Worst Broadway Audience Ever?- Page 3

[ShbrtAlley44]

Posted: 7/30/07 at 1:48pm

Ooh, how could I forget this??? A couple weeks ago at Curtains, we had the mother of all Wednesday matinees. As the show started, I noticed there were two big bunches of seats in the mezz that were open. Barely a minute later, an entire busload of nursing home residents, most of whom could barely walk up stairs, arrived. The manager would not let us seat them until the first seating cue, so they had to stand and wait for a few minutes. This, understandably, was difficult for them and they complained at me full volume. "WHY CAN'T WE SIT???" Finally, after 20 minutes we had helped them up the stairs one by one (they all had to lean on us), and the last little woman absolutely refused (full volume) to go up to her seat. She pointed at various empty seats around the house and asked why she couldn't sit in those. We tried to explain, but she was pretty hard of hearing. Finally, we ended up getting a chair and letting her sit off to the side near the exit doors. She slept through most of the first act. Then there was the matter of getting them out of the theatre - that took 45 minutes or so. We had to get them all downstairs, then get all their walkers downstairs. No idea why their chaperones didn't think to buy better tickets. Also, a few of them were sitting in the orchestra - they were supposed to be the first, say, four seats in the row. However, there was a middle-aged couple sitting smack in the middle of their seats who absolutely refused to move to their own assigned seats and let the elderly folks in. They would not even let them past to the empty seats. I think that's pretty much the worst I've ever had. But Lise easily takes the prize.

[istillbelieve24601]

Posted: 7/30/07 at 2:32pm

When I saw a Les Mis revival matinee, there were about four empty seats a few rows ahead of us. I didn't think much of it in the beggining of the show. At intermission, I thought about moving with my sister to the empty seats (I was surrounded by a bunch of families) but figured it was only a few rows up, it wasn't a major difference. Act II begins. The seats remain empty. At around 5:00, during the final battle when the barricade is falling, a group of people traipse down the aisle and are escorted to the empty seats. I guess they were so late the usher didn't bother waiting for an appropriate pause in teh show, and as the whole row stood up to let them in, the view of everyone behind them was blocked. Why bother to even show up if you miss 3/4 of the show?

[paikea]

Posted: 7/30/07 at 6:53pm

...at Jersey Boys in LA.

tobiasragg, same thing happened when I was there. I'm guessing these people turn their phones back on during intermission? The perpetrator was not asleep but took his or her sweet time shutting off. The audience around me groaned collectively, which I enjoyed, but we were in the first five rows. There's no way the cast didn't hear it. Did your show just go on as normal?

[larry64]

Posted: 7/30/07 at 9:26pm

A few months before A CHORUS LINE closed on B'way, I went for one last time. The house was half full of Japanese tourists. The other half was empty! The audience was silent. After each number the ushers actually walked halfway down the aisles and signaled for applause!

I have never seen this done since.......

[SonicHOG]

Posted: 7/30/07 at 9:48pm

Like Midoria, I also had one bad audience when I saw Mary Poppins.

On my second time at the show, there were these young men (past teenagers) behind my mom and I, chatting and shoutting random stuff about the show, which annoyed me a lot. Most of this happened before the show and when Ms. Poppins herself popped out of the stage trap door. >.>

I only been to New York twice, so I can't explain many experiences myself, but I must say: bad audiences suck.

[BNN]

Posted: 7/30/07 at 9:48pm

My uncle had that same experience, for whatever reason the tourists would not applaud during the show but at the curtain call they went ballistic apparently.

Posted: 7/31/07 at 1:21am

When Phantom came to my city, it was clear that a lot of old ladies who liked to drink tea decided to see it.

There were two ladies behind me, and halfway through "Music of the Night" one of them drops her glasses. They shriek about it in full voice and ask me to look under my seat to see if I can find them, and tapped me again as the Phantom was riding the angel during "All I ask of You". I got really upset because this was my first time seeing it, and I had to look for someone's glasses.

Then during the second act, someone's cell phone down in the orchestra rang about five times throughout the performance.

