Sean Avery, the former NHL forward and New York Ranger enforcer, stormed out of rehearsal yesterday after an angry meltdown and quit the Off-Broadway play Negative is Positive two days before it opens tomorrow at Theatre for the New City, Page Six reports.
According the playwright, Christy Smith-Sloman, Avery apparently misheard an assistant stage manager when she asked whether the athlete-turned-actor wanted a slice of pizza, and thought she had insulted him. Avery cursed her out, then shouted "Don't you know who I am?" at director Andreas Robertz. Robertz reflected, "I think something snapped in him."
An understudy will play Avery's role when the play opens tomorrow--and, we assume, will continue to do so though the entire run, scheduled to wrap November 30. Avery's bio has already been removed from the play's website, which describes Negative is Positive thus: "The play centers on a newly married interracial, upwardly mobile couple who appears to be leading an idyllic life until an unexpected incident forces them to explore issues of trust, failed expectations, jealousy, friendship, resentment, infidelity, race and social class."
Though Avery has a history of angry outbursts both on and off the ice (see the video below), surely no one at Theatre for the New City expected the rehearsal process to have its own "unexpected incident." But the show must go on, and it will, with a cast consisting of GLAAD Award winner Karen Eilbacher (She Like Girls), Joshua Zirger, David M. Farrington and Vivienne Jurado.
