Appalling audience behavior at Little Mermaid last night- Page 3

[oohshizz146]

Posted: 6/1/08 at 6:43pm

I'm still waiting on that, Miss Elphaba.

[brettystar]

Posted: 6/1/08 at 9:42pm

Not wanting to sound like a wingeing tourist(cause I simply love NY) but I have to say that audiences at Broadway shows are among the rudest I have ever experienced.

In the 9 shows that I recently saw, I witnessed people arguing whilst the show was on, walking in late and talking in full voice on their mobile whilst being seated, talking in full voice to each other whilst the show is on and telling each other what they thought after almost every song. Last year when I saw Les Mis I turned around to the lady and man sitting behind me and asked them if they could perhaps keep it down during act two and they looked at me like I was crazy and said 'We weren't even talkin'.

I blame some of this on the video generation of course, people are so used to watching dvds, videos etc at home and talking when they want that they don't know how to behave in a public audience.

It was a small price to pay because I love Broadway so much, but it is still unacceptable.

[nygrl23]

Posted: 6/1/08 at 10:14pm

That's a drunk and disorderly and should have been dealt with immediately. I hope people got their money back.

[BWayJunkie]

Posted: 6/1/08 at 10:30pm

wow.. i'm surprised at the cautiousness of people to see a disney on broadway show. I've seen Mermaid twice and luckily both times have been with pretty decent audiences. The first time I had a comp ticket (second was Student Rush) so I wasn't furious at the fact that the Spanish man behind me was pretty much translating every word of the book to the woman he was with and that there were several people singing along with Part of Your World and Under the Sea. I don't know why, but Mermaid seems to have rather unfortunate audiences pretty frequently. I work at Mary Poppins and have rarely seen or heard about issues with people within the theater (i'm not an usher) that wasn't quickly taken care of. It seems that Mermaid pulls in adults who bring much younger children who are prone to acting up or provoking others during the show. Oh well... Since Disney owns the New Amsterdam theater; that's probably why its not as bad. The ushers are employed by Disney so protocol per se is different

[defyingravity07]

Posted: 6/1/08 at 10:47pm

When my class went to see Phantom last year, there was an annoying group behind a section of ours & that part got moved up to the front mez. from the second to last row of the rear balc. Also are the bars open at Disney shows?

[insertclevernamehere]

Posted: 6/1/08 at 10:49pm

And the ushers did nothing?

[defyingravity11]

Posted: 6/1/08 at 10:55pm

The ushers at that theater are ridiculous. They're on you the moment you put a bag down in standing room, but they could care less about something like this.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 6/1/08 at 11:07pm

Of course the Bars are open in the Disney shows, if you have three screaming kids with you, you might need a drink or three.
Now if we could stop the stage hands from drinking, that would be another thread.

[DaintyJack]

Posted: 6/1/08 at 11:51pm

Here's the low-down on what happened exactly last night at Mermaid. The woman when she came in was just acting excited to be there, not drunk. She was just thought of as an excited audience member during Act 1. Nothing was said during intermission about her, and nothing was said about her at all until after the show was over. At that point, audience members went to an usher, then the house manager was told. She was questioned by a police officer, then put in a cab and sent to her hotel. The woman was not well, it wasn't completely due to drinking before the show.

She was dealt with. Had someone complained to an usher or house manager earlier, she would have been delt with earlier. The ushers are asked not to walk up and down the aisles because it is distracting to the performers. Usually with something like this stage management calls the manager during the show, but she wasn't really rude or angry until about 20 minutes until the show was over. The cast complained to the house manager after the show as well. Oh well. All an usher can do is tell a patron to stop breaking rules or to change their behavior. There is no security in Nederlander houses. Police have to be called or found on the street. If there was security (like Shubert houses or Jujamcin), then things like picture taking, cell phones and roudy audience members could be taken care of more efficently.

Oh well!

[ashley0139]

Posted: 6/2/08 at 12:14am

DaintyJack- thanks for an explanation. I'm interested to know that the cast complained as well. I would disagree with the comment that she wasn't rude or angry until after the show, though, because I saw her get very angry and rude during the show to other audience members (I'm pretty sure giving the finger constitutes this). However, looking back I do wish someone had gotten the ushers earlier. Someone DID get up toward the end of the second act to get an usher, though. She came back a few minutes later then left again.

Here's my question: after the show, was anything done about her with the child? I'm assuming she just went back to the hotel with her daughter?

[Craww]

Posted: 6/2/08 at 12:54am

Just feel lucky it was that awful second act that was ruined, instead of the first act.

A friend and I saw it and had two adult women (with their much better behaved children) talk and sing throughout the first act. An example of the insightful commentary? "OHhhhhh snaaaap! I was wonderin' how they was gonna do that!"

We got reseated for the second act (in the right box), at which point we could only sit there and appreciate how hilariously awful the entire experience was. And make eye contact with floating ensemble members who seemed to be saying, "Yeah, yeah. I know."

