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Broderick Forgets Lines in Play Preview, Producers Delay Opening

By DNAinfo Staff on October 28, 2009 8:48am

By Gabriela Resto-Montero

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

Matthew Broderick has a hard time remembering his lines, it seems. So much so, apparently, that he stumbled on 10 lines in the first act of his new play, "The Starry Messenger," Gatecrasher reports.

Broderick, a Tony-award winning stage actor, appeared woefully unprepared and mumbled apologies during a brutal preview on Monday, the Daily News gossip column reported. Producers then announced the show's opening would be pushed back a week, now opening on Nov. 23.

"Broderick should be fined for this sort of thing," a theatergoer wrote on the Web site talkinbroadway.com. "The theater, the producers, [director] Kenneth Lonergan and Broderick should be ashamed to have let an audience in for this."

The actor won Tonys for perfomances in "Brighton Beach Memoirs" and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," and was nominated for the blockbuster, "The Producers."

His recent outings have been less celebrated, with critics panning "The Philanthropist," which he starred in from April to June.

The actor's habit of studying scripts late and a last-minute cast replacement of Jonathan Hadary with Melwin Goldsmith may have affected Broderick's performance, reported the Daily News.