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Hmm, Gothamist is familiar with wacky antics from fellow moviegoers, but we haven't had to deal with a Broadway play audience that actually yells at the actors. The Daily News listed some recent examples of bad behavior, including one audience member dousing another with water and someone yelling to actor Larry Bryggman during a performance of Festen, saying that he couldn't hear Bryggman during a speech. Oy - we think we remember hearing that some actors (Laurence Fishburne?) would stop performances when he would hear cellphones ring - are we to expect people to put their feet up on the backs of seats next? This kind of strange behavior seems more endemic to people paying mad money for mainstream Broadway shows, while smaller off-Broadway shows seem less infected, perhaps because of the smaller venues and stronger camraderie.
Have you come across nutty theatergoers? And in other theater etiquette news: At the hottest ticket in town, Three Days in Rain with Julia Roberts, Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper, the theater will not allow late arrivals, so fashionably late does not apply, folks.
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The worst is when some a-hole's phone goes off. What moron in this day and age doesn't know how to use the vibrate setting? Or better yet, turn the damn thing off.
I was Matthew Broderick in Night Must Fall (not his best) when, during a climactic and tense scene with no dialogue, one of the unwashed masses yelled out "Boo"! Yeah, the show sucked but that's no reason to ruin it for everyone else. Especially at 100+ a pop.
I saw Night Must Fall as well. Not his best, but, wow, your story takes the cake on douchebaggery.
Once during a community theater performance, a very elderly gentlemen in the first row very audibly said of the lead actress who had plopped her bare feet on a coffee table, "Wow, she's got some big feet!"
At the Met, as the lights went down, someone popped open a can of soda, which was pretty WT. That was my last time in the cheap seats. :P
Actually, isn't this just a throw back to the good old days of Shakespearian theater? I seem to remember learning that in Shakespeare's it wasn't uncommon for audience members to get, um, interactive when they didn't like what was happening on stage. Anyone up for tossing some fruit?
A friend of mine had a REALLY nutty theatre experience:
She had comp tickets for a musical she was attending with an out of town friend and the friend's tour group of 30+ church ladies. Unfortunately, my friend had to sit alone but happened to have great seats. Next to a CRAZY lady and her equally obnoxious 7 year old daughter.
During the first act, the little girl was seated next to my friend and, intentionally or not, who knows, was repeatedly kicking her. My friend, in her never-anything-but-pleasant way, leaned over to the mother and asked her if she could please ask her daughter to stop kicking. The woman cursed at her! And to make things worse, the little girl looked straight at my friend and said "You're ugly." She proceeded to say this to my friend roughly every 10 minutes throughout the first act.
Then at intermission these couple of buffoons went out and got bags of stinky, smelly, loudly-wrapped food that they proceeded to eat during the beginning of the second act. By this time, the woman had switched places with her daughter so at least she wasn't giving my friend constant bruises. But as the play ended and everyone got up to leave, this insane woman looked my friend straight in the eye and stomped directly on her foot, no apologies.
Insane. Obviously, my friend didn't enjoy the show all that much. Thank goodness she was comped for the tickets, otherwise that would have been a very unpleasant $100 spent.
Some of the worst audience members are the drunks that stumble into the UCB for the midnight weekend shows. One of my favorites was a drunk trio in the front row during No Posers. One woman instantly passes out, and the guy starts crawling across stage, then passes out center stage.
Speaking of feet. I can't stand when audience memebers in the front row put their feet up on the stage. It happens more often off-broadway, where its physically more possible. But I think its so rude, and SO disrespectful to the audience. And unlike a brief cell phone ring, the distraction can last for the entire length of the play.
I wasn't there, but I remember reading about an incident a few years ago where Kurt Masur abruptly stopped the NY Philharmonic and harumphed off the podium because too many people in the audience were coughing.
Last night, at a show on Theatre Row, there was a couple sitting in front of me and throught the drama, they both nodded off and snored into a lilting crescendo.
They slept through two acts but woke up for the 10 minute intermission.That'a almost three hours of old person snoring! At the end of the show, they clapped loudly. I turned to them and asked if they wanted me to explain what the show was about.
I've been to too many musicals where people insist on singing along, right next to me or behind me. I didn't pay to hear YOU sing. That's what the actors on stage are paid for. Dumbasses.
I can remember one show (come to think of it, it was also on Theater Row-the old one) when just before the end of the first act the old woman seated in front of me, who carried several shopping bags (but was not a bag woman, per se), suddenly gets up, loudly gathers up all her bags, and says, "Okay, Myrtle, good seeing you, I gotta go, I'm going home, I'll call ya, bye..." Mind you this is in a, maybe, 80 seat theater. It was so disruptive the actors onstage stopped and looked at the woman, like they couldn't believe what was happening. And she just walked out like she was getting off the bus.
Ah, show biz...
My first time in NY I went to several Broadway musicals. I remember a guy singing along *every* song of The Phantom of the Opera. Cmon! It's a famous musical, but we want to hear the actors, not the audience...
Years ago, when Whoopi was doing "A Funny Thing... Forum", I saw her stop the whole damn show because she was laughing so hard she counldn't finish her lines, about mid-show. She turned to the audience and said, "That's live theatre for you folks!" and proceeded with the show. It was actually fairly endearing.
I think some people have a few too many pre-theatre cocktails. I saw Festen the night someone yelled at Larry Bryggman. It was difficult to hear what he was saying, but I was in shock when this person called out from the mezzanine. Also, at the start of the second act, a character calls out "Hello?" (because he's looking for the other characters) and certain audience members felt the need to respond. Most of these people were my parents' age or older (I'm in my twenties), which really baffled me.
I have no complaints about people talking the last time I went to see a Broadway show (a couple of weeks ago) but I was shocked at how some people were dressed! It was like they just got out of bed. Sweatpants, baseball caps, sneakers, it was shameful. There was one man in front of me who put his foot up on the ledge - we were sitting in the 2nd row mezzanie - and he was just a slob.
As in movie theaters, I don't understand why people sit there and take antics like this. That's what ushers in Broadway theaters and managers in movie theaters are there for! If someone is disrupting the performance, you have every right to ask someone in charge of the theater to take care of the situation, or at least ask to have your seat switched. For the person mentioned above to sit through the kicking from the child and then the ill-treatment by its mother is ridiculous. I don't feel sorry for her, because she didn't ask to be reseated or ask to have the problem removed from the theater. No pity here.
Well, yeah, one could at least directly ask the sing-along dopes to shut up. If they are right next to you, it's your job.
Actually the biggest problem I've seen at the Met was someone who was trying to give a running translation to his friend. We shushed, he apologized, no biggie.
The only kind of disruption I've seen at Broadway shows is the usual talking during the performance. Why can't people do that BEFORE the lights go down?
If you want to be noisy and boo the actors, I suggest heading to the Globe Theatre in London. It's a great experience and you don't get shushed for booing at the bad guy.
There's always the infamous NYPhil incedent discussed by Alex Ross in his awesome Concert Rage article. Opening line, "Why did a man start yelling at a concert of Bach cantatas the other night?"
"Alex Ross"--I love his Wonder Woman.