Forgetting Lines, Falling in Flippers and Flying Offstage! Mamma Mia! Alum Remember Favorite Onstage Mishaps | Playbill

News Forgetting Lines, Falling in Flippers and Flying Offstage! Mamma Mia! Alum Remember Favorite Onstage Mishaps Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Catherine Johnson' international hit musical Mamma Mia! played its 5,773rd and final Broadway performance at the Broadhurst Theatre Sept. 12. Celebrating almost 14 years of Broadway success, cast members from the musical comedy recently recalled some of their favorite mishaps during performances.

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Christy Altomare (Sophie)
My second performance on Broadway that I had ever done, I forgot the words to "Under Attack," which is the opening of Act Two. I ran to both wings [asking], "Do you remember the lines to this song?" All three of [the actors] were like, "No." As the scrim is coming up, I jumped into bed. I remembered everything. I was terrified. It was like two words I missed, and no one would have known because there was fog in my face. I saved my own butt. That was magical.

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Christy Altomare Photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

Aaron Lazar (Sam)
I had to walk offstage during Donna's big "Mamma Mia!" number when the dads were frozen. There was a sound issue. When we moved to a new theatre, they had to re-tech the sound, and the sound issue was so deafeningly painful that I literally had to walk offstage. I thought my ears would be bleeding. The speaker [was] aimed center stage in Sam's face.

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Aaron Lazar Photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

Liana Hunt (Sophie)
I think my favorite one was when my long wedding veil got hooked on the long wooden jetty. So I'm walking down the aisle, and I catch and we all look at each other and realize it's caught. The wedding music has run out, and no one knows what to do. I'm yanking on it, my two bridesmaids crouch down into a squat and are ripping it. There's no music. We're holding for two minutes. Then one of my bridesmaids just tore open the veil and yanked it. It was pretty epic.

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Halle Morse, Liana Hunt and Traci Victoria

Ashley Park (Ensemble)
There's a tradition that during someone's last show, everyone during one of the eight counts rushes that person and hugs that person. On my last night, I completely forgot about that tradition, and everybody came rushing at me. I got so scared I fell to the ground. I didn't know what was going on.

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Sharone Sayegh, Rachel Frankenthal, Ashley Park and Laurie Veldheer Photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

Paul HeeSang Miller (Ensemble)
In the flipper scene, there was one time when the Pepper tripped over my flipper.

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Paul HeeSang Miller Photo by Matthew Murphy

Alan Campbell (Sam)
I'm somewhat — I don't want to say infamous — for forgetting my lines and lyrics. When you forget what you're singing or saying, you develop this savantish quality of actually making up stuff that kind of advances the story, which became legend, because people would come back to me saying, "That was amazing the way you recovered." Actually, it's an embarrassing thing to have happen. [It would happen during] the scene with Sophie ["What's the Name of the Game?"] and sometimes spinning out of "Voulez-Vous" and with Donna before "SOS." She would forget, too, sometimes. She dropped the F bomb one time onstage because she got so mad. We were so in the scene, and I was like, "Oh my God, it's a family show!"

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Alan Campbell and Graham Rowat Photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

Gerard Salvador (Ensemble)
One night they were trying out new flippers. I don't know what kind of flippers they were, but they were different from regular flippers. As we went onstage, you heard each boy yell and fall to the ground as they turned the corner at the Winter Garden Theatre. They yelled, got back up and kept going.

I've also fallen off the stage, into the first row of the theatre, during "Voulez-Vous." At the very end, we whip around, and I'm at the end of this whip and luckily my friend Collete was there and held onto me so tight. My feet were hanging in front of people's faces in the front row.

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Gerard Salvador

Elena Ricardo (Sophie)
I have had everything horrible happen to me. Nights when I just forgot and had to stutter and figure it out… I bled onstage once and I had to hold my hand. One of the guitar strings was sticking out, and it sliced my hand. I'm a klutz and too much happens to me. They're dangerous! No joke.

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Elena Ricardo Photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN
 
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