Several stage actors have admitted that they’ve experienced the white room effect in real life. For example, Seth Rudetsky told Playbill in 2013 that while performing in a play, he lost control of his lines and couldn’t forge a way forward. “[W]e started the first scene and when I got to my seventh line I completely went blank. That’s what’s called entering the white room; meaning there is nothing but whiteness around you. Nothing to grab onto,” he explained. He ultimately ended up repeating the subtext of his line over and over until finally the actor he was working with managed to rescue him by triggering his memory. Charles, working all by himself, definitely doesn’t have that luxury for this number.
While Charles finally manages to figure out a way to get out of the white room by pretending he’s making an omelet while singing the song, he’s thrown another curveball when he can’t stop his hands from following along the motions of stirring up his favorite dish. One calamity leads to another — and to Charles ending up on bended knee before his girlfriend, Joy (Andrea Martin). It remains to be seen if Charles will be able to conquer his performing demons — or if he’s done suffering for his craft yet — but hopefully, he won’t find himself in the white room when real danger is afoot.