Booing on Broadway-Ever Heard Any Boos?

[TEACHEROFTHEATER]

Posted: 8/20/03 at 2:52pm

David Finkle wrote about booing yesterday in Theatermania.

Have you ever been at a Broadway show where booing took place? I have seen some awful stuff but cannot recall a single time in my theatergoing life of hearing boos from a Broadway audience.

I have wanted to boo but have refrained...have you ever heard Broadway boos?

Updated On: 8/20/03 at 02:52 PM

[Sonofmamamiasam]

Posted: 8/20/03 at 2:58pm

Nope teach, can't say that I have ever witnessed any broadway boos. I do however know of quite a few broadway boozers.

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 8/20/03 at 2:59pm

Saw the last revival of Peter Pan with Cathy Rigby. I was a teenager at the time. I sat in front of a group of smart ass teenagers. They acted like the insufferable twits that they are all through the show. When Peter made the appeal to clap for Tinkerbell, they booed. Does that count?

[TEACHEROFTHEATER]

Posted: 8/20/03 at 3:20pm

yeppers, it kinda counts, i think :)

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 8/20/03 at 3:21pm

yeah, I wasn't too sure. I mean, they booed in a place where you are supposed to applaud... but it wasn't like they were doing in the usual way (ie -- curtain call, end of song/scene, et al)

Posted: 8/20/03 at 3:36pm

If you want booing...

Try an opera house...

In Italy, it's as bad as it gets and they just don't yell boo..They yell things like:

“Bruta voce”

“Tu padre e’ manga grande cazzo”

“Disgraziata, porco”

and let us not forget what was shouted at Renee Fleming (America’s Opera Sweetheart) at La Scala in 1999..

“La stupido Americana putana”

Even at the Metropolitan Opera House, where it is frowned upon, it happens…. usually to designers or directors…very rarely to a singer…

I did it only once:

To Sharon Sweet after her unidiomatic singing of “Pace, Pace mio dio” in “La Forza del Destino”..

She followed none of Maestro Verdi’s markings and her Italian was unbelievably bad for a top-flight opera singer….

I let out one long loud booooooooooooooo….

No one did anything…in fact it sorta halted the applause… I think everyone agreed…

I agree that is must be heartbreaking to an artist to hear such a thing…but sometimes, it happens…

Hell, they booed Callas left and right…and she was a goddess..

Callas never lost her New York vocabulary and she would go offstage and say “Ugh, those stinkers!”…
Updated On: 8/20/03 at 03:36 PM

[orion59]

Posted: 8/20/03 at 4:14pm

Ugh those stinkers???

I somehow imagine callas as having something a bit more colorful to say. Things that couldn't be repeated here.

BTW, I understood all of the Italian phrases except one;

“Tu padre e’ manga grande cazzo” What is the translation?

Posted: 8/20/03 at 4:37pm

“Tu padre e’ manga grande cazzo"

Your father eats big..........................

Yep, its a bad one...

..and I left out the story about how in Sicily, a tenor was so bad..after the opera..the audience broke in backstage...took the tenor and escorted him to the train station...

literally THREW him out of town...

Us, Siciliani are a tough bunch !

Posted: 8/20/03 at 4:37pm

“Tu padre e’ manga grande cazzo"

Your father eats big..........................

Yep, its a bad one...

..and I left out the story about how in Sicily, a tenor was so bad..after the opera..the audience broke in backstage...took the tenor and escorted him to the train station...

literally THREW him out of town...

Us, Siciliani are a tough bunch !

[Max Bialystock]

Posted: 8/20/03 at 4:42pm

It wasn't Broadway--but when Mandy Patinkin was going around about 10 years ago with one of those endless "one man" show tortures of his, I was dragged to the Shubert Theatre here on cold winter night.
After he sang for about 2 hours and forty five minutes straight -accompanied by that sad sack piano player he drags with him - and told an endless story about his aunt (He's from Chicago and felt entitled to be expansive about his roots) and literally read out loud her Noodle Kugle recipe - the lights dimmed to prepare for encores.
I was in the fifth row right side. As the lights went totally black, and the applause died down, I yelled out " HIDE THE PIANO!" A smattering of applause ensued in the dark.
When the lights came up - and he came back out - he scoured the audience for the offender; no one gave me up!
He sang one more screech and we left in peace!
Better then a boo...?

