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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2016 6:48:11 GMT
Either that or it's someone who's been doing it a long time and has a good memory, and is writing about long-ago issues with a contemporary tone. But more than one does sound more plausible.
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2016 9:38:02 GMT
Could it be Robin Askwith?
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Post by freckles on May 18, 2016 9:49:55 GMT
Not a mistake I made myself, but a friend who wanted to book for Lady Day asked me where the Emerson's Bar & Grill is!
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Post by partytentdown on May 18, 2016 10:36:54 GMT
It's someone who gleans their experiences from many years working in different theatres. The events that take place are exaggerated versions of real situations that have happened over the years.
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Post by Phantom of London on May 18, 2016 23:49:43 GMT
Think there is more than one box office manager, reporting from different venues!!
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2016 14:18:57 GMT
It's someone who gleans their experiences from many years working in different theatres. The events that take place are exaggerated versions of real situations that have happened over the years. Having worked in the industry for many years i can tell you that these events are no where near exaggerated versions of real situations. this stuff happens on a regular if not daily basis. |
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Post by Snciole on May 21, 2016 17:19:10 GMT
Not a mistake I made myself, but a friend who wanted to book for Lady Day asked me where the Emerson's Bar & Grill is! Ha! For a long time I thought the Wyndham's were staging this in their theatre bar... |
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2016 12:49:15 GMT
Any idea who it is this week? Cant figure it out for the life of me!
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2016 17:18:17 GMT
Any idea who it is this week? Cant figure it out for the life of me! I wanna know who the "star" was! |
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Post by wickedgrin on May 29, 2016 17:36:10 GMT
Any idea who it is this week? Cant figure it out for the life of me! I wanna know who the "star" was! OK my guess is Rob Lowe who starred in A Few Good Men at the Haymarket Theatre in 2005. He was known for the West Wing of course and was very good looking in his day. Plus of course we all know that How the Other Half Loves is struggling to find an audience. I might be totally wrong of course before the lawyers start calling and my post gets deleted for libel!!! |
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2016 17:43:25 GMT
I wanna know who the "star" was! OK my guess is Rob Lowe who starred in A Few Good Men at the Haymarket Theatre in 2005. He was known for the West Wing of course and was very good looking in his day. Plus of course we all know that How the Other Half Loves is struggling to find an audience. I might be totally wrong of course before the lawyers start calling and my post gets deleted for libel!!! Good guess! I just need to know who the box office manager is! Every time I read a new post, it makes me change my mung of what theatre it is! But maybe it is Haymarket |
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Post by danielwhit on May 29, 2016 17:49:07 GMT
OK my guess is Rob Lowe who starred in A Few Good Men at the Haymarket Theatre in 2005. He was known for the West Wing of course and was very good looking in his day. Plus of course we all know that How the Other Half Loves is struggling to find an audience. I might be totally wrong of course before the lawyers start calling and my post gets deleted for libel!!! Good guess! I just need to know who the box office manager is! Every time I read a new post, it makes me change my mung of what theatre it is! But maybe it is Haymarket It definitely can't be the same one every month (there was one a few months ago about booking in different countries for the same performance that we all jumped to Matilda for) - unless the BOM in question has traveled around a lot of theatres in their recent career, I suspect there's three/four who are taking it in turns to write stories down. |
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2016 18:00:42 GMT
It always seems to be written by the same person, but they're probably telling different people's tales.
It's always very entertaining! And credible.
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2016 19:02:29 GMT
I really hope it's not the person Google returns on searches of various clues the writer drops. (Again, for libel reasons, no names.) But then, it would be a sad story whoever it turns out to be...
