Oops! Lindsay Lohan forgets her lines in her London theater debut.

Oops! Lindsay Lohan forgets her lines in her London theater debut.

This is shocking! She made it to the theater on time.

"Members of the audience took to Twitter to air their frustration at Lohan’s performance and said the star was holding a book containing her lines."

Honestly, in her defense, that sort of thing kinda goes with the territory for stage actors. I had to do that once myself. I was in a repertory company that was performing How to Succeed, but I was not in that particular play. The guy who played Mr. Bratt had a last-minute emergency for one performance (car accident, maybe? I don't remember, but something like that), and I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when the director tracked me down and asked me to fill in on the day of the performance, maybe two hours before curtain. Luckily I knew the song ("A Secretary is Not a Toy"), and I was able to cram all my lines in my head because it isn't that big a part. No subtle character development was necessary because the guy is basically just an empty suit sucking on the corporate teat, so I didn't have to develop a character voice or an accent or anything. Besides, it's a middlebrow musical comedy, not Murder in the Fookin' Cathedral, and I was only playing the sixth- or seventh-billed character, so I could get by with a bland, stock portrayal for one performance until the real guy returned

But there was one problem. Although I knew all the lines, I didn't know when to say them, because I had never rehearsed! Since I was playing an executive, I decided it would be reasonably well in character if I strutted around with a clipboard when issuing my lofty or obsequious pronouncements. On that clipboard was, of course, the script! Peeking at it from time to time gave me just enough advance notice of when I would have to speak. Hey, that's the theater. I'm sure I sucked, but probably not hard enough or deep enough for anyone to care.

On the other hand, Lohan wasn't filling in at the last minute, and I'm guessing the director would have been expecting her to know her role inside and out.