[Lise2]

Posted: 7/31/07 at 2:24am

So pleased to have made an impression with my first post :)

[broadway_socialite]

Posted: 7/31/07 at 4:06am

I was seeing the Julius Ceaser, and was seated next to a single older middle aged lady. At first glance, she seemed totally normal, a little over dressed for the theatre (she was wearing a pink formal gown) but she seemed nice enough and introduced herself to me and my mother, telling us this was her first show and that she was a CPA. When she turned and started talking to the people around us, I started looking closer at her and I realized that first, she had a very noticable price tag sticking out the back of her dress, complete with one of those ink/shoplifting devices, second, she was wearing a red, davy crocket raccoon-style hat, and had a stuffed animal cat in a plastic beach bag next to her.
5 minutes later she introduced herself again, like she'd never met us, and pulled out the cat, which was not a stuffed animal, but a REAL DEAD CAT she'd had stuffed (totally true!!!!) and named "Mr. Tibbles", who she said she'd found run over on the side of the street 10 years earlier. My mom and I decided it was best to go and ask an Usher what we could do about changing seats, but the show was just starting, so we figured we could make it through intermission.
WRONG. The lady talked to her cat throughout the whole show, fed it cat food, and during every scene break would stand up and swing the cat up over her head by the tail. The longer the show went on the more aggresively she would swing the cat. One time she lost control and it landed in my lap. EVERYONE in the audience was staring at her, not watching the show, and I'm sure the performers noticed her too. She also, periodically, would change her RED raccoon hat for a WHITE raccoon. It was quite the ceremony. At intermission we changed seats.
To this day it remains the most bizarre experience of my life, theatre-related at not. When the show was finally over, it was like the parting of the red seas- everyone in the audience moved aside and watched her march out of the theatre, dead cat in tow.

[thereisnofuture]

Posted: 7/31/07 at 4:32am

I thankfully haven't had any bad audience experiences.But now thanks to this thread when I see RENT Saturday I'll be worrying about being thrown up on or dead cat ladies.

[My Oh My]

Posted: 7/31/07 at 7:30am

Lizzie, yeah, I read that on her blog recently. That makes me sick.

I would've thrown a large pitcher of ice water on them.

[dgjbear]

Posted: 7/31/07 at 7:54am

Why dont they simply do an announcement at the start of the show that all cell phones should be turned off?

[Gingersnap2]

Posted: 7/31/07 at 10:23am

Why dont they simply do an announcement at the start of the show that all cell phones should be turned off?

They do. People ignore it.

Setting it to vibrate can be just as bad. I once sat through an entire performance of "The Phantom of the Opera" with the floor around my feet buzzing like dental drill. Turned out it was a cell phone.

[cfmiller]

Posted: 7/31/07 at 10:57am

I might get some grief for this, but so what.

My partner and I went to see 42nd Street. It was a community theatre, but a very well regarded one. This is one of my favorite shows, and I was very excited for my partner to see this for the first time.

Right before the curtain goes up, the seats to my partner's left were filled by a morbidly obese man and his morbidly obese wife. The "spillover" for lack of a better term, easily took up a third of my partner's seat. He then continued to huff and puff until at least "Go Into Your Dance" due to the exertion it required to get to the seat. He was dripping in sweat, and since he took up so much of my partner's seat, he had to schooch over by me to avoid touching sweaty skin all show. My partner was literally forced so close to the seat divider between to the point it became painful. All of this without a word or acknowledgment, just huffs and puffs. We moved at Intermission, but still it was pretty foul.

I don't think it is too much to ask for someone in that position to purchase an extra seat, though I am sure some will disagree.

[amalou]

Posted: 7/31/07 at 2:15pm

Whenever you go see a show with a friggin field trip. Damn kids. I went to see Phantom in the front row but of course, the field trip took up all the three rows behind me. They were old enough to know how to behave, but did what they could to piss off everyone around them.

[bwaylvsong]

Posted: 7/31/07 at 4:37pm

"I don't think it is too much to ask for someone in that position to purchase an extra seat, though I am sure some will disagree."

I don't think anyone would disagree, but the smarter thing to do would be to simply purchase an aisle seat.

[mikem]

Posted: 7/31/07 at 5:11pm

ShbrtAlley, are you saying that the middle-aged couple at Curtains were sitting in the wrong seats and refused to move? That's ridiculous. Did they move at intermission, at least?

