When an audience member had a medical emergency Wednesday night during a performance of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” in Los Angeles, Tom Hanks saved the show by entertaining the crowd with an in-character ad lib session while medics tended to the patient.
According to the OC Register, the performance was halted for nearly half an hour after the audience member fell unconscious during the second act. Crew members with medical training attempted first aid until paramedics arrived. It was then that Hanks, who plays the plus-size Falstaff in the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles production, came back out on stage to keep the crowd from leaving.
“Come back here!” Hanks told the crowd as he re-appeared on stage. “God has decided this play needed a second intermission.”
“But the scurvy rogues that stood up from their seats, tore apart their tickets” gave “an insult to all actors and to Shakespeare himself,” Hanks shouted. “Get back here! Or find this sword, and many a dagger, placed deeply in your carrots. No intermission brew for you!” Hanks added.
The crowd, by the way, loved the improvised routine.
The Oscar winner kept going for almost five minutes, roasting audience members, including one he said stole his costume, offering to use his sword to cut people’s hair, and even bringing audience members up on stage.
The play resumed after the fallen audience member was taken to a nearby hospital, but per the OC Register, the unidentified patient was fine.
The performance, held at the Japanese Garden on the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration campus, runs Tuesday through Sunday at 8 p.m. until July 1.
Watch the whole clip above.