Annoying audience members in the theatre

[beverleybass]

Does anybody else ALWAYS seem to have seats right by the worst people in the theatre. I must just be unlucky.

This year saw Come From Away and was directly behind 3 women who kept chatting all the way through, including during really emotional and key moments and solos. Someone tapped them on the shoulder and told them to shush in the end which improved things slightly.

I also saw Cinderella and more chatters as well phones coming out constantly with their shining lights.

What is the point spending all that money on tickets to look at your phone or chat to people??

Anyway saw Mamma Mia as a birthday treat today and it was honestly the worst of the lot. People on my row playing musical chairs, people arriving up to fifteen mins late (and still being let in) the man to the left of me kept singing along with the songs, the people in front chatting and constantly zipping/unzipping bags and rustling noisy bags of snacks.

How hard is it to sit still and be quiet

@bendmeoverbackwards

I don't blame ushers for not intervening when people are that aggressive

Seriously this is such a cop out. Theatres need to do more instead of shrugging their shoulders. It just seems to be acceptable now for people to spoil the enjoyment of others. If ushers don't feel comfortable calling out people who are talking or using their phones, then they're not fit for the job.

Clamp down hard. No more excuses.

It's letting people get away with it in the first place that has made them so brazen. Broken windows theory of policing, you need to crack down on the petty stuff.

Yep. And people eating in these places drives me up the wall as well.

Chomp, crunch, slurp, rustle rustle...

Fuck off.

Yes!

We went a performance of Jesus Christ Superstar, with small boy in front of us. His mum explained everything to him in a loud stage whisper " That's Mary...that's one of the disciples......Jesus is sad now...Peter is Jesus's friend..." Eventually a man near them said "I didn't pay for this seat to hear a bloody running commentary!" And luckily for all of us, she shut up.

Q Why do you think she was shouting?

A Because it was very loud and angry sounding.
Cognitive, please tell me you were deliberately misunderstanding this question in order to be able to argue.
Because otherwise, your comprehension skills are seriously off.

Many years ago went to a film version of Twelfth Night at a local independent cinema. Someone had brought their kids with them and they were obviously bored stiff. They spent the entire evening chasing each other up and down the aisle stairs. Parents did nothing. Film was ruined.

@DameHelena

Q Why do you think she was shouting?

A Because it was very loud and angry sounding.
Cognitive, please tell me you were deliberately misunderstanding this question in order to be able to argue.
Because otherwise, your comprehension skills are seriously off.

Or she’s been on here a lot and is used to people doing the “I’m sure when you said shouting what you actually meant was talking politely at a normal volume and in fact was the opposite of shouting” routine. Which people do a lot when they are trying to defend something indefensible like standing up and creating a massive scene in the middle of a film.

That may not have been what you were doing, but enough people do it on here that it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption.

@CognitiveDissolver - no way the person shouted . It would have at most been a stern voice. I simply can’t believe that you weren’t embarrassed that your companion had behaved in an anti-social manner, instead of relentlessly defending their right to annoy others.

This is why we always book a private box, no need to sit with the riff-raff.
I've noticed a few people seem to have an issue with crowding the entrances and staircases. I take great delight in impolitely barging people out the way.

I always remember being in the cinema a chap behind kept bumping my friends' chair, until eventually said friend got up and bellowed at this person and told him to stop.
Not only did this chap stop, but he and his friends all go up and left.
Unfortunately for him, my friend was an international Olympian bodybuilder.

People need to behave when they go out and not behave so entitled, might is always right.

Changechangychange, no, I don't buy that. The poster clarified later what they meant. It's misunderstanding, the question being whether it was genuine or wilful.

[quote Anonymous48]@JingsMahBucket

"I was about to comment on this thread that all this appalling behavior in theatres must be cultural because this type of crap wouldn’t happen on Broadway at all."

I think you're absolutely right and I commented something similar. I am a frequent theatre-goer in the US (although very rarely actually on Broadway) and never come across this type of behavior.

I think maybe it's possible that over here we have more respect for the artists and their craft.[/quote]
I don’t know if it is a case of respect but in the US, theatre and the arts are considered high culture. There isn’t much of an attempt to make it accessible to the widest possible audience.

In contrast, in the UK, the Art Council gives more support and funding to things that are ‘accessible’ (not in the sense of disabilities) and that translates to the lowest common denominator.

Went to see Phantom of the Opera last weekend.
It was amazing!
I was also very impressed when the usher was immediately onto the one person who started looking at their phone and it lit up like a beacon in the darkness.
Thank you to that usher. It sounds like she's a rarity.

@ApricotArcade

Went to see Phantom of the Opera last weekend. It was amazing! I was also very impressed when the usher was immediately onto the one person who started looking at their phone and it lit up like a beacon in the darkness. Thank you to that usher. It sounds like she's a rarity.

I got told off by an usher at Phantom for looking at my phone - it was right at the end of the interval, the orchestra hadn’t even started back up again but you could see they were getting settled. Ironically I was just checking it was on silent

Wish more were on the ball as the team there

@DifficultBloodyWoman

"There isn’t much of an attempt to make it accessible to the widest possible audience."

Actually, I don't think that's true. Where I live, theatres definitely make an attempt to bring people in who otherwise wouldn't get to. Especially when it comes to schoolkids. That's one reason I volunteer for my local performing arts center, which is a non profit organization. Not having to pay people to usher means more money available to do work in the community. They are also directly supported by the city, the county and the state that we are located in, which I guess would be like the Art Council funding you mentioned.

I don’t know if it is a case of respect but in the US, theatre and the arts are considered high culture. There isn’t much of an attempt to make it accessible to the widest possible audience.

