What is the lowlight of your theatre going experiences?

[dented146]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 1:03am

After the wonderful post by Theatre Fan3, I couldn't help reviewing, in my mind, so many thrilling times I have had as a fan and audience member. My experiences began as a volunteer teenage usher at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles over 60 years ago and continue to this day.

However, my most memorable experience was my first visit to Broadway to see My Fair Lady in 1960. At the age of 14 this was my first trip to NYC. I was beyond excited. Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison had already left the production but that didn't matter to me. I couldn't wait.

We arrived in New York during a scorching July heat wave. Temperatures we in the high 90's and the humidity about the same. The morning of the matinee performance, I developed a severe nose bleed that just wouldn't stop. My relatives in Brooklyn rushed me to their doctor who cauterized my nose. I left the office with my nose killing me and stuffed with cotton which was to be left there. All I remember of the show was that the theatre was way to hot. I sat through the entire performance in misery and couldn't wait for it to end. 

My aunt and uncle felt really bad for me and the next day they told me they were getting tickets for a new show which they heard was better for kids. I was in a terrible mood and told them that I didn't want to go to some "kids show" I had never heard of.  But, of course, I went anyway and we saw Bye Bye Birdie which had opened a couple of months earlier with Chita and Dick Van Dyke. I loved it. Ironically, a few years later, I played Hugo Peabody in our high school production.

[SouthernCakes]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 1:30am

Jagged Little Pill - awful.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 1:35am

Watching Suzanne Somers hide behind a box from an imaginary abusive parent while singing “If I Only Had a Brain”.

[dented146]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 1:56am

Jordan, that is very funny.

[SouthernCakes]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 2:35am

Jordan Catalano said: "Watching Suzanne Somers hide behind a box from an imaginary abusive parent while singing “If I Only Had a Brain”."

This show was before my time. But I’d love to see a comedian do a word for word recreation. 

[WldKingdomHM]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 2:45am

Thou Shalt Not……tuggggggboat

[inception]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 3:23am

Cirque Du Soleil's R.U.N. that opened at the Luxor in Las Vegas in 2019.  I've seen plenty of bad shows by small theatre companies, but never anything so terrible that must have cost a lot, especially when you consider all the renovations done to the theatre. It was supposed to be a sort of live action crime film, written by Robert Rodriguez,  trying to be similar to his Sin City films.   It had filmed sequences that actors/stunt people interacted with. It didn't have any main characters you cared about, and just had too much gory violence including a gross mob hit man sequence.  It was all deadly serious with no comedy to lighten it.  Though it probably isn't possible to lighten the mood after a sequence where a character is tortured to death acted out live on stage. They got lousy reviews but limped through to early 2020 when Covid shuttered everything.

The America's Got Talent live show has now replaced it at the Luxor.

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 7:12am

Oh now this is fun! Off the top of my head, the lowlights of my theatre going have been...

- Summer - The Donna Summer Musical

- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

- The Lightening Thief

 

 

[NotTheComfyChair]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 7:50am

Small Mouth Sounds at the Signature Center. I have never been so cold in a theater and couldn't appreciate what most reviewers thought was a very good piece.

Not so much a low light but a contrast to the above. Elmina's Kitchen in the West End - the theatre was so hot, it made following the play hard but it was well worth the sweat!

 

As others have mentioned productions that they found awful...

For me, and in my opinion only:

Lady in the Dark at the National Theatre. Left at the interval which I'd never done before.

Kinky Boots on Broadway and Merrily We Roll Along in the West End. In both shows, the accents were painfully, wince-inducingly dreadful. KB was bad across the board while MWRA was mostly bad. I wish I'd been able to leave both at the interval but I knew people in the casts and couldn't just bail. 

[gibsons2]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 8:28am

Back in 2019 two of the most anticipated shows for me personally were Moulin Rouge and Tina. I spent lots of money on tickets and was very disappointed with how shallow the shows were. Sure, both were visual spectacles, but books were awful, lack of chemistry between MR leads was too obvious and Tina's dialogs (and some acting) made me cringe. 

[quizking101]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 8:34am

SCANDALOUS on Broadway - Hurricane Sandy was about 12 hours from landfall and this was one of the shows that hadn’t been cancelled yet. (We already had tickets through TDF). My mom and I had a nice lunch and some drinks beforehand. Jesus Christ. I felt bad for all that talent on stage because the material was so cringey, misfiring, and hard to comprehend that I actually fell asleep during part of the show, something I had never done in over 200 shows. 

My mom and I rode the bus home thinking “We braved a potential early hurricane landfall for THAT?!”

[fashionguru_23]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 9:09am

Girl From the North Country: I remember hearing this show is so good. I saw the Olivier performance as was pleased. Then once I finally saw the whole show, I wanted to leave at intermission, and was just bored, and couldn't care less about what happened to these characters.

