Bad Behaviour at a Show

I haven't see The End Of Longing so don't know how inappropriate the language would be for a 4 year old but if it's very inappropriate then the fact that none of them spoke English was probably a good thing!

At Sunset Boulevard a man behind me kept needing to tell the person he was there with what was going to happen about 30 second before it happened. It was annoying for me and I at least knew what was going to happen but I can imagine it must have been very annoying for people who didn't know.

They were clearly out in force at Sunset Boulevard last night then. Around me we had phone checkers, popcorn eaters, a woman hair-flicker who was wearing every bracelet she owned, countless trips to the toilet and what seemed like everyone talking all the way through the Entr'acte.

I think my favourite though were the two women in our row who, just as the curtain was going up on the first act, decided they didn't like their dead centre row view and would rather move to an empty box - which they did one at a time.  They were also toilet trippers and phone checkers but with around 15 minutes of the second act remaining they packed up, phones lit and walked out chatting.

At War of the Worlds a while back I was lucky enough to have a front row seat. The girl behind me was a super excited fan (seen it multiple times in the short run and reminded me of the girl in I Can't Sing who sat in the front row then was part of the show in It Could be Me). Anyway the couple next to me were nice enough except they liked taking photos. Not so bad, the flash was off but the husband had to pass his drink to the wife, take the camera from the wife, take the photo then swap it all back! I resisted the urge to kill

I'm sure they saw them do similar at the New Oxford Theatre, except this was with M&Ms or Skittles. You can imagine how noisy they were in a plastic glass; they would've been better in the packet!

Italian though.

You were on a hiding to nothing there.

I hesitated to mention the nationality I suspected was concerned in case people thought I was being racist or some other sort of "ist". However, I thought it might be relevant if either that meant the culprit might have a different view of theatre etiquette or insufficient English fully to understand and engage with the play - examples of the latter having been cited above. But judging by her response, she was fluent but alas simply rude.

I recently went to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. It's a 4000+ seat venue for country music. You sit on pews rather than individual seats. A school party of 13/14 year olds arrived beside and behind us, and we got chatting to their teachers. Most of these kids knew the words to many of the songs, singing along during the performance, but it didn't matter because it was so loud and it added to the fun of the evening. What did strike us as odd was the young family in front of us. Mom, Dad, Big Sis (7???) and a babe in arms (3/4 months???). Babe in arms wore his/her own headphones, presumably playing lullabies to drown out the loud country music. We tittered, not quite believing that anyone would actually do that to a baby. We elbowed the teachers beside us, pointing out the headphoned baby, thinking that they too would think it strange. They nodded politely at us, and we came to the conclusion that they didn't think this was odd at all: rather we were the odd ones for finding it in any way out of the ordinary.

Oh yes... I hadn't thought of that. Sensible indeed, Baemax. Thank you for pointing that out. 

It must be my week for attracting bad behaviour at theatres and I haven't seen everything I've booked yet! Today at the matinee of Clybourne Park, I had booked an aisle seat in the side block rather than a more central seat but not on the aisle, in order to make a quick getaway to catch my train afterwards.

It turned out that I was the only person in my row but not before an elderly gentleman had caused me to get up to let him pass by, only to discover that he wasn't sitting in the side block at all. I therefore noticed where he did eventually sit and it was in the same row but in the centre block.

I went out at the interval and when I returned, lo and behold this gentleman was sitting in my seat. When he saw me, he got up as if to let me by but I said "That's actually my seat", to which he replied that he had moved as he hadn't been able to see from his own seat - hard to imagine why as the centre block seats have the best view in the auditorium and the rake is fine. I had to stand there and repeat, very pointedly "Yes, but that happens to be MY seat" before he moved further along the row - honestly! If I were planning to move seats at the interval (or sooner), I would at least make a mental note of where the empty ones were!

I had the same experience in a cinema recently, where the performance had allocated seating despite being a morning screening. When I politely pointed out to the lady in my seat that I had booked it, she said aggressively "Did you particularly want this seat?" - well yes, actually, as again, it was an aisle seat near the exit and I had to run down the road to the theatre for a matinee straight afterwards. She moved with very ill grace and much huffing and puffing, but didn't appear to check first where she was meant to sit so of course the problem arose again later.

Sowwy.

ill try to do better tonight