Disruptive Audience Members during Musical Perfomance

[Ger1atricMillennial]

Hello MNs-

Posting in AIBU for traffic.

We attended a performance of a musical made up of well-known pop songs.There were parts of the performance that it was indicated to sing along but mostly it was a standard musical. The group of people behind us were DRUNK, singing and shouting out, spilling drink all over us etc... I get it as they are very well-known songs some people get it confused with a concert, but as you can imagine their behaviour was less than ideal and we had paid to let the professional's sing.

I complained to see if I could get a refund for the tickets. I am in NZ- and there is a very strictly enforced law and 2K fine for individuals that sell booze to intoxicated patrons. Some of these people were so drunk that they would have been thrown out of a pub but were still able to get more alcohol in the intermission. I therefore made the central point that it is the venue was responsible for the behaviour as they were selling alcohol to drunk people which in turn ruined the performance.

They have replied asking if I alerted anyone at the venue at the time. We did not so I guess they could say they weren't aware.

Do any wise MN's have any experience with being successful with this type of complaint. I would like to make them pay so they have a reason to closely monitor this behaviour in the future.

They wouldn't know they needed to monitor this sort of behaviour if you didn't let anyone know at the time!

If it was bad enough to warrant a refund I think you should have alerted staff at the time really...

Yes and no in terms of experience. In a London theatre, we had a group who were drunk and climbing over seats just to go in and out and smoke and go to the bar again. We complained and we got moved immediately. It was disruptive and annoying, but the usher moved us as quickly as they could in a scene change.

In the interval, those people were told that they could not purchase any more alcohol. I don’t think there was enough room to move all the patrons who were affected. But I also don’t know if anyone else complained.

Really I think they should’ve been thrown out. The problem is you didn’t say anything at the time. So asking for a refund later, probably won’t wash. I don’t know.

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Thats good to know. Next time I will do this.

I don't know how they couldn't have known- my friend was performing, and he could hear them throughout from the stage, but I guess it was a combination of the bystander effect and not wanting to piss them off in case of retaliation.

But surely the job of ushers during the show is to monitor the audience? How could they not see a drunk group causing a disturbance?

I think they assume that if no one says anything, people are okay with it. So if they go and ask people to calm down when no one‘s actually complained, it looks as if they’re the ones creating a problem.

Basically they would go up to a bunch of people and tell them off… and those drunk aggressive rowdy people would say “well no one else has a problem with it.”

there’s also very few ushers around now in my experience.

Of course in New Zealand, it may be different. But the actual area of audience that one usher will be keeping an eye on, if there is one, is quite a large area.

thinking about it, the performance where we were re-seated, I did actually have to get up and look around to find someone to do that.

an added problem is that people seem to think they’re entitled to sing along at a “not singalong” event. So infuriating.