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2016 22:32:10 GMT
The thing that shocked me googling for who I suspect it is was an article about the early 2000s west end star vehicle bemoaning the fact that people were having to pay "up to £40" for top price seats
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Post by firefingers on May 29, 2016 23:40:15 GMT
I wanna know who the "star" was! OK my guess is Rob Lowe who starred in A Few Good Men at the Haymarket Theatre in 2005. He was known for the West Wing of course and was very good looking in his day. Plus of course we all know that How the Other Half Loves is struggling to find an audience. I might be totally wrong of course before the lawyers start calling and my post gets deleted for libel!!! Rob has been alright. Parks and Recreation ran many series with him in it. The language in the article seems to imply a Brit anyway. |
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2016 5:21:51 GMT
OK my guess is Rob Lowe who starred in A Few Good Men at the Haymarket Theatre in 2005. He was known for the West Wing of course and was very good looking in his day. Plus of course we all know that How the Other Half Loves is struggling to find an audience. I might be totally wrong of course before the lawyers start calling and my post gets deleted for libel!!! Rob has been alright. Parks and Recreation ran many series with him in it. The language in the article seems to imply a Brit anyway. Also, he stills looks in good nick to me (but then I am somewhat older than a lot of you). |
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Post by wickedgrin on May 30, 2016 7:09:01 GMT
Everyone's "in good nick" compared to me! Good to hear Rob Lowe is alive and well and it wasn't him!
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2016 8:59:07 GMT
Whilst I don't doubt that there's an element of truth somewhere in these stories, the "voice" of the BO Manager isn't believable at all. It's the same voice that features in all these Confessions of a Junior Doctor/ GP/ Lawyer books: entertaining anecdotes, bite-size pieces, but the same formula each chapter.
Box office staff tend to move around an awful lot, so the collection of ideas for "stories" might come from different theatres, different regions, even different sources.
When I tried Googling the kidney quotation, all I got was a string of kidney donation websites...!
(There's something else not quite right about this story: what was the star's point in visiting the box-office? He didn't buy any tickets...)
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2016 10:09:28 GMT
When I tried Googling the kidney quotation, all I got was a string of kidney donation websites It's in fact a character's line in a Stoppard play, not something Tom Stoppard himself said about a production of a play. |
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2016 10:14:38 GMT
That crossed my mind, too, caiaphas, but I'm guessing the person in question was so inebriated they genuinely thought theatre staff would be enthused by their very presence - or else had gone in to buy a ticket and then forgotten why they were there (given that the BOM wasn't able to give them his/her full attention immediately).
It may seem unlikely, but then as I left my own workplace the other night, a random guy wandered into reception and started asking everybody, "Am I in the right place?" Given that he didn't seem entirely sure where he was, or where he needed to be, it was an awkward question to answer.
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2016 10:22:26 GMT
There's something else not quite right about this story: what was the star's point in visiting the box-office? He didn't buy any tickets... I like to wander into box offices occasionally for conversation, making it quite clear that I have no intention of buying any tickets. (But I wasn't a glowing star ten years ago). |
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2016 11:38:06 GMT
Thank you. Shows my knowledge of, and appreciation for, Tom Stoppard. Can just about get through Rosencrantz, but realized he wasn't for me when I walked out of Jumpers about thirty years ago. (One of the very few times I've voted with my feet.)
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Post by BurlyBeaR on May 30, 2016 12:14:04 GMT
I think the articles are badly written, cliched and neither funny or particularly revealing. Anyone who has worked in a customer facing role gets this sort of stuff day in day out. And the forced "Hey, nobody died" sign-off makes me cringe.
What I dislike most of all though, is that the joke is always at the expense of the customer. They're always the unreasonable/foreign/stupid/late/drunken foil to Mr Box Office's superior intellect.
Youre only a glorified shop assistant dear, ditch the attitude.
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2016 13:42:51 GMT
I really used to enjoy these, but recently they've started to become quite formulaic, and the "box office manager" appears to be running out of ideas, rehashing stories from last year with very similar characters but a slightly different circumstance. The "landing a small plane in the stalls" joke has also been made before.
I would hazard a guess that it's the same person every time, but these are many years worth of stories from different venues all slightly exaggerated and "anecdotalised" (not a word, I know). The Haymarket would make sense as a venue, as One Man Two Guvnors ran there and in the US simultaneously - did he specify Broadway? I can't really remember that one.
This was a great idea when it first started, but like the celebrity who was once able to effortlessly sell out that theatre, the stories and the writing style have become somewhat old and tired. I wouldn't mind if said box office manager stopped now, the one where they shouted at someone without provocation just because they were in a bad mood at the kids' show is when it first started to jump the shark.
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