Fluffing lines can be dead funny

By Lesley Hart

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SPEAK then to me, who neither beg nor fear your favours nor your hate” was what I should have said. But what came out was, “Speak then to me who neither beg nor hate (gasp) … your favours nor your hate”.

Between the gasp and the end of the line, my thoughts were, “Oh, no! I’ve fluffed it – should have said ‘fear’, not ‘hate’ … think, think – what do I say now? I can’t say ‘hate’ again – that’ll sound ridiculous – but what’ll I say instead? Aaah – quick, quick, time’s running out – oh, sod it, I’ll just say it”: “… your favours nor your hate”.

It was an honest mistake, and one so common in live theatre that you come to measure your skill as an actor by how well you recover from such inevitable blunders. On this occasion, however, (Wednesday night, Lochgoilhead, playing Banquo in Mull Theatre’s Macbeth) I didn’t recover well at all, and in fact, nearly corpsed myself, Macbeth and the witches.

In the lexicon of theatrical jargon, “corpsing” denotes the uncontrolled and inappropriate laughter of actors during performance. Its origin is officially unknown, but thought variously to derive from actors trying to make other actors laugh when they’re playing dead or from the idea that breaking out of character and laughing “kills” the scene, or from delivering cod lines over dead bodies in shoddy murder mystery plays.

Actor Roy Kinnear apparently beat his head against a wall offstage each night to fend off the hilarity of having to announce “Someone must have got him as he bent over the wood box” in an Agatha Christie play.

Stories of corpsing abound in theatre, and beyond. Earlier this year, Charlotte Green completely lost it live on Radio 4 after hearing the first ever recording of a human voice. A member of staff apparently whispered in her ear, “sounds like a bee buzzing in a bottle”, sending her into fits of giggles. She then giggled all the way through the next item: the obituary of scriptwriter Abby Mann.

The things that make you laugh during live performance can be anything from a fluff of lines to a breaking of wind (in fact, nine times out of 10 it’s one or the other). They may not always be funny out of context, but it is the fact that you can’t, and mustn’t, laugh that makes them so funny on stage.

LAUGHTER is most infectious when least appropriate, because the underlying premise of human nature is deeply comic. That is why trying not to laugh is intrinsically the funniest thing you can do.

To get back to Wednesday night in Lochgoilhead: I’m on stage playing my first scene as Banquo, addressing the witches, played by Sarah (who could be a real witch – the jury’s still out) and facing upstage, while she, poor soul, has to look downstage at me and face the audience. I fluff the line and, on saying “hate” for a second time, Sarah’s eyes flash. I can see she’s clocked the fluff and she can see that I can see that she has seen.

So instead of looking away and plugging the dam that’s about to break, I do a very naughty thing and pull a face that says, “Whoops! ... Get a load of that then”.

Sarah winces, casts her eyes inside the hood of her witchy cloak, gulps and carries on with the next few lines until the blessed moment when she can disappear into her little hatch on the set.

On the last of her lines, I can hear a little rise and titter in her voice, then she shuts the doors on herself, trapping the train of her witchy cloak in the hatch, only to wheech it out again seconds later, much to my rising glee.

SOMEHOW, we all managed to cover and recover from this momentary fit, but not without a struggle. With the rest of the scene to play, I had to start thinking about tax bills, Robert Mugabe and getting sacked to quell the giggles, and though I was on a knife edge for a minute or two, it kind of worked.

Put it this way, it could have been much worse. On a previous production of Macbeth, the guy who played Banquo (who also directed the fight scenes in our show) appeared one night in the wings in his dressing gown, with pipe in hand – as is his wont – to scream like a Greek chorus at the point of Lady Macbeth’s death.

Unfortunately, he had only been directed to add the scream earlier that day, and no one else in the cast had been told. So when this wild, operatic belter of a scream came to an end, the rest of the cast – most of whom could see him in the wings – totally creased themselves, openly howling on stage throughout the rest of the play.

Other corpse hazards include stuttering, fluffing, drying, Malapropisms and outright pranks. If you happen to trip, fall or break anything on stage, the biggest worry is not getting hurt but that you might kill yourself laughing.

Flatulence is to corpsing what methane is to a flame. I’ve experienced it many times – at least twice on this tour (not from me, I hasten to add) – and it never fails to test one’s acting mettle.

All kinds of psychological tricks and deflections are used to fend off the onstage giggle fit. Usually, they work, but occasionally they don’t, and when the floodgates open, torrents of unbidden laughter can spill out.

I know of two Scottish actresses who giggled all the way through the first scene of Much Ado About Nothing (I know not why) until the director finally stopped the show, reset and made them start again. Kenneth Branagh and Dame Judi Dench are also known to have been kicked out of rehearsals for giggling uncontrollably on a production of Ibsen’s Ghosts.

No actor wants to lose control or make mistakes, or to “kill” the scene by laughing, and if you do corpse, it is vital to regain your composure instantly, or as quickly as humanly possible. Having said that, a little hysteria now and again can’t hurt you none, and so long as you do recover, the odd corpse on stage can be dead good fun.