to think that able bodied, neurotypical adults should be able to behave appropriately in a theatre?

[DrSeuss]

I don't often get to the theatre as tickets are very expensive. Therefore, when I do go, I don't want it spoiled.

Based on today's trip, someone needs to tell some members of the audience the following-
Find your seat in advance of the show, not ten minutes in.
Buy your snacks and drinks in advance, not at intervals through the show so that half your row has to stand to let you out.
Buy appropriate snacks, i.e., ones that can be eaten without a lot of noise, not ones that crunch loudly or have wrappers that make a lot of noise.
If the show is different to the film, I don't need to know nor do I need your extended opinion on this mid show.
Similarly, I do not want to hear your loud predictions on what will happen next.

All of the above were behaviours from adults who appeared to be neurotypical. I fully accept that some of them may not have been but surely not all of them? My nine year old daughter was better behaved than many adults, having been told from her first trip to the theatre as a much smaller child that it was necessary to sit still and be quiet.

I will probably told that I sound judgemental. Mostly, I resent spending my limited resources on a treat which I have been looking forward to for ages then having it spoiled. Would they like it if I came and jumped around in front of their much anticipated TV programme making a lot of noise?

I was at a conference today and the amount of people who swanned in late - all carrying take out coffee cups! Also you might think you're speaking quietly but I can hear you more than the speaker...

@ControversialFerret - I don't doubt you. But it just seems so false compared to the regular editions.

I've seen shows as a teenager in London and quite agree that etiquette should be drummed into everyone before they even enter the auditorium.

@FluffyEarMuffs, I was at an ROH general rehearsal today and had to ask an older man behind me to stop loudly criticising the set and giving a running commentary comparing it to previous productions of Don Pasquale he had seen. Grr.

OP "I also recently attended the Menin Gate Ceremony in Ypres"

I went to this 27 years ago! Sounds like I wouldn't want to go now, how sad.

Not quite the same op but I am always amazed by the talking over people that adults seem to think is ok in training courses!

I was at one this week to take headshot photos of everyone and I needed to stand up and tell everyone why I was there - the course leader introduced me and most of them promptly talked over me! I waited silently - I used to teach 13yos who were more polite.

I totally agree about the theatre btw, and again, have taken groups of teenagers who were better behaved than lots of the adults.

YABU

I couldn't agree more. It is totally disrespectful to the rest of the audience and to the performers to behave like this. I sometimes think that people have got so used to virtual this that and the other that they forget that they are watching actual live people in the theatre.
I do agree that the theatres have to take some responsibility for the situation though. When I was a regular theatre/concert hall goer pre children, which admittedly is 20+ years ago now, most theatres i went to would not allow latecomers to take their seats until the interval, or at some suitable hiatus anyway. I don't recall people strolling in once the performance had started like they do now, and I am pretty sure food and drink wasn't allowed in the auditorium in plenty of places either.
I can understand disruptions at a pantomime or other productions that are clearly aimed at small children, but adults and older children really should know better.

@ThinkingIsAllowed

Why do you think that please?

@Fiacla Nooooooooooooo 🙈

I like the open rehearsals. They are such a different atmosphere. God, I hope I don't get rudeness next time I try one.

Ha. I have just remembered what I do like about Open rehearsals. In complete defiance, most people take sandwiches and flasks and sit in the corridors. I just love it. Please tell me that still happened today? Never in the auditorium of course, and never leaving any mess. But it makes me smile.

I was at a science museum this week with my children and there were various talks and things for them to attend. The first one, people were still streaming in when it had already started, and then people sitting behind me started to comment on everything the presenter was saying. I had to give them a hard stare.

In the second one, the children had to sit in the middle, parents round the outside. Parents had to be told four times to stop talking! They were just chatting away in their normal voices.

Can I add to the list the people in the front row of the circle who lean forward and rest their elbows on the front of the balcony or whatever its called?

The laws of perspective mean that by doing this they block the view of the stage for people sitting further back.

And also, if you're having a hot flush, in the theatre, and you're dripping in so much sweat it looks like you've come in from a rain storm, and you're blowing a mini fan towards your face, the breeze is blowing right in my face and the smell of your unwashed hair is really taking me out of the story of the show . Happened last night. I don't think I'm up to going into crowded places anymore .

