Back in June, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece on the poor etiquette of theatergoers, a trend that seems to be growing as deeply discounted tickets bring new asses to the seats. These are the people who use their cellphones during the show, shout or are otherwise unruly, etc. David Hyde Pierce recalled seeing "a family passing a bucket of chicken down the front row." Turns out they're having the same problem across the pond. This being Britain, however, things are much more exciting.
Apart from drunken yobs fucking their yobettes in the mezzanine while knifecrimes occur in the lobby, audience reaction can be downright dangerous:
Desmond Atuehene, 46, who works on the door of the Prince of Wales theatre, where Mamma Mia! is playing, said: "When hen parties come, they are always drunk but you just have to ignore them. Two months ago a drunk guy came in and assaulted me."Yow! To be fair, who doesn't hate to miss even a minute of Sondheim? They should pass out plastic jugs with the programs.The rudeness is not confined to the West End's more populist offerings, however. Hannah Waddingham, who appeared in A Little Night Music, recalled how a drunken audience member urinated next to the stage during a recent performance. "We were performing the song Every Day a Little Death; the man almost peed on [her co-star] Lyndon Edwards," she said.
Time to send in Patti LuPone.
Isn't it piss?
Soon they'll be passing Haggis.
Side By Side By Sondheim At The Stall
The excerpt actually speaks more to the problems with binge drinking and the drinking culture in London (and the UK as a whole) than the poor etiquette of theatre-goers, I think.
But anyway! As an avid theatre-goer my entire life, and also a perpetual (and perpetually poor) grad student, I'm delighted by the availability of cheap theatre tickets. It's absolutely wonderful that I can go see Derek Jacobi in Twelfth Night for ten quid! That said, the need to fill theatre seats in an era of super-competitive pricing means major theatre centers (like London and NYC) are showing more long-running arena musicals like Billy Elliot and Les Mes, and fewer high-quality short-run plays that avid (and poor) theatre-goers might be interested in seeing.
Lowering ticket prices makes theatre more accessible for more people, which I am all for. The attendant problems of etiquette, like people not knowing - or caring - that it's not permissible to eat buckets of fried chicken in a theatre are par for the course, I'm afraid. As I noted above, I think the more important and longer-term issue is how the pricing of seats changes what's being shown, and the fact that an increasing emphasis on casual theatre-goers and tourist butts as seat-fillers means theatres are less likely to put on riskier, edgier, less popular stuff, and risk losing the core audience of dedicated theatre fans.
(The middle ground, sadly, seems to be casting major movie stars in short-run shows, which seems to be a hit or miss proposition, depending on the strength of the actor.)
needs a "drunken stupidity" tag. something tells me that Balk could use that tag on more than a few posts...
Slightly off topic, but woman sitting me at Next to Normal had TWO helper dachshunds. Two. I can see one, but two? Is one to help her and the second one to help the first one?
Also, I was at the Reasons to Be Pretty show when, in the midst of the character's rant about what a small-dicked douchebag her boyfriend is, some guy in the audience stood up, shouted "You bitch" and walked out. I totally thought it was part of the play.
I'm behind the times, it seems. Is a "helper Dachshund" essentially a Seeing Eye Dog for a limbo contest?
No no no. See, this is "retro" theatre where audiences get to experience it just like in "ye goode ol' days" of The Globe.
I was at Hair when suddenly everyone on stage started taking off their clothes! Just astoundingly bad manners.
The only thing worse was when they put them back on. (Will Swenson should really never wear anything, in this man's opinion.)
Finally, a return to traditional theater.
"...the commonest haunters are for the most part, the leaudest persons in the land, apt for pilferie, periurie, forgerie, or any regories, the very scum, rascallitie, and baggage of the people, thieves cutpurses, shifters, cousoners; briefly an uncleane generation, and spaune of vipers...for a play is like a sinke in town; whereunto all the filth doth runne: or a byle in the body, that draweth all the humours into it."
-Henry Crosse (1603) on the Globe.