The fallibility of actors….

The “liveness” of theatre is one of the main things we celebrate about it: the fact that it is being made afresh (or not so fresh, sometimes) in front of our eyes, by living people. But actors are only human. They fall ill. And if they’re in a long-runner, they need a holiday occasionally.

A recent spurt of high-profile absences from the stage, however, has focused attention on the fallibility of actors. Tonight Billie Piper is due to make her official West End debut in Christopher Hampton’s Treats – an opening that has already been postponed by a week – but she missed her penultimate evening preview performance two nights ago. And she also missed an earlier preview during the run, too. ‘I am quite stressed and having a tough time,” she told one interviewer, amidst pictures appearing in the press of her sharing a tearful coffee with her ex, Chris Evans – who then attended a preview to support her on Monday, after which the Evening Standard on Tuesday reported her saying, “I am doing really well. It is going well and I’m really pleased. It was really good having Chris here – I could hear him laughing. Bless him for being supportive.” But perhaps he was being too supportive – she failed to appear again on Tuesday night, and this time the Standard’s Londoners’ Diary reported yesterday, “Her agent said today that Piper is suffering from a ‘nasty bug’ and it is likely the official opening tomorrow will have to be put back once more.” The report went on, “Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea for Piper to go out on the town till 2am with former husband Chris Evans and her boyfriend Laurence Fox.” It will be interesting to see if she, or we, get to the opening tonight.

Meanwhile, Connie Fisher – propelled into the West End by TV public vote – is also currently out of The Sound of Music. Before she won the role of Maria von Trapp, there was a well-known plan to hire an alternate to share the role and responsibility, namely the considerably more experienced Emma Williams (Connie had never appeared professionally on a West End stage, whereas Williams had originated the role of Truly Scumptious in the original Palladium production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang). But when Connie won, she made an elaborate public statement about wanting to be there for every performance, and the public, too, kept phoning the box office, insisting they wanted to see “that girl off the telly”. So she was upped to performing all eight shows and Wiilliams stood down; but now the strain has hit her… and after cutting back to six shows a week (as was the original plan), she’s out of the show entirely now for a two week “enforced medical absence”.

On Tuesday, the producers issued a statement, “Through a desire not to let the public down Connie Fisher sang through a heavy cold which has caused a vocal injury. The vocal chords are a muscle like any other and, as in the sporting world, when injured they require complete rest to recover. On her doctor’s advice Connie has to take two weeks off from the show starting last night Monday 5 March in order to allow the injury time to repair.” Yesterday, that statement was followed up by another from Andrew Lloyd Webber and David Ian, who “have decided that anyone who wishes to exchange their tickets for later dates should get in touch with the agency/box office from whom they bought their tickets. We regret that we may be unable to re-seat customers in the very near future (it may be as late as November) but we will be happy, in the circumstances, to re-seat as soon as we can. While Connie has now agreed to stay with the show through November to make this possible, you should be aware that many of the remaining original cast in the show may have left by then.”

The offer was further extended “to audience members who may already have seen the show this week (w/c Monday 5 March) without Connie and would like to go again”. I’ve never heard before of producers willing to give audiences a second chance to see a show for free. Perhaps this proves that Emma Williams would have been a valuable asset to the show after all.

But it’s not just actors who are new to the stage who are prone to such difficulties. Just days after last Tuesday’s opening of Equus, Richard Griffiths has been reported as being out of the show. On Monday, the Standard reported that he was suffering from a bout of flu, and failed to appear for either performance last Saturday. And his understudy, Colin Haigh, was reportedly not ready yet, but on book for the performances. Producer David Pugh explained to the Standard on Monday, “The understudies are with the company from the start but there are changes right up until the opening and the understudies have only been rehearsing the final script since Thursday. We found people were very understanding. It’s the first performance that Richard has ever missed in his life and he was devastated - but the doctor gave him the all-clear today so he should be back on stage tonight.” (As of last night, however, he wasn’t — a friend arrived at the Gielgud to find a sign saying he was still off).

Of course, at least the West End has understudies – there are none at the Royal Court, so when Carey Mulligan, playing Nina in the current production of The Seagull there, went out after suffering from appendicitis recently, Jodie Whittaker and then Anna Madeley subsequently stood in. They, too, were on book.

But when Kristen Johnston suddenly suffered an erupted duodenal ulcer during her run in the West End play Love Song at the New Ambassadors last December, the producers found a more novel way to replace her temporarily: they flew in Molly Regan, who had played Johnston’s role in the play’s original Chicago production earlier last year, to take over. That, at least, meant that audiences were getting a fully-fledged performance; but as The Independent reported yesterday, “While industry insiders argue that the seasonal ‘bout of flu’ is intrinsic to live productions, audiences have begun to voice their dissatisfaction over not seeing the big-name performers they paid to see.” And if you’re not going to get that performer, you should at least get one who is ready for the demands of the role they are taking over. The producers of The Sound of Music are at least able to offer that: as they have also said in their statement, “The Sound of Music is a fantastic production with an enormously talented cast and we are very lucky in that, in Connie’s absence, the role of Maria will be covered by Sophie Bould, who has been receiving standing ovations for her portrayal of Maria.”