Leaving at the interval

I’ve never left a show before the end. Wish I’d left Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense when it toured locally. I’ve liked the few Wodehouse novels I’ve read, but found that play completely unfunny. Despite being a matinee it was a struggle to stay awake, and I suspect I didn’t.

Love Never Dies at the Adelphi, loved Phantom, hated this.

Hobsons Choice with Martin Shaw. But this was more due to my mood as it was the day before my Dads funeral and I wasn't in the mood for theatre. Just shouldn't have gone.

And what was that play with Suranne Jones at Haymarket theatre. Really like Jason Watkins and Nina Sosanya but couldn't take to the subject matter and Suranne Jones wailing

Loads of times, especially if it is mid-week and I've been in work all day. Life's far too short to sit through something I'm not enjoying- unless it was an expensive ticket, in which case I will sit it out.

I remember once when watching Falsettos at TOP, I'd had an awful day in work, had a banging headache and I was sat on the front row and kept dropping off, so felt it was polite to leave at the interval so the cast didn't think it was them making me fall asleep.

The Third Man at the Menier. No brainer

I've left a number of times - sometimes the shows have been really shockingly bad (Peer Gynt at the National and Paradise Found at Menier stand out), sometimes I've just not been feeling it (Amadeus at NT a few years ago- some admirable aspects about it, but I didn't care for some of the performances). The one I regret leaving the most was Rosenkavalier at ENO - it was a stunning production but I'd worked an all-nighter the night before and couldn't keep awake so left at the end of the 1st act. The older I get the less I worry about it - after all the production has your money and it's your evening!

I wish I'd left at the interval but I was with my parents and my mother loved it.

Another time (in San Francisco), I was a hotel concierge and had been given comp tickets and seated in the front row in a theater that was so small the stage was about 12 inches off the floor and about the same distance from the front row.  It was so awful that my husband wanted to walk out during the show, but we'd have had to cross in front of the stage to do so.  I persuaded him to wait for the interval, when he went to a bar and I had to return for the second act.  (Needless to say, I never recommended it to a guest...)

I think the one I enjoyed the most by leaving at the interval was the tour of Tonight's the Night.

I could tell the cast were embarrassed to be performing such dross.

When a show gives you a sailor hat to wear, you know you are in for a bad night.

I wish I had walked out of many others but hard when you have to write about the whole show ...

I have never left but feel I should have for a few things - Marvellous at @soho place, and The boy with 2 hearts at the National. Terrible both of them, should have gone home. Also a few years ago a very strange play at the Almeida with Elliot Cowan turning up all painted in gold about half way through. forgotten what it was, but it was bad.

Happy Days, starring Maxine Peake, at the Royal Exchange, back in 2018.

The whole thing was utterly tedious - there was 5 minutes of plot, which then just got repeated ad infinitum for the rest of the first half. I suppose that's probably the point, but I couldn't stand any more of sitting there, watching the stage revolve slowly, as lights followed it around, meaning you got your retinas blasted into blindness about once every 90 seconds. Headache-inducing.

Funnily, I’ve walked out of this play because although I had seen it more than once before, it was unbearable. Must have hit a nerve.