This article about badly-behaving theater audiences is old news and entirely anecdotal, but stuff like this is fun to read anyway. Having a pizza delivered during a show? Are you freakin’ kidding me?
There were three rude spectators when I went to see The Constant Wife last week. The first was a man two seats away from me who began loudly unwrapping the plastic on his candy a couple of minutes into the show, even though the pre-show announcement had clearly included an admonishment to open your candy before the lights went down.
The second was this woman sitting in the row in front of me. During the first act, her cellphone rang not once but twice, despite the pre-show announcement to turn off all cellphones. The woman sitting next to her was pretty pissed. When the lights came up for intermission, the offender was looking at her phone, and the pissed-off woman said something to her. I decided to pile on. I leaned forward and said to the offender, “Excuse me.” She turned around, and I said, snarkily, “Don’t forget to turn off your phone at the end of intermission.” (If Matt had been there, he would have been so angry at me.) She said, “Okay,” clearly embarrassed. If you didn’t want to be embarrassed, you should have turned your goddamn phone off like the announcer said.
Then, right before the lights went down for Act II, this couple was moving along my row trying to get back to their seats. When the lights went down, they still hadn’t made it back to their seats. I looked over and they were standing in the row, having a whispered disagreement with the people sitting next to me, insisting that those people were sitting in their seats, which they obviously weren’t. The curtain went up and I couldn’t concentrate on what the actors were saying because the people were still arguing. The audience members sitting behind them were now pissed, since they were standing in the row. Finally the couple realized their mistake and I had to stand up so they could squeeze past me to get to their seats. As they went past, the woman on the other side of me whispered to them, “You are so rude. So rude.”
So I wound up missing the first two minutes of dialogue of Act II, which was annoying.
As for me, I caused my own (very minor) disruption a couple of days later when I saw The Pillowman. Broadway shows rarely start on time, and at the official starting time of 2 p.m. I had a slight stomach problem. So I hurried down to the men’s room and still managed to make it back with a few minutes to spare before the lights went down. But a few minutes into the play, I felt stuff starting to move around in my stomach again. I prayed that nothing would happen, but sure enough, I soon felt something knocking on the door. I sat there, cheeks clenched, trying to concentrate on the play instead. But it got worse and I realized I was going to have to get up. I managed to wait until a blackout between scenes, and then I quickly squeezed past the two people between me and the aisle and briskly walked toward the back and out to the restrooms.
When I came back, I stood at the back of the theater, wondering how I was going to find my seat again. But then I remembered that the last row was row R and my seat was in row J, so before walking back down the aisle I counted how many rows that was, and then I walked down the aisle, counting rows, and then quickly squeezed back into my seat. So I missed a few minutes at the beginning of the scene, but fortunately they didn’t seem to have been crucial, and I think I managed to do it with a minimum of disruption.
Stupid stomach. Stupid me for not having any Immodium on hand.
If only there were a TheaVo – a TiVo for the theater. Pause live theater, just like live TV! But then the show would be 10 hours long because everyone would be pausing it.
