To ask what poor theatre etiquette you’ve witnessed?

[AllaMova]

Admittedly, I had never experienced poor theatre etiquette until I saw Phantom of the Opera in the West End last week.

A woman next to me kept lunging forward and then flinging herself back in her seat throughout the performance, which was very distracting and made my seat shake each time. Then, she kept whispering to her companion.

A man kept kicking another man’s seat. I didn’t notice until the man in front turned around and told him off doing so. (Not that I blame him in the slightest!)

Another woman a few rows in front of me got her to text several times. An usher intervened, but she kept doing it.

Some people also arrived late and missed the start of the show and distracted everyone else in the process of finding their seats.

I can’t believe all of this happened during one single show. Until that point, I had been so lucky.

Two women with kids sat behind us at The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe in Glasgow. The kids were so loud, throwing stuff, kicking seats, chatting, playing and not watching at all and had absolutely no interest in being there and the parents were totally not bothered either. It was a beautiful play. DD9 and the similarly aged girl next to her joined forces and very angrily hissed at them to be quiet. Really ruined a lovely play. We've avoided matinees ever since

My experiences (singing along tunelessly to Beautiful & having a drink dropped on me from the balcony at Book of Mormon) is mild to what my daughter has seen.

she used to work at a long running “family” show popular with tourists.

the international school party where the teachers left all the children alone in the auditorium whilst they stayed in the foyer.

a couple becoming very intimate in a box

a lady accusing another woman of being racist and trying to start a fight with her (victim was the parent of a child performer & had called out the woman for poor behaviour)

and having her boobs grabbed by a drunken man.

I paid for front row seats to Hamilton and a woman 2 seats down sang every fucking song. People started glaring and she smugly grinned, clearly thinking we were admiring her skill and dedication. After people asked her to stop, she quietened down a bit but carried on.

A man next to me stroked his goatee beard slowly throughout the whole show. I was about 6 months pregnant and it just gave me the rage. Not that I could say anything about it but it was really really annoying

Half a row of people arriving in the middle of the second song in Book of Mormon.
Those West End musicals seem to be the worst for shoddy behaviour.
My worst was in the literal dying moments of Andrew Scott’s Hamlet when a guy’s phone rang. And then rang again. And then rang a third time and he got up and answered it and took the work call as he was exiting the auditorium. That was so awful it made it into The Stage along with my incredulous tweet.

That reminded me of the time I took DD to see “Sleeping Beauty” Panto with Dave Benson Phillips. It was excruciating and the first act lasted two and half hours. I decided that I couldn’t face sitting through the second act so I told her it had finished and we were going home as the curtain came down for the interval. She started crying because Sleeping Beauty was dead. I told her that she was fine, and that she comes back to life in Sleeping Beauty 2.

I once had the misfortune to be sat in front of a mother and two children. It was a show that was suitable for children (though not exclusively aimed at them. I wasn't at In The Night Garden Live or anything like that!) and most of the children were sitting nicely and enjoying the performance. Not the children who were in front of me. They were jumping up and down, climbing all over the seats, squealing, the works. The mum seemed completely unbothered. I was too worried that I'd get myself thrown out if I asked her to control them so I tried my best to ignore them and said nothing.

Second one was when I was at the Harry Potter plays, back when it was still in two parts. The first part I was sat next to two Chinese women who talked throughout the entire thing and had what I can only describe as a picnic, complete with the loudest rustling on opening pretty much every item. Bizarrely enough they didn't come back for part two so I got to see the second part in peace.

I went to a local production of the Buddy Holly musical a few years ago, before Covid so no lockdown-etiquette-forgetting excuses. There was a group of friends who had brought their own bottles of wine (somehow!!) and were drinking all the way through the performance, cackling, and shouting out during the performance - once even in a faintly racist accent 😳

Not bad behaviour as such but at a popular musical on opening night a young woman was violently sick over the row in front of of her. The poor people had to leave they were dripping I wondered how they got home as it was a cold winter night. The stench was bad. The young women clearly had special needs and refused to move despite the people who were with her trying. Quite a few people had to be moved to other seats because of the smell.

2 and a half hours is excrutuatingly long for a panto 1st half.

ds has played in a few pantos. The actors always say their ones very quickly and the MD conducts the songs at a fast tempo on the Xmas Eve performances so everyone can travel home

We took DS to a pantomime and in the row in front were two women with five children between them, aged about 2-5 years. Each child was then given a plastic pint-sized cup with a bright blue drink in it and a large bag of sweets.

Cue- not long before they started going hyper and wouldn’t sit still and then followed the repeated trips to the toilet throughout the performance - I think we counted 13 trips if I remember correctly. And of course it was always a faff with them getting up and trying to get past people to get out into the aisle and then back again.

