Critics, fans and the Twittersphere lashed troubled actor Charlie Sheen on Sunday after he was booed off stage in a chaotic start to a live show US tour.
Sheen maintained an uncharacteristic silence on his own Twitter feed after fans walked out of his Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat is not an Option debut show in Detroit on Saturday night.
“It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” said Jennifer Pyryt (26), after fans streamed out of the Motor City’s Fox Theater, many of them booing and doing thumbs-down signs. “The show was horrible.”
By Sunday afternoon — hours before Sheen was due on stage for the second gig — his last tweet was the one he made live during the Detroit show, saying: “The most honest city in the world honours the most honest man in the universe.”
Shortly after that the show collapsed, when a clearly rattled Sheen –who was sacked from his mega-hit TV show Two and a Half Men last month — failed to return to the stage after a musical break.
Critics were scathing. “A cynical attempt to cash in on his craziness,” said the Hollywood Reporter, calling it a “poorly planned show filled with faux-Biblical preaching and extended video clips”.
“Charlie Sheen live: what WAS that?” asked the Entertainment Weekly, after a blow-by-blow blog of the show, which lasted barely an hour, while the Los Angeles Times said Sheen had “no ability as a live performer”.
The Twittersphere was no more sympathetic.
“Haha on Charlie Sheen & all the morons who wasted their money to listen to a ranting psycho. What did they expect??” said lesliee1969. MolliDuckworth added: “Don’t boo Charlie Sheen! Boo yourselves for buying tickets!”
Started well
The gig, to a packed 5 000-strong audience, started well with a spoof involving news clips of the actor’s recent outbursts, and high-action excerpts from classic movies including Apocalypse Now, starring his father Martin.
Sheen’s two nubile “goddesses,” with whom he lives, also won applause for kissing each other passionately.
But the boos began during a stream-of-consciousness monologue by Sheen at a presidential podium — the kind of verbal fireworks he has displayed online, but which patently failed to grip Saturday’s audience.
After commenting several times on the fact that he was being booed, and getting increasingly tetchy as the stream of people walking out grew, Sheen said would take a break while a video of a new Snoop Dogg song was played.
When the video finished, the lights came up, and it was clear that Sheen was not coming back on stage.
Sheen was sacked last month from Two and a Half Men after criticizing its producers in a series of rambling media outbursts which Warner Brothers called the actor “dangerously self-destructive conduct.”
The 45-year-old then became an internet sensation after launching a Twitter feed which now has 3,4-million followers, and an online webstreamed show, Sheen’s Korner.
At the same time he announced his plans for the live tour, which now has more than 20 scheduled dates over the next month, after tickets for the first gigs sold out within 18 minutes.
Before Saturday’s show fans had lined up to defend the star, a legendary party animal whose recent crisis came shortly after he ended up in hospital following a marathon bender with five women including a porn actress.
But the mood afterwards was a mixture of disappointment and anger, with some fans talking about asking for their money back.
“Charlie’s a big fraud. It was unbelievable, it was the worst show I’ve seen in my life,” said another man, declining to give his name, as he and other headed off into the night.
Sheen’s next show was Sunday evening in Chicago.
The celebrity news website TMZ reported that security staff at the venue had held a special meeting, to decide if extra protection was needed for the star, in light of Saturday’s debacle in Detroit. — Sapa-AFP