Rude people in the theatre

It's everywhere not just the theatre.

People are arseholes to be blunt! Obviously not everyone but in general it’s all me me me these days and it baffles me because I was brought up to be SO aware of how my behaviour and actions affects other people. I saw my fav band in a big stadium concert this summer, yes I appreciate that in a venue that big you get lots of noise, but during a slow, meaningful song two 50 something guys in front of me loudly chatted about this and that throughout the whole song, not watching the band at all. They were there with wives/girlfriends and I think they just saw it as an opportunity for a good catch up, but their constant loud chat during particularly slow/quieter songs ruined it for me!

People treat it as extension of a night in where they can eat/drink/talk all they want

Hell really is other people.
At the Royal Opera House a couple of years ago I was seated next to a woman who took her shoes off and with a small square of tissue wiped between her toes slowly and meticulously as she watched the opera. Then she would stop, only to start the process again a few minutes later. I was close to vomiting. My squirming / staring etc failed to deter her.
I actually emailed the ROH asking them to never sell this woman a ticket again.

Yes uncouth

I would have phones put in pouches. This was done at some low key Bryan Adams gigs recently. He didn't want the experience blighted by screens. There were only 400 of us but it can be done. Failure to comply meant no admittance and if seen using the device you would be removed

On a positive note, I recently went to see The Importance of Being Earnest - several big hitting slebs in the cast and (apart form someone in my row being irritatingly late which meant I had to move back to my seat behind The Man With The Big Head) audience behaviour was immaculate . Everyone lapped it up. It helped that the production was vibrant and that Stephen Fry had us eating out of his hand.

No poor behaviour at Cabaret either.

I think the plays at most risk are the big family shows , the plays that have a celebrity in but are rather dull, and matinees of school set texts.

It's a huge no no everywhere. I don't want to be standing (or seated) behind a sea of phones in the air at a concert. I've seen people videoing and even live streaming. Nobody wants to sit through a shit shaky video their mate took at a concert and it must be vanishingly rare that anyone actually sits and watches back a gig they recorded themselves. The whole thing is irritating and disrespectful.

Cinema etiquette as well seems to have disappeared. I’m like ‘ffs, could you not just have eaten before you came?’ Phones were switched off last week when I went to see ‘I swear’ but watches weren’t and they flashed every few seconds with notifications. It was really distracting

Some Theatre and cinema goers behave like they’re in there own front room ..
ive had many viewings at cinema wrecked by loud popcorn / sweets / nacho chompers … always when it’s quiet .. or a poignant moment .. totally ruins the moment .. During Wicked it happened through the whole film .. so started bouncing my foot up and down to annoy the woman who was doing it and she looked .. I think she got the message it was distracting her 😂 but totally tainted my enjoyment.. and theatre goers well .. usually had a drink and start getting rowdy .. At an Elvis tribute two women had a row screaming match and weren’t even sitting next to eachother 😂 … Never experienced it before in my life before or since I could go on as I’ve been to loads in my 62 young years lol .. utterly infuriating selfish and weird

And filming or photography are explicitly forbidden at the ROH - and any other decent theatre.

I witnessed quite stringent treatment of phones at Cabaret on Broadway a few months ago. We were given special stickers & were required to cover our camera phone lenses. As I left, the FoH staff were surrounding a man who was the photos he'd tried to take. Friends of mine who are performer absolutely hate being filmed/photographed while on stage. They are so generous off-stage in chatting to fans and posing for selfies with them - but some people are just pigs sometimes, and exploit anything.

Absolutely agree, I have noticed this and its happening ever more regularly. People arriving late, so all the row has to stand up, lots of views being blocked behind. There are even warnings that if you arrive late you will have to wait to be admitted at the interval but it seems no-one puts this into force. People coming back from interval late ( same goes?!) But they are often sloshing glasses of wine with them, and clearly more than tipsy, it shows in their loud voices and "slower to rise but longer and louder to laughs". Once at Les Mis, £180 tickets again, its really not cheap and definitely a rarer treat, the staff came to warn our section that the cast could hear someone in the audience singing along!! WTA? Luckily we hadnt hears them...but not even West End shows alone, bad manners are seen within more local productions too. A particular peeve of mine is at tge interval, usually 15 mins, and never enough ladies loos. So the people next to you and on your row refuse to let you get past to get out and join the queue, they literally look at you like your mad, and maybe then twist their knees to one side slightly and of course there just isn't the room to scrape past. So you say excuse me again from your standing position, and then they tut and stand and make you almost trip over their feet. When you come back, they have always gone from their seats probably to do the same!! I have had a coat and bag from someone on MY seat, and tuts when I have to ask who's they are, so I can sit down. Crisps and wrappered sweets, talking loudly al the way through....just what is wrong with some people? My daughter recently was trying to come out of a loo cubicle to wash hands, and one particular lady (waiting for loo!!)just blocked her and despite several excuse me's from my dd, glared at her and refused to move! My dd is 22, I had to ask the lady myself could she get out, so someone else could exit the queue and use the toilet, madness! It rather spoils the experience, we find ourselves discussing bad mannered people as much as the performance (afterwards!!)

