your worst theatre expierece- Page 2

[PB ENT.]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 11:24am

I thought you meant the worst experience " on the stage" not in the seats! LOL! Seems like "rude audience syndrome" has taken over, which in nothing new for the theater world!

Personally, I am happy to say that from an "on stage" perspective, out of the numerous shows I've seen in a dozens of years, I've had only one show that I would deem my "worst experience".
I won't reveal the theater or the show to save the dignity of those involved, but it was a one man show that was imported from mid-east that involved a tongue-in-cheek foreign comidian/showman. He told senseless stories that ran the endings into another topic altogether. He also turned his body into a human musical instrument. His humor was off color and morbid.

I was also TOTALLY unimpressed, and surprisingly dissapointed with Mandy Patinkin in a concert this past June. If "anyone" else presented that material in the same manner, he would have goten the hook in my book.

Posted: 9/29/03 at 11:26am

I find that Sunday in the Park with George is one of those shows that you cannot just go to in order to enjoy a night of theater out. It is not a date show. It is one of those rare shows that you have to discus. Maybe go see the real painting and do some reading about Serat. I love the show but only because I have done what I just discribed.

[TheaterBaby]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 12:31pm

Wow Maggie! If I were you, I would have refused to go around and made that old man get up. You paid just as much money to see the show, and that is where the Usher escorted you.
Call me disrepectful, but I don't care how old someone is. It doesn't give them any more rights as a human being. Those old farts were sitting on the aisle seats. They should have expected other people were going to have to get passed them at some point.

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 12:56pm

PB ENT.2: It was Yakov Smirnoff wasn't it. Come on, you can tell us.

[Starlight]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 1:11pm

Well tally one more to the bad cell phone experience chart. Mine was during a touring production of Titanic. Despite being thoroughly disappointed in the show as a whole, the woman sitting next to me ruined the entire experience. First, she and her guest were late and had to crawl across us to get to their seat. Then the cell phone problems started. It rang once and she ignored it. The second time she actually stopped it from ringing. When it rang for the third time I said "Could you please turn your phone off?" To this she said "I don't know how." So I promptly reached over, took the phone from her, turned it off, and gave it back with an emphatic "there ya go."

[JakeB]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 1:36pm

My worst was at CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG in London. Every single person in the audience was irritating - people sang all the way through, they clapped along to the overture so you can't hear the tune, children ran around the aisles in their underwear, grown adults who were split over two rows sat talking to each other about how good it was, and then there were just loads of children who chatted and moaned the whole way through.

Oh, and Michael Ball got an applause just for being Michael Ball. When he entered the stage it was.. applause.

A good show ruined by the audience. I'd much rather see a dress rehearsal.

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 1:43pm

Does there not come a time when you just get out of your chair and ask to speak to the house manager? If more people demanded their money back because the theatre staff could not eject the troublemakers, I’ll bet you would see more ushers in the aisles playing bad cop. Stand up for your rights as a theatre patron. You do not have to take it.

[Maggie]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 2:13pm

Theaterbaby, you know what? The guy completely caught me off guard! I was totally surprised and I couldn't think of ANYTHING to say!
I actually saw them at Carmine's after the show and I was going to say something to him to let him know that he was completely rude and I didn't appreciate it but I just let it go. Let the miserable old coot be miserable.
Updated On: 9/29/03 at 02:13 PM

[FFARLS]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 2:21pm

During a performance of "Chicago", a very drunk man kept screaming "faggot" at the top of his lungs and stating that he is going to buy some "fag candy" during intermision for a "fag show". I was with three other people, all of us were about to get up and throw him out of his 2nd row mezz. seat. During the second act, he screamed it at the toooop of his lkungs during a rather quiet part, and someone actually looked right up at him from the stage in shock (he was 2nd row 1st mezz.). About ten minutes later, he was escorted out of the theatre and the entire first mezanine applauded. It was absolutely the worst experiance I have ever had at a show.

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 2:27pm

That's horrible, Ffarls. What an a**hole! You have to wonder what he was doing there in the first place!

I've been very lucky, having only been with quiet audiences with no body odor.

[CJR]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 2:30pm

well Ffarls, at least you weren't sitting in the orchestra last year when the girl in the mezz leaned over and puked.... Thank god, I wasn't there either!

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 2:32pm

CJR, the show literally made her sick? I did not think it was all that bad!

[WhatDoINeedWithLove?]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 2:45pm

"Cabaret" with Jon Secada. I had the worst seats ever because we did student rush about a half hour prior to curtain and we were in the last row. Those are NOT MENT FOR MEN WITH LONG LEGS. I was sooooooo cramped. Put that together with a bad performence, a lousy crowd it BY FAR tops my worst list!

[FFARLS]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 2:49pm

He was with his whooooole family, they were veeeeeeeery drunk, and yes, thank God I was not there to have anyone get sick on me. I'll never ever forget that. It's the onle time I have ever seen someone on stage actually look out to see what the fuss was about. Even when a man had a heart attack during Les Mis about three years ago on a Saturday afternoon, Eponine still couldn't help fallin for Marius.

