Onstage Mistakes, Injuries, and Improv: David Tennant Makes 'Em, Just Like Anyone Else

Like any performer with a career as lengthy as his, David’s had his fair share of excruciating moments on stage. He’s endured accidents and injuries and performed while ill. At times he’s had to scramble his way through versions of improvisational Twister…though at others, he’s deliberately chosen to riff lines of improv to prank his fellow cast and crew members, or tease his audience. And of course he’s endured the dreaded "drying up" - that moment when the next line absolutely refuses to come.

In other words, he’s made plenty of mistakes.

We’re about to get into some of them…although we’ll say upfront we won’t be counting things like his method acting (we’re looking at you, Merlin The Magnificent medieval pudding bowl haircut, and you, shaved head Comedians)!

David Tennant in 1992's 'Merlin The Magnificent'; in 2001's 'Comedians'

We’ll begin with two of the earliest onstage references I could find, something I anticipate will be a treat for fans of David’s. It certainly is for me! I always love it when I can reveal part of my extensive research into David’s early Scottish theatre work to help further the fandom’s knowledge about this part of his career.

In late 1989, David was a second year drama school student at the Royal Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD), now known as the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS). By the end of that year he had been involved in a number of school plays, though most of these - with a few exceptions - had been performances intended as “in-house” (or classroom) productions, meaning they weren’t to be performed for the public.

But David had been recommended by a recent RSAMD graduate to star in a new production, opening on 2 December 1989: The Ghost Of Benjy O’Neil. Rehearsals began a month or so prior to the start of the production, and in the final week, David came down with a nasty viral ailment of some sort. Fatigue, fever and general malaise followed, and as late as a few days before opening, it was touch and go whether he’d be well enough to take the stage. But in what was to become typical David fashion, he was determined to do so, sick or not. And he did! But in some photos taken of him as Benjy in those first days of the production, he probably didn’t have to don much of the stage makeup they used to appear ghostly pale!

David as Benjy O'Neil in 1989's 'The Ghost Of Benjy O'Neil'

By the end of 1991, David had graduated from the Royal Conservatoire and had begun his professional career. Because he has been quite vocal about his early theatre work for the 7:84 Theatre Company (Scotland), most of David’s fans know his first professional job was working for the 7:84 in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. But not as many know what his second job was.

After David wrapped up Arturo in early November 1991, he took on the role of Kenny in a Christmas/pantomime-adjacent show called Shinda The Magic Ape, written by Scottish playwright Stuart Paterson specifically for the Edinburgh Royal Lyceum. (For those who don’t know, a pantomime is musical comedy family entertainment performed on stage over the Christmas holidays, usually involving a twist on a traditional tale - think Jack and the Beanstalk or Cinderella - with gender role reversals, audience participation, slapstick, silly costumes, and lots of hammy dialogue.) But while Shinda had some panto-ish moments - it was designed for younger people and the audience was encouraged to boo when the witch came on - it leaned more towards a Christmas production than a panto.

Shinda The Magic Ape began its run in mid-December 1991. It wasn’t a twist on an old tale, but a modern take on the nature of good and evil. As Alasdair Cameron says in The Times:

Stuart Paterson's moral fable Shinda The Magic Ape has a gritty urban setting, complete with shell suits and BMX bikes. But almost from the start, the drab streetscape is transformed into an elemental battleground between good and evil, when Coran and Scarab, a good and bad spirit, strike a wager that there is at least one good and incorruptible human being left in the city. Kenny and his big brother, Danny, get sucked into the machinations of the witch Scarab, who turns Danny into a master thief and tries to do the same to Kenny. Happily, after many trials, with a lot of help from their friend Shona, their battling granny and a mountain gorilla from the zoo called Shinda, the witch's spell is broken and the triumph of good secured.

Shinda The Magic Ape’s star was the gorilla, Shinda, played by Edward Brittain. Brittain’s costume was specially designed and consisted of a muscle suit, a rubber rib cage, a harness, steel-hinged arms, and fake fur. The costume, with its 60-inch chest, weighed over 50 lbs! Brittain lost an average of three pounds of water weight per performance and more than seven actual pounds before the end of the run; he sweated so much inside the furry suit, he had to take salt tablets and drink over three liters of water after each show.

David’s character, Kenny, frees Shinda from the local zoo which held him in captivity. Halfway through one of the performances, Shinda’s steel-hinged mechanical arm landed on David’s left hand, breaking his left ring finger. A 2005 article in the Glasgow Sunday Mail described the injury like so: “…David soldiered on, despite having to climb trees and generally monkey around on stage.”

David’s understudy, Joe Gallagher, panicked, as he was sure he would have to step in to take on the role of Kenny. But Gallagher needn’t have worried. David was back the next day with a splint on his hand.

If you look closely at both the photos below, you can see the bandages on David’s hand!

David in 'Shinda The Magic Ape' with his bandaged left ring finger

David had many mishaps during his 2000 run as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. First, we learn that during the show’s second press night at the Barbican Theatre, he simply made up part of a speech after experiencing what actors dread most: “drying up” onstage. David told the Daily Mail what happened:

“I was playing Romeo, and then my brain started doing that thing where you don’t know how the speech ends, and I just sort of made a bit up. I thought, I am making up Shakespeare at the Royal Shakespeare Company to an audience of critics who have seen this play 150 times over their careers. And do you know what? Nobody noticed. I made sense of it — it was not particularly elaborate Shakespearean language and I curtailed it a little bit. I knew what the sense was — I just couldn’t quite figure out what the words were. And nobody could tell.”

