Bad Behaviour at a Show

Brave… I’m reluctant to engage with the offender. At Dear England a couple came in just before the start, the wrong way. FOH should really sharpen up on this imo. Meant that my OH and I had to get up and move out of our aisle seats. When I mumbled about the other way, he said loudly something along the lines of what am I making a fuss about. Well, he could see that OH has trouble getting up so at least a very o sorry would have sufficed. Small first world problem but actually first time anyone had responded like that in my experience and the people next to me were also astonished.

I’d confused. Shouldn’t the person trying to get to their seat be the one posting about bad behaviour, not you?

Had something similar at the last run of Joseph at the Palladium. Three or four aged people sat on the aisle, with my seat just the other side of them. I said “Sorry, I’m just along there” or something similarly apologetic, only to be greeted with an indignant “couldn’t you have gone the other way?” I never replied to that. I don’t like to inconvenience anyone, but if you’re at the end of a row and take your seat early you can expect to be asked to move.

As it happened I noticed during the interval that at the other end of the row was a wheelchair space, which was in use. Wish I’d noticed that at the time to point it out to her.

Just a minute before the start is not really on - I can't stand those folk who turn up with a minute to go and are right in the middle of the row.  That said, we all make mistakes - I totally misread my numbers at the final night of Only Fools and Horses and in trying to avoid making people get up, chose the wrong side and ended up making 2/3 of the row stand up.  I was so embarrassed and personally apologised to each person for the inconvenience.  (And that is the lesson for me, I think - human courtesy should be that if you cause somebody an inconvenience, no matter how small or large, simply apologise for it and admit your mistake - I bet if the person who raised his voice to you had been more apologetic for your inconvenience, you would have probably have been okay with it.)

Well in my incident, it was definitely my mistake by entering the row from the wrong side.  My point really was that it is better to try and be pleasant - everybody is there for the show and it's no hardship to me if somebody is less mobile to take an alternative route.  Though if i had mobility issues or was of a larger frame, I would probably wait until as late as possible to take my aisle seat if i knew that getting out of it was difficult.

There is nothing wrong with taking your seat a minute before time. You are not late.

(And even lateness itself, when it happens, is usually due to circumstances entirely outside your control.)

Woman in a box at a matinee yesterday, with bare feet resting on the edge for all to see.

I have this issue with people putting their feet on seats in general, it's not your home so don't do it!

I appear to be on a bad run. Since the non-stop distractions at Mrs Doubtfire, I have endured someone munching on crisps during the more harrowing moments in The Pillowman, as well as having to move seats during the interval at both shows at Chichester on Saturday.

During Rock Follies, a family arrived close to ‘curtain up’ and spent ages fannying around trying to work out their seats. We were five minutes over the start time and they still hadn’t taken their seats, while the ushers were just standing around watching them. I know staff at the Minerva are probably volunteers but still. They eventually sat down and chomped on sweets in noisy bags throughout the first act. We moved a few rows down.

Then at Sound of Music, a man behind me who had clearly been dragged along by his wife spent the entire first act taking out individually wrapped sweets from his pocket and unwrapping them. Usually I think oh well they’ll finish them within the first 10/15 mins of the show but this slob just kept devouring them for the full 75 minutes. No amount of dirty looks affected his entitlement. We had to move a lot further back to be able to enjoy the second act in peace.

I’m of course venting in what I consider to be a theatre fan’s safe space on here. Many people I know would probably just shrug it off. But how do you deal with the constant anxiety that some selfish Pr**k is going to ruin your experience? It doesn’t seem like there’s any will from theatres to actually tackle this issue…

TBH if you fear other people will ruin your experience, you would never leave the house for anything and that to me is not a healthy mindset.

This sums it up for me too - I have terrible anxiety seeing certain musicals in the UK that some selfish Pr**k is gonna ruin the experience as you say! It really escalated for me post the lockdowns and I did get to a point where I would be nervous to do my fave thing on earth (see musicals). It wasn't helped by fact that just post Covid I saw the Les Mis concert and Palladium Joseph multiple times both of which were peak offenders for drunk singing badly behaved audiences. I actually saw a fight at the Les Mis concert which for someone who has baseline anxiety anyway was an awful experience. 

Sorry I can't offer much of a solution. I do find that things are a bit better now but part of this is that I am mainly avoiding "family" musicals. 

But yes, it's sad times when you have to be nervous doing the things that you should find relaxing!

My personal hate is people who chat and comment on the show to each other throughout. It's like being sat next to a less witty version of the old men from The Muppets.

I sat in front of three women at Gypsy when it was at the Savoy and after they chatted all the way through the overture, they continued to give a running commentary throughout. "Ooh didn't Barbara Windsor do this song once?"

I think I already posted in here about the middle-aged couple behind me who acted like lovesick teenagers all the way through My Fair Lady too. Knocking back champagne and far more interested in each other than anything happening on stage.