Alex and I figure the most entertaining (although not the best entertainment) part of the evening was even before the show started.
As always, there was the usual group of characters at Bard. Last night that group consisted mostly of the clueless family and the stupid people who just don't get it...
Okay...that makes me sound really mean and catty.
The clueless family was clueless only because they'd never been to Bard on the Beach before, but they also had not read their brochure or checked out the website. Lucky for them, the mother had a good dose of human nature and her curiosity got the best of her and she came over from their picnic under the trees to see what the line up was all about. She was soon joined by her husband and daughter and the picnic, in the line up, which meant she ended up with decent seats...which is important when you arrive really early for a show.
There were the usual people who tried to start a new line up or tried to get in through the locked gates before they were open or tried to ignore the line. We just shake our heads at those people now!
The other people we had the pleasure (or not) of observing were a couple. They were a couple everyone in the nice, cozy studio theatre got to observe, whether they wanted to or not...
Apparently they bought four tickets and it was completely unacceptable that when they arrived at 6:40 for a 7:00 general admission show, there weren't four seats together.
Never mind that the tickets and ticket agents and website all say that it is GENERAL ADMISSION. Never mind that the first people arrived at 4:45 to secure good seats (yeah...that's excessive, we got there around 5:40 and felt like we were super keeners), but it wasn't fair and the poor ushers for the studio theatre should move everyone around to accommodate these people.
The usher managed to find two sets of two seats and asked them to sit there and she would see if she could rearrange some people so they could sit together. This was also unacceptable and everyone in the theatre knew it because after the female half had a temper tantrum because everyone else had tags for their seats and why didn't she and an usher calmly escorted her out to the table by the entrance with the tags and tape, the male half of the couple yelled at the poor usher who had been helping them and told her they WOULD all be seated together.
And then the male half told the usher exactly what he thought, that this was not how business should be conducted, that he was never coming back again, that customers should never be treated this way and that he was going to make sure it changed. The usher was sooooo good. She listened to him and told him she'd talk to guest services, she'd try to seat them together and that he could write a letter to the Board, but that it had been done this way for 17 years and had worked so far and they were happy with it, but he could try to change things.
While all this was going on, no fewer than six more couples came in and were happy to sit in single seats, since that was all that was left. A few nice people moved around a bit so that some of those couple could sit together, but every single one of them was apologetic for arriving so close to the show time and had no problem sitting apart.
Well...after the chaos, the grumpy, loud complainers got their four seats together, even though they delayed the start of the show...And we settled in to watch The Winter's Tale.
But the stupid people show wasn't quite over...just after 8:00, yes, an hour into the play, the same usher escorted four people to their almost front row seats. We're not too sure what happened there since their seats had tags on them and it was glaringly obvious they were missing...maybe they thought the play started at 8:00 because that's when they start every other night of the week???
Oh well, at least this was a good play and we had a nice evening...who knows, maybe without these lovely people to entertain us, we would have found the evening boring?
I find it highly entertaining that your show reviews are all audience reviews and not about the shows themselves. I LOVE that. It reminds me of my favourite Non-Sequitor cartoon. I'll try to find it and send it to you.
ReplyDeleteThe audience is infinitely more interesting to write about than the play. I loved Midsummer Night's Dream, Measure for Measure was okay and The Winter's Tale was very good, but I can't pretend I like to review shows...they're either good or they're not (okay, maybe that's not true), but except for Midsummer, nothing was astounding and so far nothing has been horrible, but the audience makes up for it and provides me with great stories! Besides, it's Bard on the Beach and there is pretty much a standard that they pretty much always live up to...incredibly enough!
ReplyDeleteoh, audiences!
ReplyDeletei call myself an audience nazi and only half-joke that when i'm old and not working (or even just not working) that i will write a guide to considerate audience etiquette and stand outside theatre and other performances and shove them at the audience.
ooh! Can I help? I'd have a few things to input I'm sure. Especially after this week.
ReplyDeletenote to about 20 of the audience members of Anoushka Shankhar last thursday: perhaps you wouldn't have had to wait until after the first 20 minute long piece to be seated if you showed up anywhere in the hour prior to the show that the doors were open.
my other piece of advice: to people picking up tickets to more than one event who's pack of tickets will be waiting for them at the first show - it may be wise to actually attend said first show as your tickets will not just magically appear at subsequent shows. Or as I used to like to put it when I worked at film fest: unless your tickets are made of metal and you have a magnet in your ass - your tickets are NOT going to follow you around.
Thank you for letting me get that off my chest.