This is an excerpt from a previous posting...
http://theatre.revstan.com/2012/03/hay-fever-and-the-comic-moment-even-coward-couldnt-write.html#more
03/02/2012
Hay Fever and the comic moment even Coward couldn't write
It sounds like a criticism, and it isn't, but the funniest moment in Hay Fever at the Noel Coward Theatre on Tuesday evening the result of a lady sitting who happened to be sitting on the front row.
On stage Jeremy Northam's Richard Greatham is being seduced by Lindsay Duncan's Judith Bliss. They get closer and closer and then Greatham, succumbing to her attentions, suddenly kisses Judith on the neck. Cue a surprised and loud 'oh' from said lady audience member.
I think a hundred pairs of eyes, mine included, snapped towards her direction simultaneously bursting into laughter and we weren't the only ones. On stage Northam was fighting very hard to stifle his own giggles, fighting very hard, while Duncan stoically delivered her lines but even there the concentration was perceptible.
Eventually the laughter died down and the actors found their footing again but it was one of those priceless moments you are only ever going to get with a live performance and it made the evening, which again sounds slightly negative about the play but isn't. I really enjoyed Hay Fever.
All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt. (Charles M. Schulz)
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