This afternoon, I went to see August:Osage County up at Playhouse Square in Downtown Cleveland (part of the Broadway series that I'm a season subscriber to). The play was a 3 1/2 hour serious melodrama done in the style of Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neil and, while slow at the beginning, quickly picked up steam as the play went along and ended on a really powerful note.
This posting isn't about the play however. It's about the group of women who were sitting 2 rows back of me in the theater. Throughout the entire play, they wouldn't stop talking. They would make comments to each other and to themselves almost nonstop. And, we're not talking quiet whisperings, we're talking almost normal volume conversations. And the comments they made were beyond inane. For example, at one point a character mentions that he's been married 38 years so, of course, the genius in the group said to her friend "38 years, huh?". And the dialogue remained this scintilating and at the same relative volume. If the action or dialogue on the stage got louder, so did the conversation in the group. It went beyond distracting into the aggravatingly annoying.
I would have said something to them along the lines of "some of us paid to hear the actors on stage, not you" but I was convinced by my mother and sister to not say anything and just "deal with it" (they were probably afraid that I would be less than tactful and it would, no doubt, result in ME being asked to leave the theater). Thus, I spent the bulk of 3 1/2 hours simmering and wishing that they would FINALLY shut up.
What annoys me is that this is a problem that is more and more prevalent. I know it's been a problem in movie theaters for years but, until now, I've been happy to avoid encountering it in a live theater production. At least in that situation, the patrons realize that this is not their home where they can make comments throughout and that it is rude to the other guests who paid some fairly expensive prices to hear something that can only be done once (at least with a movie, I can always watch it again later to catch dialogue or a performance that I might have missed -- with live theater, that isn't possible). But today proved to me that society is becoming less and less civil.
As further evidence of lack of civility, at least 3 times in the play I heard someone's cell phone go off. I have yet to figure out why people can't learn to switch the phone to vibrate. I do that as a matter of course but there is still a segment of the population who have to master this complex feat. Because of that, during some intense sequence in the play, I'm suddenly hear a phone going off. It's distracting and too easily takes us out of the play.
On behalf of all of us who like to actually hear the actors and get lost is a story that we paid money to watch, I beg now of the segment that feels a need to talk or let their phones ring. I beg that you either respect our rights to enjoy the play withour constant commentary. Either that of just not come and restrict yourself to watching stuff on a TV set where your blather will only annoy your family members.
They might have to put up -- I don't. Please respect that fact
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