner said. “Suddenly his blood runs out. He staggers and falls into a chair,” Hytner wrote in his memoirs. “We call for help, an oxygen tank is rushed into the room, then a stretcher. Michael is taken out in a wheelchair, an oxygen mask on his face. One of the stage managers is with him in an ambulance to St Thomas He’s going to the hospital.
“As he is being taken to A&E he asks her if there are any messages she wants him to deliver to the rehearsal room. ‘Don’t worry about those bastards,’ she says. ‘They’re already talking to Simon Russell Beale on the phone.’” Gambon withdrew but was replaced by Richard Griffiths.
Think about your step
Laurence Olivier’s career could not have had a less auspicious start. During his first post at Brighton Hippodrome in 1925, he was repeatedly warned about the doorways of the theatre, which could create a tripping hazard. After receiving his cue, he “pushed open the canvas door and walked through it in a manly manner” and immediately stumbled on the edge of the door.
“Before I knew what was happening to me, I found my front teeth stuck in the middle of the stage lights between a pink bulb and a blue bulb,” he wrote in his 1982 memoir. “I dusted myself off, stood up, and stood winking at the audience for a while; Then he turned and winked at Ruby Miller, who was too professional to move a muscle. I once looked at the audience imploringly, but their biggest laugh in ages should not have been stolen so easily.”
Damn these prosthetics
There are more teeth now. John Vandenhoff was one of the leading Shakespearean actors of the 19th century, playing Shylock in his farewell role in The Merchant of Venice in 1858.
In the third scene of the first act, Vandenhoff began by saying “Three thousand…” before the sound of something falling on the stage, and the speech ended as soon as it began. Co-star Henry Irving recalled: “I looked at him and saw his mouth moving, but there was no sound. At that moment, my eye caught the glint of something on the stage. “I stopped to pick it up and as I picked it up I saw that it was a set of dentures.”
Irving continued: “I handed this to Shylock, holding my body between him and the audience so that no one could see the transaction. He turned away for a moment and put both hands to his face. When he turned to the audience his words came out quite forcefully and clearly: ‘Three thousand ducats – well !’ ”
Caution: slippery when wet
The elements can also damage the theater. In 1982 the National Theater staged Alan Ayckbourn’s Way Upstream, a play set on a floating cabin cruiser, to great acclaim at its premiere in Scarborough the previous year. The problems started when they moved to South Bank; especially in the new construction, which had the weight of 12 people on board, twice as much as that used in North Yorkshire. The National’s boat was kept in a 6,000-gallon tank, and eventually much of the stage machinery broke apart and got wet, leading to the cancellation of previews. Not taking any risks, critic Jack Tinker arrived at opening night wearing a pair of Wellington boots.