You can watch him tell another version of the same story right here:

@theactingnotesDavid Tennant shares a story about how forgetting his lines taught him that even when you’re afraid things can turn out fine. #actor #actress #actingtips #actingadvice #davidtennant

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Another story originating from his run in Romeo and Juliet was featured on the Graham Norton Show. This tale - about David nearly fainting from the sight of his own blood during the play’s last scene when Paris nicks his finger during a fight - is quite well known to the average David Tennant fan, so I won’t go into the event in depth. But if you’re one of his fans who hasn’t heard about it or doesn’t know about it, I’ll leave it to David himself to explain it in his own way:

So with that out of the way, let’s move on to talk about a production David did that same year…The Comedy Of Errors.

David’s been rather vocal about some of the corpsing, breaking character and ad-libbing he did during this particular production - mostly deliberately, unlike what we just learned about in Romeo and Juliet.

For example, in October 2017 at a convention in Dallas, Texas, David told the panel audience an amusing story about how he and Ian Hughes (the actor playing Dromio of Syracuse) made life unbearably difficult for the interpreter during one of the production’s sign language interpreted performances. David explained that during Act 3, Scene 2, when Dromio calls his lady “spherical, like a globe,” and Antipholus asks where different countries are upon his lady’s globe, he and Ian decided they’d learn a place name the interpreter couldn’t possibly spell. That place was in Wales: “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.” It completely flummoxed the interpreter during the production, as well as the interpreter on stage at the Dallas panel!

You can watch David tell the story if you like (it starts at about 11:57 in):

On another occasion, during a performance in Stratford, David and Hughes played to their audience by ad-libbing that same scene. Dromio (Hughes) repeated the line, “she is spherical, like a globe…I could find out countries in her,” and each time paused dramatically to allow the audience to laugh before repeating it again - to yet more laughter. David then interrupts, breaking the fourth wall to speak directly to the audience: "Got that?" - which drove the house to clap and whistle in delight. He waited once more for the audience to quiet before cracking, "Calm down, there's loads more of this to get through!" - which once more spurred the crowd into gales of laughter. Again, Hughes repeats the line, and the audience again collapses into mirth. But finally, knowing they’d gone about as far as they could go with it, Hughes says wryly, "I'm not saying it again."

Sounds hilarious, yes? Well, I’m about to give you an extra special treat - you can listen to that ad-libbed scene right here:

Fast forwarding a bit now to 2008, we arrive at a moment in time when David was pulling double duty: first as Hamlet in Hamlet, and then as Berowne in Love’s Labour’s Lost. David has said many times how difficult and stressful that season was, given the intense public scrutiny piled on top of all the normal angst any actor would experience before stepping on stage. So it’s not a wonder he messed up now and again.

Here, from an 11 October 2008 account by flickfilosopher, is a great description of David’s improvisational skills:

…if you don’t know how clever actors cover up the fact that they can’t remember what words are supposed to be coming out of their mouths, you’d never have guessed that David Tennant was out there on the stage by himself, saying to himself, “Fuckin’ hell, what’s my next line?” with no one to prompt him and no one to help him out. The word midget does not appear in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, only in the one that Tennant was performing that night. (In fact, my dictionary tells me the word was not coined till two centuries after the Bard’s death.) But it was charming, really, to learn that Tennant really is as intelligent and creative as I imagined he was, that he could extemporize Shakespearean-sounding language even while he was panicking, going round in gloriously absurd nonsense till he remembered his appointed dialogue.

And finally, we pay a visit to October/November 2013, and to David’s role as Richard II in the play of the same name.

During Richard II’s initial run, David was gifted a ring which had belonged to renowned Scottish stage actor Ian Richardson, best known for his role as Francis Urquhart in the 1990 BBC1 show House of Cards. Richardson had worn the ring during his RSC run as Richard II in 1974, and Richardson’s widow, Maroussia, found the ring around the same time David’s titular role in Richard II was announced. Maroussia decided that since David was only the second Scot to play the part, it was fitting that she pass the ring on to David on Richard II’s Stratford-upon-Avon Press Night on 17 October 2013.

David with Maroussia Richardson and art correspondent Rebecca Jones; a closeup of the ring

On 1 November 2013, David and Maroussia appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Today and spoke about the gifting of the ring. David said he was excited to be wearing it onstage.

You can listen to them talk about the ring and its history here:

That very evening, on 1 Nov 2013, an accident occurred with Richardson’s ring during the performance of Richard II. David’s co-star Nigel Lindsay - who portrayed Henry Bolingbroke - tweeted that during Act 1, Richardson's ring had slipped from David’s finger and clattered twenty feet down to the stage from the bridge!

Lindsay added, “Ian Richardson is buried in the stalls,” and said David swore it had not been an accident. Lindsay wondered, too, whether the ghost of Richardson was looking to be involved in the show! Luckily, David’s co-star Oliver Rix, who portrayed the Duke of Aumerle, managed to find and safely retrieve it. It was back in pride of place on David’s hand the very next evening.

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And that’s it for this edition of David Tennant’s mistakes, accidents, illnesses, and plain old silliness. I hope you enjoyed it!