Last night we couldn't have bought a laugh from the audience. A laugh here and there but mostly crickets....it was disconcerting.
Even the doctor sketch ("a dead person would laugh at that sketch") was greeted with mostly silence. Scary.
I dropped two lines.....and Willie decided to ad lib to liven things up, which it didn't. In answer to my question: "Where do you live?" Instead of replying "Mt. Sinai Hospital" he decided to use the name of a local hospital "Methodist Hospital" instead.....
Many, many years ago, the Guthrie Theater did a production of Skin of Our Teeth. I loved it, and saw it many times, but it was a disaster for the theater, I think, and between the first and last acts usually half the audience had left.
Two actors... the one playing the father and another guy whose role I don't precisely remember anymore - not Cain, had a little schtick going in one scene, a lot of clever repartee, and they invariably changed their lines each night. I used to go see it just to see what they were going to do next with that scene (and also just out of curiousity to see if there was ever a night when half the audience DIDN'T walk out...but they always did.)
And now 20 years later I can't even remember the details....just the vague outlines and the fact that I thought it was hilarious.... god it sucks to get old. Actually, it sucks to not have had the nerve to make a bootleg copy of the production... not that I'd have had the knowledge to do so back then...