I've just come back from acting in the last performance of our latest amateur play and if you think it's annoying having someone talking when you're in the audience, imagine what it's like when you're on stage and they're doing it - and right in the front row! Yes, that happened tonight and it was completely off putting. Loud comments about what we looked like and how what we had just said/done was so funny. I felt like telling him to shut up - would have suited my character but I'm sure he would have tried to engage me in a conversation!

@FluffyEarMuffs, I didn’t see, because I was seeing friends I hadn’t seen in ages and didn’t leave my seat at the interval. I imagine so — no one can stir the English middle classes getting out their flasks. It’s a civil rights issue!

Where we live, the theatre doors are closed a few minutes before the performance starts and latecomers are not allowed to their seats until the intermission. You can’t take snacks in until after intermission either.

I went to the CBeebies prom in the summer at the Albert Hall. I fully expected there to be noise, crying, singing along etc - 50% of the audience was under 8 and to it was actively encouraged.

There were three adults behind me, part of a bigger mixed party, who continued talking very loudly throughout the music about a programme they’d seen about the moon landings (the theme of the show). I eventually asked them to shut up as I was trying to teach my children how to behave when other people are performing.

At the end of the show they tried to justify their conversation by saying they thought it was like a relaxed prom where it was fine to just talk through everything... I was so bewildered by their justification I think I just said something about the word respect and appropriate... but they were basically trying to say they expected to come to the RAH to talk to each other through the music?!?

I shush people left and right at the theatre. Can't abide it.

Don't get me started on the phone recording. I saw Joanna Newsome in concert, and after being distracted by flashing cameras in her first song, she said to the audience, "Right, how about I stop playing for a while and you can all get your pictures and then we can get on with the music".

It was clearly a sarcastic comment but people still took the opportunity to take loads of photos whilst she and her band just sat there staring at one another. And when the concert resumed people just kept filming. So rude.

DrSeuss would have loved to have seen Patrick Stewart’s hard stare!

We went to an outdoor production of A Midsummer Night's Dream this summer. It was a free Shakespeare in the park type thing so not ticketed and people were just coming and going so didn't expect silence or anything. I did, however, think it was particularly rude of the couple that walked through right at the end to stand so close behind us they almost trod on dd. They also then proceeded to very loudly debate amongst themselves which play it might be and what was happening, all this was done over Puck's closing monologue

I agree and think theatres shouldn't sell snacks that come in stupid plastic bags which get rustled constantly through performances.
Nothing worse than having to sit near someone who is loudly crunching and munching right in your ear.

@Wheat2Harvest yes, the people who lean onto the balcony to get a better view are the worst. They pay less for restricted view tickets then seem to think it's fine to restrict the view for everyone behind them who paid more so that they didn't have to deal with a restricted view! Entitled fuckers.

I have been to two regional theatres recently and had no issues with anyone's behaviour - at one I know that you're not allowed in until the interval if you are late. I didn't hear any rustling of wrappers or any food apart from interval ice creams eaten. The worst time I had was at 'Wicked' in London - a variety of things put me off that theatre. I find the cinema worse for people moving around during the film except for the live screening of 'Twelfth Night' where there was an interval.
We were taken by a teacher to the theatre for a fairly serious play, not children's or pantomime, when I was at Primary School. She instilled in us the idea never to talk through a performance or have any thing that rustled & that's remained with me over the decades.

The whole ‘eating sweets in the theatre’ thing is a bit odd, anyway. Understandable perhaps if you have small children and/or are at a long, noisy, cheerful or comic musical or pantomime, but if you’re watching something short/intense/painful/where every word of dialogue counts, it seems like a weird thing to do.

I was at the Lyttleton to see Simon Woods’ play Hansard last week — a play that comes in at 88 minutes in total with no interval, and is a quiet, intense two-hander about a political marriage in 1988 where all of the drama is in the quiet, vicious dialogue and nasty silences. I was four rows back from the stage in the stalls, and the woman next to me opened a bag of popcorn just as the house lights went down, about fifteen feet from two astonishing, deservedly-famous actors delivering blistering dialogue. Rather than just rude, that struck me as weird.

Oh I was thinking of seeing Hansard at the cinema broadcast

The popcorn thing is rude and weird, I wonder how much money theatres make on snacks.