Broadway Play Disrupted by Woman, Police Called

By Daniel S. Levine

Wendell Pierce's performance of Death of a Salesman on Tuesday was interrupted by an unruly audience member. New York City police were reportedly called to the Hudson Theatre to escort the woman and her husband from the venue. Pierce tried to reason with the heckler, as seen in viral videos from the incident.

During the start of the second act, a woman walked down to the stage and began yelling at the Jack Ryan actor. Pierce is seen trying to keep the situation calm and telling the woman to talk to him. "Hold on! Talk to me, talk to me," Pierce told the woman as he appeared to stay in character as Willy Loman, reports Playbill. "I'll make a deal with you. I'll make a deal with you. I'm going to ask them to let you stay. Hold on, hold on, I'll make a deal with you. Ma'am, I'll make a deal with you, alright? You can stay, but we have a show to do."

Pierce offered the woman a refund, but she began to ignore him. Other audience members started yelling at her and the state manager asked the cast to leave the stage. Eventually, the woman and her husband were escorted out of the theater by law enforcement. "We're grateful to the entire team at the Hudson Theatre for working together to resolve the situation and resume the performance as quickly as possible," the Death of a Salesman producers told Playbill.

Reddit user toss182, who claimed to be in the theater at the time, offered a detailed description of the incident. They said the woman was sitting with her husband in the front row center seats. During the first act, she was rummaging through her bag loudly and yelled responses to the actors. "She was very obviously drunk and/or high," the Reddit user wrote. During the intermission, the husband tried to get the woman to leave, and they made their way to the back of the theater. At the start of act two, she began "screaming at the top of her lungs that she wasn't leaving and if she couldn't see the rest of the show, neither would anyone else."

"She made her way back to the front of the stage, still screaming when the show was stopped and house lights were brought up," the Reddit user continued. "Wendell Pierce tried to reason with her but she didn't buy it. [The] husband kept demanding their money back. Pierce told the usher to grab money from petty cash to pay them, but around then the cops came. I wish they would have dragged her out but they reasoned with her and she left with the husband." After the couple was finally escorted out of the theater, the actors began the scene from the beginning.

Pierce is now starring in a new production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, alongside Sharon D. Clarke, Khris Davis, McKinley Belcher III, and Andre de Shields. Miranda Cromwell is directing the play, which was first performed on Broadway in 1949. The production continues through Jan. 15. Pierce also stars as James Greer in Amazon Prime Video's Jack Ryan series with John Krasinski.

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