When the cell phone rang during a performance of A Steady Rain a few months ago, no one was very surprised. What was surprising was that the phone rang for such a painfully long time before the owner shut it off. And it rang during the most gut-wrenching scene in the play which made it so much worse.
Hugh Jackman, one of the show’s stars and the performer who was interrupted (shown above with co-star Daniel Craig), remarkably tried to stay in character. With the same intensity of the character he was portraying, he turned to the audience and glared, “You want to get that? Grab it, I don’t care, just grab it!” Unbelievably, once silenced, the phone rang again. Jackman showed remarkable restraint and just shook his head while the audience laughed uncomfortably. Hugh Jackman’s reaction to the cell phone was recorded by someone in the audience and has gone viral (isn’t filming the performance a no no, too?).
Unfortunately, bad behavior has become commonplace; a ringing cell phone at every venue, from school meetings to Presidential press conferences, is now the rule rather than the exception. Without getting into a (very long) discussion about the decline of civility in today’s society, here are some of the most egregious lapses of courtesy in the theater, as provided by some of our readers.
At a recent concert of the New York Philharmonic, a 30-something woman spent 15 minutes talking on her cell phone during a performance. No amount of dirty looks or shushing would deter this person from planning the rest of her evening. The conversation went something like this, “Not much, just at a concert. Boring. Sure, where do you want to meet? No, I don’t like that place. Pick someplace else and get back to me.” Couldn’t that call have rolled to voicemail and been dealt with at intermission?
It seems bad behavior in the theater is nothing new. Elaine Stritch and George Grizzard (in the photo above) were on stage, playing a scene from the 1996 revival of A Delicate Balance. There was an obvious commotion in the balcony, and finally, a female voice rose in a crescendo, “I want my money back! I want my money back! I WANT MY MONEY BACK!!! Grizzard stopped the action on stage, looked up and said, “I’ll give you your money back, lady.” The audience roared their approval.
In another incident, an elderly woman had obviously been dragged to the 1999 revival of On the Town. She fussed at her companion to leave, until finally, in utter frustration, she yelled, “It’s TORTURE!!!” at the top of her lungs. This has become the catch phrase for not-so-great theater to our reader who was sitting next to this woman.
A reader reminded us that during one of David Hyde Pierce’s 2007 Tony-winning performances in Curtains a family in the front row passed a bucket of chicken among themselves. Other readers commented that in London’s West End, it is not uncommon to see people pack a dinner, eat it in the theater, then leave the remains on the floor.
Apparently rudeness knows no bounds in the theater. At a performance this summer of Blythe Spirit, with the iconic, Tony award winning Angela Lansbury (shown above), an audience member demonstrated that the basic rule of respecting one’s elders does not apply to him. When Angela Lansbury first entered the stage to deafening applause, she waited, and then began her lines. A few seconds into her performance, a middle-aged man from the back of the orchestra bellowed, “LOUDER” to Lansbury. The audience, appalled at the lack of respect shown to this legend, hissed in response, which, in turn, got a smile from Ms. Lansbury. The show went on at the same decibel level.
By far, one of the cleverest reactions to an audience member’s behavior came from Nathan Lane. About 10 minutes into Lane’s opening monologue in A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum, two young women entered the theater laden with shopping bags. Of course, these two had seats not only in the front of the theater, but also in the center of the row, requiring everyone to stand up to let them and their parcels pass. Lane stops to watch the action in the audience with his trademark smirk and says to the women, “What? Was it all you could eat shrimp night at the Red Lobster?” The audience howled and Lane continued on with his very funny monologue, the audience clearly in his court.
While some of these examples of boorish behavior seem incredible, the ringing cell phone is often accidental, its owner embarrassed and horrified. So when the following announcement comes over the loud speaker, “Turn off your cell phone. The use of recording devices is prohibited. No tweeting. No texting. No singing along. No buckets of chicken,” pay attention; that ringing cell phone could be yours.
