Wall Street Journal writer admits to leaving most shows at intermission...

[adamgreer]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 7:07pm

Wow.
Confessions of a Broadway Bolter

[Phantom of London]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 7:21pm

Isn't that the golden rule of reviewing and that is staying until the very end? isn't that what they are paid for to stay until the very end, so you don't have to?

Even Ben Brantley on Theater Talk stated he always stayed until the end. I think Joanna Kaufman has talked herself into the sack, that is if she is employed as a theatre critic?

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 7:27pm

I don't think she's a reviewer.

[Sutton Ross]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 7:28pm

Most people cant read this article anyway, so it doesn't matter.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 7:30pm

New York

I recently saw three Broadway shows in a single week. Actually, as is my unfortunate tendency, I’m overstating things a bit. To be scrupulously honest, I saw half of three Broadway shows. Intermissions came and I went.

I bailed first on “The Last Ship.” The lights had barely come up at the end of the tedious first act—think “Sinky Boats”—when I looked at my husband; he looked at me and off we went up the aisle and out the exit, thrilled to breathe the sweet air of W. 52nd Street. O, Sting, where is thy depth?

I’m embarrassed by how unembarrassed I am to admit that the very next night, I took early leave of “The Country House,” and the following night of “It’s Only a Play.” If only. Don’t ask me what happened during the second acts of “Matilda,” “Kinky Boots,” “Pippin” and, reaching back a few seasons, “Boeing-Boeing” and “Billy Elliott. ” Really, I have no idea. But I am nothing if not cosmopolitan in my tastes, or distastes—French farces, English musicals set in gritty industrial cities, and American entertainments involving Charlemagne ’s Frankish kin.

I hasten to say that I have occasionally met a production more than halfway. Let the record show that I sat happily and raptly through “August: Osage County” and, just last month, through the superlative “Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” both of which clocked in at almost three hours. I never looked at my watch. “Here Lies Love,” which is set on a disco floor and requires audience members to follow the action on foot? I was sufficiently captivated that I stood through it—actually, danced through it—twice.

But these are exceptions. I’m of the “brevity is the soul of wit” school and of the belief that only a few bites are required to determine that you just don’t like a particular dish. My ideal night in the theater runs 90 minutes without an intermission (it is best not to put temptation in my path), which means that Shakespeare and I don’t tend to see a lot of each other.

“In a recent production of ‘ King Lear, ’ the first act ran for two and a half hours,” Jean Kerr —the humorist, playwright and wife of drama critic Walter Kerr—recalled in her 1964 essay “I Don’t Want to See the Uncut Version of ANYTHING.” “I was once more made aware–during that interminable first act—that the most serious materials eventually seem comic if they are allowed to go on too long,” Kerr continued. “For instance, during the protracted scene in which Lear (now mad) is talking to poor, blinded Gloucester, all I could think was ‘first they put his eyes out, now they’re going to talk his ears off.’”

I’m privileged and I know it. Because of my profession, I get a pair of free tickets to many entertainments: theater, movies, concerts, opera. If I leave at halftime I lose nothing, say friends who, using logic that befuddles me, feel they need to stay until the end of a show they abhor in the name of getting their money’s worth.

There’s a risk in leaving early, of course, not the least of which is being spotted and caught out by the press agent who provided me with the tickets in the first place. There are only so many times one can claim appendicitis or labor pains, or indignantly claim to be the victim of mistaken identity: Me leave “L’elisir d’amore” after the first act? Would Pinkerton leave Madame Butterfly ?

But more significant is the possibility of missing out on an extraordinary performer, perhaps an actor making a Broadway debut, who doesn’t show up until late in the proceedings; a song that has standard written all over it; a flat-out revelatory second act.

“American plays seem to get better as they go along. They’re just introducing characters and doing exposition in the first act,” said the actor Richard Kind, who received a Tony nomination for his work in the 2013 Broadway revival of Clifford Odets ’s “The Big Knife.” (Actually, it was thanks entirely to Mr. Kind’s portrayal of a brutish movie studio chief that I stuck it out till the end.)

“I remember not being enchanted by the first act of ‘Other Desert Cities,’” Mr. Kind continued, referring to the Jon Robin Baitz drama that ran on Broadway during the 2011-12 season. “And I was going, like, ‘there’s a lot of Sturm and Drang here, a lot of much ado about nothing.’ But then, in the second act—wow, you’re just slapped in the face. It was wonderful.” Optimism (things will get better) and fear (his actor buddies in the production might find out if he leaves early) tend to keep Mr. Kind in his seat.

But he was remarkably forbearing about the estimated 30% “or maybe even 50%” of the audience that departed the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor where he starred this summer in Tom Stoppard ’s intellectually demanding comedy “Travesties.” “Who wants to see that when you have chicken skewers waiting at home?” Mr. Kind asked. “But the people who did stay were enthralled.”

A friend who sometimes comes with me to the theater and sometimes makes an early break with me (the aforementioned “Billy Elliott”) and without me (“Superior Donuts” and “The Cripple of Inishmaan”) worries about the effect her premature departure might have on other unhappy audience members. Emboldened by her leave-taking, will they bolt too, in effect clear-cutting two or three rows in the orchestra section? She’s also foreclosing on the opportunity to opine about the show—which is, of course, half the fun of going to the theater. After all, how much weight can her judgment carry if she didn’t stick around through the curtain call?