[TooDarnHot]

Posted: 6/2/08 at 1:17am

comparing the story from both Ashley and DaintyJack's perspective, it seems it wasn't as bad as Ashley is making it out to be.

Either way... sorry for whatever damage she caused but it's part of life. if you're that upset, get your money back.

[ashley0139]

Posted: 6/2/08 at 1:34am

Thanks, TooDarnHot. Much appreciated.

Honestly, I think you had to be there. And like I said, DaintyJack's story isn't entirely accurate. She WAS rude and angry before the end of the show, and someone DID go to get the usher before the show was over.

And thanks for the lesson that "it's part of life." Very profound. There was no bitching and complaining from me. No "omg my entire experience was ruined!!!!" I even said that if others wanted their money back, I hoped they got it. Not that I was demanding a refund. I was just simply relating a story I thought people here would find interesting.

[Tchi4Lif188]

Posted: 6/2/08 at 11:15am

I missed the incident but I remember seeing a cop talking to a woman and her daughter after the show in the lobby. It sounded like she snuck in from what I could hear but I'm not sure about that.

[into_the_woods2]

Posted: 6/2/08 at 11:40am

crazy...i feel so bad for everyone involved

[YoYo12345]

Posted: 6/2/08 at 2:02pm

haha...one of the mermaids should have heelied (?) off the front of the stage and wacked her with their tail fins.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 6/2/08 at 2:13pm

Welcome to a Disney show !!!

LOL You think it's a Disney thing? Drunken people have been disrupting Broadway shows since the birth of Broadway itself. It has nothing to do with Disney.

[Okayfine]

Posted: 6/2/08 at 3:15pm

What a lot of audience members don't realize, which DaintyJack explained so well, is that the house staff cannot always step in. Very frequently, we are instructed NOT to intervene because doing so would create an even bigger disturbance. Often we cannot hear or see the disturbance or it is not as apparent from where we are stationed - for example, it might seem to us to be infrequent noise, not ongoing.

One of my pet peeves is that everyone assumes someone else will get up to complain & no one does. At intermission or the end, several people start complaining loudly about an incident the staff wasn't even aware of.

Having said that, there are house staff members who will ignore a bad situation & house staff members who will step in immediately. And Disney can indeed be more lenient than other houses.

[DrewBill]

Posted: 6/2/08 at 3:45pm

Actually, when I saw "Mermaid" about a month ago, it struck me that there seemed to be so few ushers at the Lunt-Fontanne for the size of the space. We basically made our own way to our seats, as did most around us. I even recall discussing the lack of ushers at the time. Who knows ... maybe it was an odd night?

[FlyingMonkey1223]

Posted: 6/2/08 at 4:11pm

When I saw Mermaid on Valentines day it was mostly adults and everyone was well behaved. And I thought the show was good.

[Fosse76]

Posted: 6/2/08 at 5:43pm

"Very frequently, we are instructed NOT to intervene because doing so would create an even bigger disturbance."

I have never heard of such a policy...neither in a Shubert-owned house nor in a Nederlander-owned house. The policies are generally to intervene as inconspicuously as possible, but NEVER to NOT intervene.

"Often we cannot hear or see the disturbance or it is not as apparent from where we are stationed - for example, it might seem to us to be infrequent noise, not ongoing."

This part is true. While it may be obvious to a few people in the audience who's cellphone is ringing, it is 99.9% of the time not obvious to the usher. Same with flash photography. The usher about 99% of the time is only going to see a flash in an area but won't be able to pick out the exact person. Not being familiar with the Lunt, in this situation I find it hard to believe that a member of the house staff wasn't aware of who it was.

"Having said that, there are house staff members who will ignore a bad situation & house staff members who will step in immediately."

Exactly. Some house staff don't care, while others do.

"And Disney can indeed be more lenient than other houses."

But they don't own the Lunt, and have very little influence on the policies (which are negotiated with the usher's union and aren't amendable until negotiating time). The real power lies with the house manager, and to be quite honest, most of them are so full of themselves it's not surprising ushers don't step in any more than they have to.

[defyingravity11]

Posted: 6/2/08 at 8:56pm

The ushers could easily patrol the extreme side aisles without much disturbance.

[Fosse76]

Posted: 6/3/08 at 3:49pm

"The ushers could easily patrol the extreme side aisles without much disturbance."

Audiences notice everything, so unless something is happening in the house that requires the usher to patrol the far aisles, it is unnecessary. As I said before, most of the times the usher isn't going to be able to pinpoint the exact person causing the disturbance. Generally they only catch them if they keep repeatedly causing a commotion. Some ushers I know will make a conspicuous but unobtrusive appearance near the area of the disturbance to let the audience know thet someone is watching them. It's an attempt to get the audience to behave. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

[lildogs]

Posted: 6/3/08 at 4:06pm

I think if some crazy woman who was making that much of a ruckus told me to F off...we'd be minus one drunken lady.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 6/3/08 at 4:12pm

Honey, if I paid $150 a pop for this turd sandwich I'd wanna drink or five, too!