[ErikJ972]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 3:02pm

Fag candy....is that like Skittles?

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 3:04pm

Do you mean Scattles?

[WOSQ]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 3:25pm

'Twas an off-off Broadway play (that had even won a playwrighting prize!) called SISTERS.

It concerned lesbian nuns and how they took over the convent. It was not a comedy, but rather very serious. I'm not making this up you know.

The play was deadly dull. The kind that was so-bad-it-was-bad. Lethal. We got fanny fatigue in the first fifteen minutes. But I knew one of the actresses (who went topless as she initiated a novice into the joys of Sappho) and it was her girlfriend who directed this bad play badly. Oh dear. I had to go back afterwards, but what can one say? I finally blurted, "You had the nicest hoo-hoos in the show!" and gave the happy couple a big false beauty pageant-sincere smile.

20+ years later, this is the Bad Theatre Standard by which all are measured by both me and my friend who I dragged with me.

[ChristineDaae]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 3:25pm

Most of the time it seems to be a rude person. Once I saw Phantom and the guy behind me brought is daughter. I think she was about 6. She was cute but a little annoying =-/

I don't have a really bad experience ...

[magruder]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 4:05pm

Chicago must bring out the worst in people. I remember sitting next to a plus-sized gentleman at Chicago at the Shubert. After intermission, he came back to his seat, loaded down with candy, which he devoured noisily. During "Class," he poured M&Ms into his mouth, letting them rattle like a hailstorm against his teeth. "Whatever happened to class?" indeed.

I once saw a performer stare down a few ill-behaved audience members. It was a rare staging of Peter Weiss' The Investigation at Baltimore's Center Stage. The play features unflinching testimony by Holocaust survivors cataloguing the various horrors experienced in the camps, in trials against the Nazi soldiers, commandants and doctors who abused them. The script was taken from actual testimony and shaped by Weiss into a dramatic piece. One actor, I wish I had his name, had a monologue in which he described how some campmates ate their shoes to fight off starvation. Well, some schoolgirls in the audience thought this was a laugh riot. The actor turned in their direction, locked eyes with them and stared them down, letting a good half minute of intense silence go by, until the girls regained their composure, and felt justly embarrassed for what they had done. It ended up being a chilling, very effective moment, that really blurred the lines of what you were watching. From what could have been one of my worst theatre experiences, an actor's choice made it incredibly memorable.

Updated On: 9/29/03 at 04:05 PM

[TEACHEROFTHEATER]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 4:59pm

in the mid 1970s at an off bway production of

One Flew Over the cukoos Nest

i remember vividly the theater was so uncomfortable and it was so hot that the whole thing was absolutely miserable......

the worst thing I ever saw with no redeeming value whatsoever was

Its a Hard Job Being God

[emmamia]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 5:16pm

mine was @ Mamma Mia ... I was with a friend in SRO and this old lady fainted during intermission. she was out for a min or two and then walked away and she tumbled again. she convinced everyone she was fine and managed to go back into her seat. halfway thru the 2nd act she started to throw up all over and then proceed to go to the garbage can ... throw up some more ... go lightheaded again ... sit in some chairs in the back by SRO .. talk and complain the entire time and annoy the hell out of me and my friend!

[Al Dente]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 5:46pm

Does sitting next to someone with severe halitosis and/or someone passing really bad gas count? There are also the few times I've had the misfortune of seeing people with a clearly low alcohol tolerence, having overindulged at dinner wind up... well you know the rest of that story.

[Shawk]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 6:03pm

During a showing of My Fair Lady in London, I was stuck next to a large Scottish man who sang along with all the songs. Behind me was a boy eating crinkly candy and his mom, explaining the whole plot. The Scot redeemed himself by turning to the kid and growling, "What the hell do you think you're doing?" The child was silent for the rest of the show.

Rivaling that was a showing of Les Miz where the man next to me sang along with all the songs, but made up his own words. He also tapped his feet, which shook the seats, and kept putting his jacket over the mezzanine railing, which lead to a near-altercation with an usher.

The final example would be a woman at Phantom in front of me, who felt the need to take her three sweaters off and put them behind her back, then put them on again. Then she started doing Yoga in her seat.

[DofB5]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 6:47pm

I had to really and truly LOL at some of these.

Can't say I've ever had that bad of an experience. The worst thing that ever happened to me was when some friends and I went to see POTO. I had only heard Mr. C's version so I was expecting this really romantic, rich voice for the Phantom. Well, the poor guy sang his first note and my jaw hit the floor--it was at LEAST 5 octaves higher than I would have dreamt in my WORST nightmare!

My friend said it was worth the price of the ticket just to see the expression on my face in that moment. I didn’t think it very funny at all. I’m over it now but you could have knocked me over with feather at the time.

D

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 9/29/03 at 6:49pm

Attending the first public preview of "Metro" although opening night was probably just as bad