Live performance
Paul Whelan being hauled from the stalls to the wings of the ENO the other night to sing Raimondo in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, while Clive Bayley who had lost his voice mimed on stage, is a reminder of how fraught live performance can be. It can all get worse than drying, falling over the furniture and breasts bursting from cleavage. There was a Dutch production of Grease where the car with the lead lovers Danny and Sandy drove into the orchestra pit. One was concussed, the other had a broken arm but the musicians were all right. I remember Stephen Moore dangling from wires centre stage at the National Theatre for a quarter-of-an hour as he failed to fly in Peter Pan. He quipped about it being quicker by tube. Judi Dench as Cleopatra - was it again at the National - got her robe ripped to bits by a lump of set, but womanfully, and half-naked, went on about having immortal longings in her. The stage caught fire on the press night of The History Boys in 2004 and apparently that year too a lump of ceiling but not the chandelier fell on the stalls’ audience at the Haymarket in When Harry Met Sally.