I have to say that some of these are so darn funny (admittedly not if you experience it) and makes me realize how fortunate I have been in theater going. I did have a few instances of minor annoyances with only one of them qualifying as major.
At Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, there was a woman sitting across the aisle from me that was engrossed with texting. I figured she would stop after the announcements and the lights went down. She did not and never once looked up at the stage during the entire first number. I was sitting there thinking "Who pays the price of a Broadway ticket to sit here and text through the whole show," when suddenly an usher came up to her and told her she would need to shut it off. She did. Unfortunately, she resumed texting through intermission and the same thing repeated for Act II, with the same usher having to approach her again and request she shut off the phone. Wouldn't these people be better off staying at home to do this rather than pay hefty ticket fees?
At On the Town, we were seated next to an aged couple (probably 70s/80s) who predictably spoke entirely too loud and were one of those couples who seemed to be in a perpetually annoyed mood. She kept complaining about how close to the stage her husband got the tickets. Then, when the Star Spangled Banner began and the audience rises, we get "We got to stand! Do I have to stand! Oh Lord, what a waste of time!" Isn't she part of the "the greatest generation" that is supposed to appreciate patriotic gestures like this? She complained for ten minutes about having to rise and announcing "they better not expect us to do it again!" They were largely silent through Act I with an occasional disgruntled retort to something hubby would say about their personal business. At intermission, Ms. Personality announced that she couldn't follow the show (On the Town is hardly King Lear for Pete's sake). Hubby asked if she wanted to leave and she shrugged, but they stayed and mercifully said little more.
At Kinky Boots, we had the dubious pleasure of being surrounded by a group of tourists from Texas, who had to be louder than anyone else in the vicinity while announcing repeatedly for no apparent reason that they were from Texas. Most of the entire conversation was all about how conservative they were and how none of them could possibly tell anyone back home in Texas what kind of show they had seen in NYC with a drag queen in it. It came out that the married couple who planned the trip for everyone and bought the tickets had seen the film Kinky Boots was based on and were among the loudest about how they couldn't tell anyone back home in Texas about it. And all I could think was: If you already knew that the subject matter of the play was so personally disagreeable to you and your friends, why the hell would you buy tickets to it when you could just as easily have seen something else?
The Lion King was my worst experience. I have attended many kid-friendly shows (often with friends and their kids) and never had a problem. I have to admit I am in the minority and hated The Lion King. The kids with us with bored to death, but thankfully stayed quiet. Not so with a set of parents next to me, whose kid started bellyaching loudly at how bored she was, then dove to the floor and started crawling up and down the aisle under everyone's feet, jostling everyone along the way. Instead of Mommy Dearest telling her little darling that this was unacceptable behavior in the theater, she started looking at her on the floor and saying "What are you doing down there? Does sweetie want to play a game? What kind of game are you playing down there? Aren't you just precious?" Sorry, but I don't think a child ramming into people's feet as she crawls up and down the aisle during a Broadway performance is especially precious, and I doubt her mother would have found it precious if someone accidentally stepped on her and injured her in the process. Sometime, these parents really have no idea of common sense when bringing their children to shows.