Dear Evan Hansen: Why do people like this show? 

Once: I saw this original cast on a few weeks after the Tony nominations came out, and the buzz was this was going to win the Tony. I went, enjoyed pieces, but just wondered what it was that made everyone so excited, It was a slow burn to nothing. I then caught the show again on tour for dirt cheap, and gave it another go. It burned even slower than the Broadway company. The highlight of the show was going to the bar on stage, and turning around at looking out into the house, and thinking how incredible that moment was.

[PennClassic]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 9:39am

Although I didn't see them on Broadway, I did see touring productions of CATS and THE BOOK OF MORMON.  Both shows had talented performers and were very professionally done.  I know that these shows are among the most successful in theatre history but they are not my cup of tea.  I realize I am in the minority but, in my opinion, both shows are over-rated and, therefore, were quite disappointing to me.

Updated On: 5/4/23 at 09:39 AM

[Valentina3]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 9:44am

I genuinely HATED sitting through POTUS this summer. My partner thought Act 1 was "good" and he was laughing and for me it was like sitting through a horrible SNL skit with guest stars galore. We both wanted to cut out trip short and leave NYC after the even worse Act 2 (thankfully we didn't, and saw Take Me Out that night which more than made up for the lackluster matinee).

[denali.fire]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 10:49am

Jimmy

Hamilton

 

[taragel2]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 12:06pm

There have been a lot of movie adaptation duds touring in recent years (several not from/going to Broadway) but I'm not sure any were as bad (though GHOST may have come very close) to Dirty Dancing the Musical. Everything was just so lackluster. I remember laughing out loud at the scene where Johnny has to break the car window in the rain -- there was either no actual car or just a flimsy cardboard piece meant to be a car. Rough stuff for a national tour.

[bholtzinger544]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 12:39pm

Hands down seeing King Kong on Broadway in 2019. The music was forgettable and I was genuinely bored during most of the show and was ready to leave. Honestly, I think it would have been much better as a play as nothing about King Kong really makes you sing. 

The only show I have ever left at intermission was The Office Parody Musical. I'm glad I got tickets for cheap. The amount of gay jokes made at Oscar's expense came off as cruel and not funny. Like I get where it came from having seen the show but the humor did not land with me. 

[Sutton Ross]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 12:40pm

BKLYN.

[hollebolle]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 12:49pm

Sam Gold's King Lear. I had a TDF ticket in the balcony during an early preview, so the show was running long. Stared down at that awful purple and gold set for 2 hours before the single intermission. 

[MayAudraBlessYou2]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 1:02pm

Himself and Nora at Minetta Lane. Yikes. I got como tickets and was excited by the premise. When my boyfriend and I took our seats, we were dead center in the 3rd row (not a good sign when you’re sitting comps/papering in prime locations). And only a few other parties came into the theater by the time the lights went down. The music was so awful and it was insufferably boring. I felt bad about leaving since we were 2 of maybe 20 ppl max in the house..but we both turned to each other at intermission and said “we gotta get out of here.” I think it’s the only thing I’ve ever left at intermission.

 

as for Broadway, Amazing Grace was prob the worst. Besides being terribly amateurish with music and staging I also thought it was fairly racist. 

[JSquared2]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 1:25pm

Jordan Catalano said: "Watching Suzanne Somers hide behind a box from an imaginary abusive parent while singing “If I Only Had a Brain”."

 

That's funny -- I was going to say my lowlight was seeing Suzanne Somers wheel onstage a huge cart filled with her infomercial products, featuring the Thighmaster!

[sppunk]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 1:35pm

Two stand out: 

1) The Radio City Summer Spectacular - worst live performance I have ever seen. Depressing, dumb, terrible, beyond words how awful this was. A nearly empty RCMH didn’t help. 
2) Roundabout’s most recent Cherry Orchard revival Left midway through the 2nd act, only show we have ever left. 

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 1:38pm

JSquared2 said: "Jordan Catalano said: "Watching Suzanne Somers hide behind a box from an imaginary abusive parent while singing “If I Only Had a Brain”."



That's funny -- I was going to say my lowlight was seeing Suzanne Somers wheel onstage a huge cart filled with her infomercial products, featuring the Thighmaster!"


At least it was an unforgettable experience lololol

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 1:40pm

Seeing the Fish-revised OKLAHOMA held lowlight pride of place for several years. Watched the whole show from behind the standing double-bass player. Nothing could prepare us for the dreadfulness of the "ballet" that opened Act II.

Then came the horror that was FLYING OVER SUNSET. That lowlight lasted through the pandemic all the way until...

SIX! The worst 86 minutes we can remember enduring on Broadway in years.

[nealb1]

Posted: 9/15/22 at 2:14pm

"Margaritaville"
"The Wedding Singer"