Tuesday 4 August 2009

Be Careful What You Wish For...

A dramatic new role has come up in the West End theatre - for bouncers.

Audience behaviour has become so bad that many producers are hiring security staff to throw out the worst offenders.
You wonder why this is now happening. Wasn’t the theatre one of the last bastions of quality entertainment?

Well, no. Not any longer:
Ticket prices reduced to as little as £10 to attract younger audiences and a liberal attitude to alcohol in the auditorium have served to fuel the vulgar antics.

Some customers have been seen to fight, fondle each other and even publicly urinate.
Wow! Feel the authentic Shakespearian atmosphere!

Problem being, this isn’t the Globe, and it isn’t Elizabethan times…
Nica Burns, who co-owns the Lyric Theatre, where Thriller is playing, and four other West End venues, is among those recruiting bouncers.

'In a show like Thriller you may get people who have never been to the theatre before and may have been out for a drink before they arrive,' she said. 'It can get quite hectic and very boisterous.'
I think that’s polite theatre code for ‘drunken sluts and chavs’…

But then, that’s the problem with making things more affordable and trying to attract a ‘younger audience’ – a good portion of that demographic you are chasing have no idea how to behave, and you will wing up losing some of your other demographic (wealthy retirees) as a result:
Greta Scacchi, who appeared last year in Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea, said someone in the audience called out during a particularly dramatic moment.

'Everyone told him to "Shush". But he just shouted back, "Chill out, I'm only having a bit of fun".'
This ties in with the post the other day on manners. Sobers and blueknight both commented on the behaviour of people joining a cricket club and going to the cinema respectively.

We seem to have bred a generation incapable of enjoying anything in moderation or quiet contemplation, who demand instant gratification and ‘respect’, and who either don’t realise – or more likely, don’t care - that in hedonistic pursuit of their own desires, they ruin things for everyone else.

Hence we first need ‘quiet carriages’ in trains, then ASBOs and ‘drinking control areas’. Now, bouncers in theatres.

What’s next, I wonder?

6 comments:

David Duff said...

"What’s next, I wonder?"

Your local church?

JuliaM said...

I wouldn't be at all surprised, sadly...

Umbongo said...

"Your local church?"

Too late I'm afraid.

The last time I went to church was to a carol service in the late 70s. The local vicar - a good soul - had invited a single mother and her children (aged about 10 and 12) to stay with him and his wife in the vicarage over Christmas. The single mother and her children came to the service.

The children ran amok. Their mother did precisely nothing while the vicar smiled his beatific smile and said to me, when (after about 20 minutes of mayhem) I asked him to do something before I and a fellow congregant started to deal with matters rather more robustly, that Jesus had appealed to his disciples to "suffer the little children to come to him . . . ". When we grabbed the children (this was 30 years ago) and slung them out of the church, the vicar asked me, my family, my fellow worshipper and his family to leave: I believe the words "not showing a Christian spirit . ." were used. I left - with most of the rest of the congregation - and never went back.

roym said...

umbongo,

is that really all it took to end your attendance?!

Rob said...

Again, "blowback". The metropolitan middle-classes are beginning to feel the consequences of the weltanschauung they have imposed on everyone else over the past thirty years.

JuliaM said...

"is that really all it took to end your attendance?!"

Isn't that enough? That a minority are allowed to spoil an experience for the majority, unchecked and unfettered from any consequences?

What need to stick around?

"Again, "blowback". The metropolitan middle-classes are beginning to feel the consequences of the weltanschauung they have imposed on everyone else over the past thirty years."

Good. Because, sadly, it's the obly way we'll see any changes...