Et tu, anvil?

Ok, here is the full story of what happened.

I made the suitcase/anvil for my character Charlie Cowell for the play "The Music Man". My character is a traveling anvil salesman who has a suitcase with "ANVILS" painted on the side in big letters. The humor of the prop is that whenever he puts the suitcase down, there is a massive crashing noise like a pileup on the highway. Slapstick humor, essentially.

For this prop I took a travel case for an old slide projector. The case is made out of plywood or some similar substance, and I added a form around it to give it the shape of an anvil. After some spraypaint the prop looks fantastic. I then loaded it up with scrap metal to give it some weight, but mostly to give it the ability to make a massive clamor when the case is slammed down on the stage. After a few trial runs, I determined the effect to be perfect. It was light enough to carry easily, but makes a huge racket when thrown around.
There are three scenes where I drop the suitcase. It was in the third scene during opening night for the S.R.O. production of the play when the catastrophe happened.

Here is how the scene is written.

Music Man is in the center of the stage.
Charlie Cowell enters, slams down the suitcase and yells at the Music Man.
Charlie Cowell picks up the suitcase and storms off.

(end scene)


Simple, right? This is the smallest scene of the whole play and was the one I practiced the least because I only have two or three lines. There isn't any coreography really, just stand and deliver the line. With me so far?
Here's how it went wrong.

Music Man is in the center of the stage.
I enter, give him a glare and say my line:
"Crazy? I'll say I'm crazy! Missed my train, probably lost my job!"
I slam down the anvil. The anvil goes off like a bomb. The bottom of the case splits and an avalanche of scrap metal spills out at my feet. My mind is racing with the usual adrenaline of being on the stage, so I quickly improvise the line "And you broke my anvil!"

Then I go with my line "But I've got the goods on you... etc." At this point my mind is on autopilot because I'm in the routine of the script and the scene is going forward exactly the way it should. However, I'm madly trying to think of how this scene is going to end. Because the way the playwright wrote the story, Charlie storms off the stage taking his anvil with him. He DOESN'T leave a pile of scrap metal behind!! Also, in about two minutes the next scene is going to happen, and leaving a prop on the skirt of the stage would just... well... it's just not done. Somehow I've got to gather up all these pieces and get them off before the next act begins, and do it while everyone in the audience is watching, including the director.