[The_Jackal]

Posted: 7/31/07 at 8:19pm

When I saw Jersey Boys in LA, I was in the first row and a man behind us kept talking to the other people with him. Luckily, he wasn't too loud and he pretty much stopped when my dad shushed him, but then during Nick's part when everyone talks about what happened to their characters, his cell phone went off. All of the actors continued like nothing was wrong and he got it shut off but it was still pretty annoying.

There's this local theatre company that puts on these original parody shows (they're hilarious!) in a relatively small (100 something seat) theatre. They add a lot of improv. and ad-libbing and they aren't afraid to respond to the audience, so it can be pretty entertaining when you have a bad audience.
If you come into the theatre after the show starts, someone in the cast will yell "LATE COMER!!!" and the entire cast comes onstage to sing "The Late Song" to whoever just showed up. The Late Song is basically that song "You're So Vain" with changed lyrics ("You're so late, you probably think this song is about you...") The looks on people's faces who expected to sneak in and now have the entire cast and audience staring at them are pretty priceless.
Then I went to one of there productions where they were about to start an elaborate routine using chairs (jumping on them and passing them around, stuff like that) and someone's cell phone went off. Well, they pulled that person out of the audience and made them do the chair routine with them, the person, of course, having no clue what to do. It was pretty hysterical.

[p.s.]

Posted: 7/31/07 at 9:03pm

Lizzie, yeah, I read that on her blog recently. That makes me sick.
Two days ago, seated in the front row were a man and a woman. And they gave us a show of their own.


Do you know if the seats are cleaned between shows?

I'm no longer so concerned about Drew's spraying into the first row.


p.s. From the same source:

As for Brian, you know I adore him. I actually plan my Les Miz visits to make sure I get him as Gavroche. Now, it seems he's no longer in the company, which makes me very, very sad.

I don't think that's correct. Brian was on vacation last week and therefore not listed in Playbill (Drew was not listed at all for the three weeks before he returned as Valjean). Zach Rand was the only Gavroche listed, with no understudy. If he needed to miss a performance over the weekend, Carly was set to fill in.
Updated On: 7/31/07 at 09:03 PM

[amalou]

Posted: 8/1/07 at 1:35am

Oh I forgot...it wasn't exactly Broadway since it was a Cetlic Woman concert, but it was the worst audience behavior I'd ever seen. Two really old people, a married couple, came in late and of course their seats had to be right in front of mine. The music had already started so what do they do? Talk louder over the music, of course! They continued to argue with each other, really LOUDLY, for another good three mintues before they finally shut up to watch the concert.

I guess they had issues with their hearing aides because whenever the music got just a little louder, they would make a huge production out of covering their ears and complaining about it as loud as they could.

Definately old enough to know better...but I guess they felt they were entitled to ruin the concert for everyone around them.

[MillieDillmount]

Posted: 8/1/07 at 2:57am

So, just a couple of weeks ago my parents and I saw 4 shows in 3 days, three of the shows had rude people!

First night was Les Miserables, my first time seeing it, sitting front row. Before it started I heard a mother saying to her kids something like "You guys are lucky to see this musical, not many kids see this musical, they won't get anything out of it anyways." The kids weren't that young (maybe age 10 and 12) and they both had on jeans sitting second row. And the kids knew so much about it but the mother still felt it necessary to explain what was happening at least three times. And then once act two started a couple who sat front row to the left came in after On My Own! And then at the very end like no one was standing for the curtain call. I was personally blown away by this show, I was just in awe. I kept leaning forward to stand up for a while. After a while people got the hint to stand up. I was mad to find out I missed Lea Salonga's bow although it was more my fault, but still! Dad told me as we were leaving that I started that standing ovation. I should have just shot up when they started to bow. Next time I will.

Next show was A Chorus Line manitee. We were sitting second row aisle seats on the right. I don't remember the exact place, but in act one a guys cell phone went off right across from us. He answered it, but at least he whispered, but still! Sitting second row, you can't do that! I then noticed through out the performance he kept leaning his head on his arm sleeping. Thank God he's not a snorer.