I have my own silent colloquy with the audience members in my vicinity as I’m hastily gathering up my belongings and planning to make my break for freedom. Do they view my departure as reflective of an independent spirit or or an inferior intellect? High principles or moral laxity? Bad manners (though I would never leave in the middle of an act)? A childish inability to sit still? Or—and this has only recently occurred to me—perhaps a few souls are thinking, “Gee, I wish I had the guts to cut out, too.”

In a burst of feverish optimism, I just accepted press tickets to the forthcoming “Wolf Hall, Parts 1 & 2,” a 5 1/2-hour adaptation of Hilary Mantel ’s two novels about the Tudor court.

I’ll probably last as long as Anne Boleyn.

Ms. Kaufman writes about culture for the Journal.

[Pootie2]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 7:56pm

"Ms. Kaufman writes about culture for the Journal."

:o

So the culture of...being incompetent at your job or what? Being an "authoritative" writer about "culture" surely means you need to witness something in its entirety to even begin forming a complete opinion. She can't be held to the standards of an average theatre-goer. Wow.

Updated On: 12/2/14 at 07:56 PM

[Matt Rogers]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 8:08pm

She is not a "reviewer".

[HorseTears]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 8:15pm

Most people cant read this article anyway, so it doesn't matter.

The WSJ paywall is not as restrictive on Google searches as other papers. All you have to do is Google the headline and you'll be able to click-thru to the full article. Just Google "Confessions of a Broadway Bolter".

[Pootie2]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 8:15pm

What does it mean to be a published writer of 'culture'? What sort of expectation is there, I guess?

Though maybe there's irony here and maybe she's just writing about the culture of impatience, or she's admitting that she doesn't like most of Broadway in general, or something?

[Phantom of London]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 8:51pm

Okay she isn't a reviewer passe.

However she receives complimentary tickets that come out of the marketing budget, so she shouldn't leave in the interval.

BTW, Us theatre goers are the ones who pay for this marketing budget, for this entitled woman to leave in the interval.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 9:00pm

It's like something that idiot Ira Glass would write.

[adamgreer]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 9:02pm

I know she isn't a critic or reviewer. I purposely referred to her as a "writer" for that reason.

[yankeefan7]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 9:09pm

I guess I am frugal or have never in my opinion seen anything so bad that I wanted to leave before the show ended. Granted, I have not seen the amount of plays/musicals as a lot of people on this board but still could not see myself bolting after Act One. To each their own.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 9:22pm

I've done it. But I didn't brag about it.

[haterobics]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 9:25pm

"There’s a risk in leaving early, of course, not the least of which is being spotted and caught out by the press agent who provided me with the tickets in the first place."

And it's a good thing you didn't, like, write about it or anything?!

[Pootie2]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 9:33pm

^Hopefully she's never given tickets again? Re: marketing budget, such a sad waste then.

Oh! Maybe this is her way of publicly saying "Please stop giving me free theater tickets. It's annoying and I hate you all anyway."

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 11:07pm

I just read that article--well, actually, I read HALF the article then stopped because that woman is a--

[evic]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 11:14pm

Take her comps away! She can always second act the shows she walked out on. This woman hates and resents theater no matter what she says about staying for the few entire shows. She forfeited what few readers she has with this moronic confession. If her freebies were taken away, she probably wouldn't go at all.

[wonkit]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 11:22pm

Makes sense to me. Have someone write about "culture" for a major newspaper AND she admits she doesn't tolerate Shakespeare. Of course, she stayed long enough at some production of HAMLET to know that "brevity is the soul of wit." Fire her.

[CapnHook]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 11:33pm

Take her JOB away.

[Pootie2]

Posted: 12/2/14 at 11:37pm

Write letters to the editor?

Just not wasting anymore comps on her would be fine too, I imagine.

[neonlightsxo]

Posted: 12/3/14 at 10:04am

I hope the press agents read this and take her off their press list. She has no reason to be on a theater press list.

[Kad]

Posted: 12/3/14 at 10:37am

If you're receiving press tickets, the assumption and hope is that you're going to be writing about the show.

Not leave at intermission most of the time.

And then smugly write about how often she does it.

Seriously, I don't even understand why this article was written. What a stupid thing to do.

Let her drop her own money on orchestra seats.

[WOSQ]

Posted: 12/3/14 at 11:00am

I was mentored by an old-style company manager in the 70s. Her hard and fast rule was if the tickets were comps you stay, no matter how bad or boring the show might be. You were given a gift and, dammit, you'd better live up to your end of it.

On the other hand, if you paid good money for the tickets, you could leave.

I have followed this set of rules ever since.

Then again, this person does write for a Murdoch publication so is anyone surprised by her manners or lack thereof?

[tazber]

Posted: 12/3/14 at 11:03am

What a stupid piece to write.

She just lost all credibility. Who's gonna pay attention to her opinions on cultural events now that she has boasted about her disdain and lack of interest.

What a fool.