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?

@Autumn, I admit I only went because Carol Churchill’s shorts at the Royal Court was sold out — very last-minute free night in London — but although it’s a weirdly old-fashioned type of play (sort of Albee in the Cotswolds) for a debut playwright, I think it’s worth it for two stonking performances.

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!

Yes! I recently attended an event that was so oversubscribed that you had to actually fill in an application form for it and a panel spent a day sifting through forms to see who they would award the places to. People were desperate to get a place. On the day, about 20% of the people there talked over the speakers and spent half the time on their phones. If I'd been running the event I think I'd have asked them to leave.

Agreed but sometimes people are unaware of theatre etiquette. My DH and I have been together for over 20 years and been to the theatre together at least once a year so he’s been before.

He got me tickets to a play he knew I would love as a surprise - we went out for a meal first and I said if we are going to a play you are cutting it a bit fine, and he said oh but it’s like the cinema you don’t have to be there at the start time.

Well, we did have to be there at the start time - despite his protests I made him run so we got in before they shut the doors!

People are generally self-entitled assholes. My husband’s first broadway show (I had been many times before) when we were dating was ruined by a couple right in front of us pawing at each other the entire time. Loud kissing, her hanging all over him. Constantly moving in their seats. I didn’t have the balls to complain but I was spitting.

More recently, at a cinema, I had to tell a child who was old enough to know better to stop kicking my seat the whole way through. Her grandparents finally started telling her (half heartedly) to stop then. When it happened yet again I couldn’t stop myself turning and hissing at her that I’d already asked her once and she should really know how to behave at her age. She sulked for the rest of the movie but didn’t try it again.

God, @brittabot, perhaps that explains how often people in really expensive theatre seats show up late! They think they’ll skip the ads and trailers!!!!!

I do think not understanding theatre etiquette may explain some poor behaviour at musicals, which are often attended as a one-off ‘day in London’ treat by people who would never go to see a straight play (see recent thread on audience members singing deafeningly along and drowning out the cast), but I don’t think someone who’s never been to the theatre before is all that likely to end up at Euripides at the Old Vic or something. Which makes it all the weirder.

I was at the theatre in Oxford last night and was amazed by how well behaved the audience was. No rustling (though no popcorn served) and only two late comers

Friday night was at a thing and a bloody woman was whooping in my ear all night

I somtimes wonder why people shell out lots of money to go to the theatre or a gig and then talk all the way through. If you want to discuss your problems with your friends just go to the pub ffs.

My DH turned round to two women discussing their gynacological problems at a gig recently and said he didn't want to hear all the gory details on his night out and could they pleae keep it down. One of them replied that she had paid for her fucking ticket and she would do what she fucking liked. Charming.

The same happens at sporting events. We go to the cricket and the ettiquette is to only get up or come in between overs. The times we have missed wickets because someone just has to get up and get another drink or what ever and can't possibly wait five minutes. Infuriating.

So many people these days have the attitude that they can do what they want, when they want and sod everyone else's enjoyment.

I took my family to the Matthew Bourne Swan Lake last year. The children in front were quiet and well-behaved. The woman behind decided to give a running commentary to her child throughout Act Two explaining what was happening. I really enjoyed hearing a hissed (occasionally incorrect) synopsis of the ballet in front of me .

I went to see Torch Song recently, I had to tell the couple next to me to shut up, they had been loudly discussing their favourite holiday destination for almost half an hour.

Personally I think food and drink should be banned in the theatre, there’s no need for it.

Were you at Bromley yesterday op as we had 8 seats in the middle of our row empty right up to the start of the performance, then a family arrived just at start time but then had to go off to the toilet even though the orchestra were playing and it was about to start.
Then the remaining 4 seats were still empty but those people arrived 20 minutes after the show had started and of course it's a theatre where you have to get up to let everyone through.
Then of course at the interval, the kids had to go back to the toilet and go and buy sweets so everyone had to get up again.
The tickets clearly showed the start time so why is it so difficult for people to get there in time.

@Fiacla

ooh a debut playwright! Thanks, I will go!

Can't bear it. In the summer I took my mum to see Motown the Musical at the theatre and a woman a couple of rows in front and to the right kept getting her phone out and checking it all through the show. The bright light was so distracting. There was an usher near her in the aisle, but he did nothing. So rude and entitled.
More recently I went to see Ad Astra at the cinema and ended up sitting next to a man eating popcorn in the most annoying way I have ever seen/heard. Each piece taken out of box singly and inspected. Then one bite out of each piece (SQUEEAK), then another bite (SQUEEAK CRUNCH). Repeat. In the end my daughter and I had to move, as my blood was boiling so much I could not concentrate on the film.

When DD was about 14 she'd gone with MIL to see some show that was aimed at teenagers. They encouraged people to take photographs in the first act as part of the show. When DD tried the woman behind, without warning, smacked DD hard across her wrist and hissed at her to stop, despite the entire theatre doing the same.
Now DD is hyper mobile so it caused a lot more damage than usual.

I had a thread about it on here at the time. MIL was fucking useless and basically told DD not to make a fuss. When she called me in tears after the show I then had to try and make a Police report to a theatre over 100 miles away about an assault by a woman who had already left.
She was never tracked down, though local police did try and I have never forgiven MIL for her total failure to protect DD.

I suspect the 'on demand' viewing we are being accustomed to these days is a contributory cause to a lack of appropriate behaviour in theatres. After all, you can pause live tv, grab snacks, go to the toilet etc and there's rarely if ever a queue for the bathroom.
I agree. Also, I think some people confuse theatre with cinema and don't care forget that there are real people up there and they CAN SEE AND HEAR THE AUDIENCE.

Although I am zero-tolerance in the cinema as well and will happily tell people to stop talking/switch their phone off etc.