Terribile behaviour OP. I hope you enjoyed the performance despite her selfish shenanigans.

recently had to put up with a woman who sat next to me at the theatre (a man for all seasons). She talked, fidgeted and even sat with her feet on the back of the (occupied) seat in front of her!
Then she fell asleep and snored, only waking up at the applause.

She obviously wasn’t that interested-so why go and spoil it for everyone else? 😩

Ha, I have found my people! Until recently I thought the Royal Opera House was the last bastion of good manners, but sadly last week the (young - deffo not middle-aged) woman next to me began filming the show. I gave her a few minutes, and when it was clear she wasn't going to stop, I whispered (very politely) 'your phone light is really distracting'. 'Oh, is it?' she said, genuinely surprised.

You need to use a ticket discount site ...

I turn around and Shush actively & directly, or tell them sternly to be quiet. Yes, I hate adding to the disruption, but such rude people need to be told firmly.

They need to tell them to leave. Publicly humiliate if possible. Also ideally there should be food-free seatings or sections. The last performance I went to was ruined by the adults behind who each had a share size packet of crisps and sweets and a giant fizzy drink. The noise was ghastly. So uncouth. Behave like toddlers, get treated like toddlers.

there are always a few of these in any vaguely intellectual production - Shakespeare in particular - who feel the need to Laugh Very Loudly to make all around aware that They Understand the Joke, even though if it had been in current vernacular it's the type of witty wordplay that warrants a quick smile/snigger of appreciation (country matters, etc.) rather than belly aching hysteria.

A huge amount of the problems people have mentioned seem to come from people who don't want to be there - man watching football, people drinking heavily to enjoy themselves, small children at shows that are inappropriate for them, etc. What I don't understand is why people spend money on going if that's the case! It's not as though theatre is cheap, and we're supposedly in a cost of living crisis - who has £80 to drop on tickets to then play on your phone/spend another £40 on drinks meaning you don't remember seeing the show?

I can't imagine theatres will stop selling food/drinks any time soon though - that's usually where they make most of their money. Controversial but perhaps we should be thanking the pissheads and munchers for subsidising our ticket prices!

Exactly this! I've been to so many performances where people in the audience have got absolutely hammered - pre drinks, drinks during, interval drinks and then drinks taken in post interval - they've no idea how loud and disruptive they are being. And phones - I went to see a play and a woman at the front filmed it on her phone - no one did anything and all I could see out of corner of my eye was her phone waving around. All of this is so much worse since lockdown too - people seem to have forgotten how to behave in public.

I sat behind a couple at the Live Aid musical a few weeks ago and they really should have got a room. Chatting and kissing and leaning heads on shoulders. Plenty of fizz drunk throughout the show (they had a bottle, presumably from the theatre bar) not taking very much notice of the show at all. Totally ruined it for me as it was distracting and annoying. I was murderous by the end.

Throw them out of the theatre. Make it clear that is what will happen at the start. Or, when you enter the theatre, everyone puts their phones into a Faraday pouch that blocks mobile phone signals, only getting them back at the end of the show. They do this at some music gigs, and it is brilliant.

I don't think the young are any better. They just have different snacks and are more likely to keep looking at their phones (the light from the screen is so distracting).

It's sadly the same all over and does my head in. I was on the train yesterday and a group with kids was watching stuff out loud, each kid something different. I have a toddler so I know train travel can be a pain but headphones exist. The parents then took turns clipping their fingernails! They must have had a hundred fingers each for amount of grating click clicks I heard from them 😅 but how grim, someone else will have to clean that up, they could have done it in the loos over the sink even but no, at the seat with bits of fingernail flying about.

Cinema experiences are dreadful too, loud chatting, attention seeking, and people just cannot not look at their phone for 3 hours max. Lit like beacons distracting through the film so they can count their isnta likes or keep up their streak.

Did you turn round and ask her to be quiet? I agree it's terrible behaviour. I like the cinema but each time I go, I vow never to go again because of other people talking, eating, using phones etc.

The same in the cinema. Don’t go to senior citizen showings who unwrap sweets and rustle crisp packets and criticise the acting and the props.
I turned round to two elderly ladies to be quiet and was told to ‘fack orf’. 😆😆