As an emetophobe that’s my worst nightmare

The last time I went I had a front row balcony seat. The woman beside me took off her shoes and put her bare feet up on the railing in front of us. I had feet in my peripheral vision constantly. She didn't keep them still either. Very distracting. I had chosen that row so I didn't have to put up with the lights from phone screens of people ahead of me. Feet were worse.

A very drunken, loud, swearing and heckling hen party (may have been some other celebration… but a group of drunk women anyway) at a west end musical matinee. I can’t remember which show but it was something like dirty dancing or pretty woman. At one point one of them started screaming for the lead actor to take his shirt off then said to her friend ”well she can f**k off” when it was pointed out to her that the woman in front was giving her daggers.
Ruined the show for all of us in the vicinity and I felt so sorry for the actors. Also, imagine if a drunken man in the audience had shouted at a female actress to take her top off in the middle of a scene. Inappropriate no matter who the perpetrator is IMO.

My daughter hated when she had to cover at Pretty Woman.

At a musical a few years back with some friends. Some time into the first half when they were moving the scenery the ushers let a man in late who sat down next to my friend. Lights were low so I could see he seemed to be wearing some sort of costume with shiny things but no details. Until, several minutes later and half way through a scene, his entire outfit lit up with flashing fairylights. It seemed to be by accident and he switched them off pretty quick but then a few minutes later he did it again and I had words. A lot of words. The ushers appeared at that point and escorted him out. It was utterly bizarre.

The eating annoys me, why on earth can’t people watch a show without the need to eat a picnic? I once had someone behind me who crunched (right in my ear) on a tub of popcorn throughout the whole show. By the end of the show I felt like ramming the tub up his backside.

I do get that a lot of this is annoying - the wanking thing - oh my good god!

Equally i work with marginalised young people and a big part of my job is trying to give them experiences that they wouldn't otherwise get. And it can be hard in the likes of the theatre where there's an etiquette if they get excited about the novelty of it or don't realise what's expected of them. So things like wanting to record on phones or (quietly) video call family, I know is super annoying but I also know they do it because they are so excited to be there and they really do see it as a once in a lifetime thing. It's a big deal to them. We nearly got kicked out of the panto the last time we went for phones being out and partly I was just cringing because i kept telling them off but then at the same time I kind of thought that it's going to be harder for some people to get the etiquette 'right' and that makes things like theatre really inaccessible to marginalised groups. And that also doesn't sit right with me.

Same for when people need to use the loo, a relative now often needs to use the loo with real urgency and has limited ability to hold his urine after cancer treatment. He usually would try to book seats near the aisle or at the back but those are not always available so I'm not sure what else he'd be expected to do.

I think anyone being antisocial or deliberately rude then fair enough, but there needs to be allowances for vulnerability and the difficulty is that's not always going to be visible.

The arts is so under resourced and funded as it is if we aren't making it accessible and encouraging everyone to be able to properly engage with it then i think you're kind of undermining it in the long run.

I agree, same at the cinema

Went to see Macbeth a couple of weeks ago. Fantastic production but in Act 3 there is a speech by Ross. Its the first time I had seen Macbeth in the theatre so I am not familiar with the speech and........I'm still not.

A woman in the second row was roaring with laughter, I mean properly shrieking. I have had it explained that its a bit like the grave diggers scene in Hamlet, a bit of light relief but more of a wry smile moment. Nope, she lost it.

Now I understand that sometimes something tickles you and you lose it, my sister and I (who I was with) are chronic gigglers and can set each other off with just a look, but this woman didnt even try to stifle it, I would have had some sympathy if she had. She was out and proud guffawing to the point where there was a lot of eye contact between audience members with "WTF?!" expressions. Couldnt hear a single word past the first line that the poor actor said.

Took my daughters to see Phantom in January, the woman in front of me spent the entire time stroking her husband’s bald head whilst trying to rest her elbow in my lap. The first time she put it there I assumed she didn’t realise it was a person so I moved my legs a bit and she still didn’t budge. I had to push her off, and she kept putting it back again and again for me to push it off, so bizarre!

Not really irritating but puzzling. The Sound of Music had just started a run in the West End and I went to see it with a friend. A Japanese family sat next to us, the mother and teenage children looked vaguely bemused throughout. The father however, who was seated beside me, cried constantly until the end when he applauded rapturously.

The little match girl is a beautiful story, and so so sad. I didn't know they made a play of it, but I've read it to my 6yo DD many times. She was shocked and sad when she first heard it but as you quite rightly say, the whole point is that she dies. Why would you take your child to see that if you're going to lie about the end? Totally pointless.

making a bloody noise eating and rustling. Why must people eat in the theatre?????

My daughter is diabetic and if she has to eat, she has to eat. And check her phone in fact. She tries to prepare quiet hypo treatments before the performance starts though.

I think if you're a regular theatre goer, then just standing for exceptional performance might make sense. If its more of an occasion, the experience can be really different and quite intense though. I rather like the shared experience of genuine appreciation. I think it's quite moving.