I went to see Matilda ages ago and obviously there were a lot of kids in the audience, but they were brilliantly behaved and laughed/shouted etc only in the bits where you were meant to. Adults who can't behave appropriately should be ashamed that pre-teens know better than them.

@Wheat2Harvest YES. I saw Harry Potter from the nosebleed seats in the summer. Family in front of me basically lying on the balcony. I asked the parents if they could move back so that their heads were still over the threshold (they were young kids, I’m not a total dick) but that their entire arms/shoulders/torsoes weren’t, that’d allow everyone to see. Got a mouthful of abuse in return.

Ugh, I so agree OP!

I usually book something at the theatre, wondering why I haven’t been for a while and then after the show realise it’s because of how annoying other people can be!

Went to a show last year with DH and unfortunately ended up sitting near the most annoying couple ever! They turned up after the show had started, clutching huge bags of very crunchy crisps and stinky pints of beer. Proceeded to act like they were having an indoor picnic, whilst talking very loudly over the dialogue. Then they both got their phones out - at this point I can only assume they were pissed because the woman dropped her phone under her seat and then proceeded to make a big display of getting on her hands and knees to retrieve it! It was one of those situations where it seemed like they just viewed it as a night out at the pub and didn’t actually want to watch the show. I mean, why? If you want to stuff your face with crisps, drink beer and talk all night, why not just go to the actual pub?! 🤷🏼‍♀️

We went to another show earlier this year at our local theatre, which annoyingly doesn’t have an aisle down the middle of the seating, so those sitting in the middle have to disrupt a long row of seats either side every time they want to sit down or get up. A group of 3 women arrived together (late - they were the last ones on our row to be seated) and in the interval, one of the women got up to leave her seat - fair enough. What infuriated me was after everyone has got up to let her out, 2 minutes later, the other two women who were with her, decided they too wanted to vacate their seats and we all had to get up again! I mean, why couldn’t they all leave their seats at the same time?! 😡

And why do so many people feel that they have to take selfies of themselves, sitting in their seats? Do they really think people are interested in seeing that on Social Media?! 🤔

I was also graced with the unpleasant sight of a hairy arse crack every time the bloke sitting in front of me had to stand up, owing to the fact his jeans had no belt on them! 😫 Does nobody have any decorum these days? 🙄😩

Was Torch Song good, @SimonJT? I nearly went the night I ended up at Hansard at the NT.

@AutumnRose1, he’s an actor — I think best known for Rome and Crawford, and also was Bingley in the Joe Wright/Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice — and I think it shows in that there’s a lot of dialogue I can imagine being hugely enjoyable to act. (And an Old Etonian writing a play about why so many of the country apparently wants to be fucked over by Old Etonians is amusing in a postmodern kind of way.)

Yeah it was really good apart from twats r us.

Does my head in when well known actors are on stage and audience behave like arseholes. Saw Daniel Radcliffe in The Cripple of Inishmann a few years ago and the boy next to me kept taking bloody photos.

I also hate the super fans who act along. Went to Book of Mormon the other week and the couple along the row had their own little dance routines while they mimed along.

I frequently shush people. Years back, I told a couple off for talking through the first half of Midsummer Nights Dream and they said 'we're talking about the play!' I suggested they do that at the interval. DH is more direct. After a woman had complained her way through the first half of a play at the NT, he turned to her at the interval and said 'Are you going to talk all the way through the second half as well? Because it's bloody rude and it's spoiling the show'. She shut up.

It was none of the plays/shows mentioned above, which is really sad as it makes me realise just how widespread this is!

My kids have both been visiting the theatre since they were three or four. They have been taught to sit still, shut up and behave! My son is 13 and recently demonstrated that he does occasionally listen when he chose sweets for a show specifically because they had no wrappers! (We always go to Home Bargains or Poundland before the theatre and they have been refused their first choice before because of the possible noise.)

Surely, if you are taking a child to something like a ballet, you go through the story with them first? We have a lovely book that I bought before DD's trip to The Nutcracker a few years ago and there must be on line stuff too.

Oh, forgot my utter favourite. In the early 1990s I went to a matinee of The Caretaker. I was sitting next to a trio of women who clearly went regularly and had chosen this because Peter Howitt, who was in Bread a few years earlier, was in it.

Cue twenty minutes of 'Oooh, he's different to how he is on the telly'. Yes, because he is an actor. And then, in one of the long silences, an urgent hiss 'He's forgotten his lines!'

Don't get me started on those flashing swords and other flashing and twirling things that are sold at productions that appeal to children. I and my DC had a family in front of us whose four DC all had these flashing things purchased for them during the interval. It would have totally ruined the second half for us had we been unable to move seats.

These things should be sold on the way out after the show.

God, yes, @YoureAllABunchOfBastards. Cillian Murphy in the Druid Playboy of the Western World a good few years back was nearly inaudible over the fangirls squeeing. I knew someone who worked on it, and the rest of the cast had to actually rehearse ways of dealing with it (eg, what does your character do if Christy’s entrance causes so much excitement your next line is inaudible — wait it out, deliver the line anyway, go out of character and have a snack and a fag break?)

I haven’t seen him in anything on stage since Peaky Blinders got big, but I imagine it will only be worse now. It’s a shame, because he’s a very, very good stage actor, even in some dubious plays.

I go to the theatre (regional)a lot and IMO this is untypical behaviour and bad front of house management.

Anti-social people at my local theatre get a visit from the front of house manager telling them off, or asked to leave (have witnessed the latter).

I saw Cillian Murphy on stage some years ago, so probably before PB mania at its current levels. I can't say I've been a huge fan (and am not a fangirl either), but he was superb –it was Misterman, a one-hander and very physically detailed and demanding –and I hate to think of it being spoiled by people oohing at him.