Then the last show we saw was Curtains. We were in the mezz this show. Literally in the first song a girl got kicked out for trying to record it!! How stupid can you get? She had the camera (not a little one) sitting on her lap in a bag and all you could see was the blinking red light. And there was an usher standing in the box seats facing her, so it was kinda noticable. So then like three ushers felt the need to run over to her and kick her out, they were quiet but it was still very distracting. The girl was mad, and the guy kept telling her to leave but she wouldn't. That went on for maybe a minute. Once she left the ushers were working over time to see if anyone else was doing that. Throughout the first act I saw different ushers walking by. Very annoying.

Surprisly enough Legelly Blonde was the only show that nothing like that happened. Although we did see that show the day the water pipe exploded just a few blocks from the theatre, the lady sitting next to us was worried so she kept her cell phone on. But she told everyone sitting around her that she's not trying to be rude, she but she gave the police her cell number and they will call her if it gets worse. It did go off in the first act but it was so quiet. I don't even remember hearing her talk. But that was a different situation and at least she explained to everyone around her that she's not being rude. My dad talked to her a lot before it started and during intermission, she was a nice lady. So, I'll give her a break.

~Darci

[ShbrtAlley44]

Posted: 8/1/07 at 9:22am

Mikem, yup. They refused to move. The manager couldn't deal with it right then without disturbing the show, so he waited till intermission and either asked them to leave or got them to move.

[jordangirl]

Posted: 8/1/07 at 9:50am

millie ~ Someone got caught trying to record the last performance of Beauty and the Beast. Testing saw the whole thing better than I did. I just saw the ushers' flashlights going and one of them circling someone across the mezz from me.

My parents were impressed with the flashlight communication thing when they were here. We saw Curtains and at the end of intermission, someone had put stuff on the mezz rail. The usher on our side flashed to the usher on the other side to signal her to go and ask them to remove it. They're taking that idea back to the ushering crew at Tenness Performing Arts Center where they usher.

[thtrbear]

Posted: 8/1/07 at 11:47am

The story about Mr. Tibbles the dead cat is absolutely insane. Thank you so much for posting! It's a totally true story?

I find that if I manage not to feel angry about these things, I can cope a lot better, even if I talk to the offender about it. But I tend to notice and be bothered by audience noises a lot more than most people. Ever notice that if some one is 8 or 10 feet from you and keeps rustling a plastic bag, no one near them says anything to them?

By the way, I bought on ebay not long ago some industrial noise blockers like what airport workers wear over their ears and if I finally see Jersey Boys I may try wearing them over the thtr assist. listening device to block out the middle-aged/older people singing along that I've heard about.

I am dreading seeing Mary Poppins and having a ton of kids and their parents talking and eating loudly, cause I do want to see that show.

I was glad that when I saw A Chorus Line at the great exodus performance recently (i.e. the day the whole cast left lol), the audience around me in the right front mezz was very quiet except for a bag rustler. There was a bunch of people mad that a kid asked some questions during the show (and they and the parents bitterly argued after the show or possibly even during it), but I was more bothered by the repeated rustling. I was extra relieved it was a quiet audience cause the audience appears to be tourist-dominated now for this show. And there were no crazy woo-hooers nearby either.

Not to go on for too long, but something else that's botherered me is some guys who have a really loud clapping style and they somehow manage to hold their hands right at the height of my ears to make it extra bothersome.

Finally, so many people just don't seem to notice whether what they're doing makes noise or not. I think they may never think about this in relation to themselves, and don't really hear their own actions.

[popular_elphie]

Posted: 8/1/07 at 6:14pm

By the way, I bought on ebay not long ago some industrial noise blockers like what airport workers wear over their ears and if I finally see Jersey Boys I may try wearing them over the thtr assist. listening device to block out the middle-aged/older people singing along that I've heard about.
Oh, that reminds me of another wonderful story.

A couple of weeks ago, I was ushering JERSEY BOYS, and had decided to sit on the stairs in the mezz during the first act to watch the show. There were some ladies who laughed a little loudly and seemed a little drunk, but I thought they were okay - not speaking too loudly or anything. Then "My Boyfriend's Back" comes, and these women are singing, quite drunkenly. I asked my fellow usher what I should do, as it was my first shift and I didn't know if it was rude or not to tell them to keep it down, and she went and told them for me. The women were pretty pissed at me for "ruining their fun".