In contrast, in the UK, the Art Council gives more support and funding to things that are ‘accessible’ (not in the sense of disabilities) and that translates to the lowest common denominator.

I don't think that's true -- I don't think that a musical like Wicked, Mamma Mia or Waitress translates into anything other than bankable popular entertainment on either side of the Atlantic.

And while I have less than no idea about Broadway funding in the US, the Arts Council certainly doesn't bankroll the profitable commercial sector in the West End (mostly musicals) -- the London theatre it funds is institutions like the National, the Almeida, the Young Vic, the Tricycle, Battersea Arts Centre, the Lyric, Donmar etc.

But in terms of numbers of people attending musicals vs straight plays -- about double the number of people see musicals compared to drama.

I do think that musicals are viewed as more accessible in that people who would never consider seeing a Shakespeare or Caryl Churchill play will go and see Back to the Future or Mary Poppins. And that part of the issue with inconsiderate behaviour is that when you put a lot of people who've never/hardly ever been to the theatre before into a theatre setting, their behavioural parameters in terms of silence etc are more likely to be from the much looser practices at football matches or gigs than theatre.

DottyHarmer

CognitiveDissolver - no way the person shouted . It would have at most been a stern voice.

Anyway, shouting is quite moderate.
Surely it's traditional that anyone disagreeing with, or disapproving of, something someone posting on MN says or does is always reported to have been "screaming"?

Went to the theatre to see a stand up comedian a few years ago. I know a bit of audience participation and banter can be part of it, but there was one annoying bloke who kept piping up every 5 minutes. He wasn't funny and would talk over the punchlines.

The comedian gave him a bit of what for but as the bloke kept piping up the rest of the audience near him went from shushing, to groaning, to telling him to shut up.

After the interval the comedian looked in the direction of where the bloke had been sitting and asked him a question.

A different voice (very deep and intimidating sounding) simply replied "He's gone"

Lord knows what happened in the interval but it made the second half much more enjoyable!

I was at theatre on Saturday to see Dream Girls and I have never seen anything like the amount of shuffling in seats, getting up.for the loo and coming in late, it's just rude and disrespectful for the actors who have to ignore it and carry on.

Theatre is my line of work. A few years ago I went to a presentation by a woman whose job it is to analyse audiences. She put this to us differently: we all know that in Shakespeare's time, audience demographic and behaviour were very different - everyone went, and everyone stood and walked around, threw rotten fruit at the shit bits, talked, had sex, basically did whatever they wanted, much like we do at home in front of the tv. At some point in history, the people at the upper echelons of society decided that they wanted theatres for themselves, and dreamed up various ways of actively excluding commoners. The most effective way of doing that was to plunge shows into darkness and impose silence on everyone. It worked a treat. To this day, so much time and energy goes into trying to democratise the theatre experience, to attract a wide and representative audience instead of the moneyed few. We have to prove this in order for it to continue to be funded with public money. So whilst I agree that there's a limit to how much distraction feels ok to us as individuals who've parted with cash, I generally try to enjoy the experience of theatre as something that involves lots of other people and 'lean in' to the stuff that comes with that.

We've mostly been quite lucky except in Hamilton where we had seats right at the back and there were some guys with standing tickets who were, I kid you not, leaning on the partition behind the seats, so leaning right over our heads and having a full volume conversation during the show. Took us a few goes to shut them up.

Sadly echo others experience

Recently went to London and saw Six and Moulin Rouge

Front row of Six had an obsessed fan who sang and danced the ENTIRE way through the performance

Moulin Rouge was worse (and extremely expensive in front stalls). The idiot women in front kept singing along loudly except they didn't know the new song compilation so ended up singing wrong words and songs.

I did tell them I hadn't paid all this money to hear them sing and they shut up second act.

Why don't folk understand it is NOT a singalong unless advertised as such

She put this to us differently: we all know that in Shakespeare's time, audience demographic and behaviour were very different

Interesting. Would you say that Andrew Dickson's account is misleading?

Spectators are likely to have been predominantly male, particularly among the groundlings, though prostitutes seem to have been numerous, as were cutpurses. Food and drink were on offer – apples and oranges, hazelnuts and gingerbread – as were copious quantities of ale.

www.historyextra.com/period/elizabethan/at-the-playhouse-watching-shakespeares-plays-in-elizabethan-england/

Or this that I read a while back and found very disturbing with its account of the kidnapping of children (boys) and their forced labour in theatre productions?

Children's troupes were often forced into performances with pedophilic overtones in seedy semi-dark theatres that attracted predominantly male audiences, according to the researcher.

"The playwright Thomas Middleton, for example, described one children's company as a 'nest of boys able to ravish a man,'" said van Es.

www.livescience.com/37570-kids-forced-to-act-shakespeares-england.html

Constant rustling of crisp and sweet wrappings really winds me up - with all the technological advances at our disposal, you'd think someone would have invented the non rustle crisp/sweet bag by now.....

It's probably a good job I don't go to the Theatre. I don't think I could resist a good sing along if I was watching Mamma Mia. Surely that's the point? The rest is rude though.

@cavalierkingc

Went to see only fools and horses recently and sat right next to someone with a worse laugh I've ever heard, basically shrieking. And she laughed at almost every line.

I would have left, just couldn't abide that sort or noise and right next to me? Was it that funny? Quite fancy a visit to that show.

@Lopoem

It's probably a good job I don't go to the Theatre. I don't think I could resist a good sing along if I was watching Mamma Mia. Surely that's the point? The rest is rude though.

No the point of a musical is to enjoy and appreciate the talented performers, not drown them out with your own warbling. Those around you have paid to see and hear the professionals, not you.