Posted: 8/20/03 at 4:45pm

Callas...did'nt curse much, if at all..

She was known to get upset if too much cursing was going on...

There are tapes of her talking into John Adroin's tape recorder...and her speaking voice and her ability to make it so acidic, says much more than any curse word....

[Al Dente]

Posted: 8/20/03 at 4:53pm

I've never heard booing but I think the equivalent would be when people get up very *obviously* during the middle of a performance and leave. That, I've witnessed a few times. Most recently at Radiant Baby.

[BwayTheatre11]

Posted: 8/20/03 at 6:14pm

Al Dente! I am so happy! Your post is nice and reasonable! See, that is what I and everyone else likes.

[ErikJ972]

Posted: 8/20/03 at 6:40pm

One person booed when I saw Dance of the Vampires...after one of the lame sponge jokes.

[Bwaybabie]

Posted: 8/20/03 at 6:42pm

I've never heard any boos...but the applause when I saw Thou Shalt Not was so tepid it may as well have been a big fat collective BOO...

I gave the show credit for trying. :)

[dotmarie]

Posted: 8/20/03 at 8:16pm

I've never gone to a show myself where I've heard boos...I don't think...

If I remember correctly, on the Into the Woods DVD of the original cast... after Cinderella's Prince leaves the Baker's Wife after having his "moment" with her, a guy in the audience booed. But I don't think this counts as I'm pretty sure he was booing the character, not Robert Westenberg himself.

Posted: 8/20/03 at 8:56pm

I was at a production of Anne Frank and someone screemed "Thank God, She was a whinny b.tch" really loud at the end. I think she meant to say it while the applause was going on but it was one of those ooops moments.

[PigletH13]

Posted: 8/20/03 at 8:59pm

Not on Bway either...but on the West End...Chitty Chitty Bang Bang...all of the kids booed when the sinister child catcher comes out.

I heard someone boo at Sebastian Bach while he did Rocky Horror one night. The girl was completely drunk...and proceeded to heckle the entire cast more so than usual.

[ChristineDaae]

Posted: 8/20/03 at 9:25pm

I've never heard booing but I've seen sleeping.

[CourtneyM]

Posted: 8/20/03 at 11:08pm

i had someone sit behind me in the graduate and snore really loud. which to me was worse than booing

[kec]

Posted: 8/20/03 at 11:29pm

"Not on Bway either...but on the West End...Chitty Chitty Bang Bang...all of the kids booed when the sinister child catcher comes out."

Very true Piglet... that really startled me the first time I heard it! The booing occured every time he came out, including the curtain call -- but both Richard O'Brien and Peter Polycarpou were pleased at the reaction. In fact, Polycarpou encouraged more booing!

When I saw Chitty again in December the audience also started booing and hissing at the Vulgarian spies as well -- and the actors playing the spies really played up to it. Even Grandpa Potts gaven an acknowledgment to the hissing during one scene when the spies came out while he was on stage. He was taking an evening stroll, heard the hissing and swore it was a bitter north wind coming in.

Updated On: 8/20/03 at 11:29 PM

[skingdom]

Posted: 8/20/03 at 11:42pm

Someone laughed and yelled " how stupid" at her line at the end of the show " The slotted spoon can catch the potato." She definately wasn't good, but it was so rude and really pissed me off. By the way this was at the revival of Into the Woods.

[QueenS]

Posted: 8/21/03 at 10:14am

I also haven't heard booing, but I have heard laughter. AT the show not WITH it. Thou Shalt Not, Dance of the Vampires, Amour, Urban Cowboy all come to mind.

[TEACHEROFTHEATER]

Posted: 8/21/03 at 10:28am

I have seen very many walkouts.......and I have also heard laughter at things that were not supposed to be funny...

At the awful play WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM, the theater, audience, actors, etc. were being "held hostage" by thugs. It was difficult to suspend disbelief enough for the audience to believe there was real danger.

At one point two elderly people emerged from their seats at the back of the orchestra level and pleaded with the "thugs" to allow them to exchange themselves as getaway hostages in place of their daughter who had already been selected as a getaway hostage.

The audience just howled with laughter.

That play was almost as bad as Its A Hard Job Being God, the dreadful rock musical.

[flaemmchen]

Posted: 8/22/03 at 3:28pm

When Titanic was on Broadway, Ismay always got booed at curtain call without fail. Even the die hards who came to see the show a million times (myself included) booed him.