May 12, 2018

"The esteemed Manhattan theater in which I spent several hours on a recent Saturday night might as well have been a dormitory."

"Up and down the rows and aisles, people could be seen in various states of drowsy repose. A woman in the row ahead of mine had her head thrust all the way back, as if she were paying the audience member behind her to shampoo her hair.... Is every theater piece really that dull to some percentage of the crowd, I wonder, or are we just coming to public events ever more sleep-deprived?.... Do people attending plays and musicals have a moral obligation to the performers to try to stay awake?..."

From "Why pay $100 and more for a theater ticket if you sleep during the performance?" (WaPo).

57 comments:

tcrosse said...

Why pay big bucks for tuition and then sleep in class ?

rcocean said...

Why sleep? Maybe 'cause its better than watching the play.

BTW, lots of people are rich, or get free tickets, or go because someone ask them to, or just find the play dull.

They don't care that its $100.

Caldwell P. Titcomb IV said...

Why pay for a theater ticket?

Achilles said...

Most theater experiences these days are more about being seen paying 100$ for a ticket than actually enjoying the show.

Most of the shows are leftist drivel.

It is about a bunch of people feeling like they are "cultured" and superior.


As an aside it can easily cost about 100$ for a good family day at the range just in ammo. If you want to show off burning 100$ you can go shoot 10-15 rounds of .408 Cheytac.

mockturtle said...

Could be a lot of heroin addicts nodding off or it could have been a really dull play.

David said...

Drugged up, drunk or stuffed
with food.

David said...

"Why pay big bucks for tuition and then sleep in class ?"

Why sleep in class when you can sleep in the dorm? That was my undergraduate solution. I was well rested.

Caldwell P. Titcomb IV said...

tcrosse said...
Why pay big bucks for tuition and then sleep in class ?


I used to sit in on big freshman psych or anthro lectures that I wasn't paying for in order to take a nap between real classes; people escaping at the end of the lecture made a good alarm clock. That's why.

David said...

In my defense it wasn't big bucks to go to school in the first Half of the 1960's.

tcrosse said...

Poli-Sci lecture at Madison, B-10 Commerce, in the mid 60's. Some guy is sprawled out asleep with his mouth open. Prof asks somebody nearby to wake him up. The somebody nearby says, "You put him to sleep, you wake him up". Hilarity. Guy wakes up, and he beats a hasty retreat.

wwww said...

Do people attending plays and musicals have a moral obligation


It depends. Was the person raised by wolves?

Michael K said...

I paid $100 a ticket for two tickets to the Tucson opera, which was playing "Das Rheingold" but we could not find a place to park with a half hour trying. We sat in a line of cars only to be waved off by an attendant who said the garage was full. I think they had another event that night but they sure used poor planning. We finally gave up and went home. Our seats were in the front row and the Opera had begun.

Argh !

Michael K said...

The somebody nearby says, "You put him to sleep, you wake him up". Hilarity. Guy wakes up, and he beats a hasty retreat.

Karl Wenckebach invented the EKG but he as such a dull lecturer, the students said, In der Klinik wenckebach, nur die erste Zeile ist wach.

JohnG said...

Maybe the woman with her head fully back has 20/20 vision but only peripherally.

Old Steven Wright joke.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Caldwell Titcomb IV said...
Why pay for a theater ticket?
5/12/18, 5:51 PM



Er, because we don't know how to steal them?

jimbino said...

In my experience, the theaters are kept too warm, inducing sleep.

Leora said...

A lot of people plan a full day of shopping, sight seeing and a nice dinner with drinks when they go to the theater. They don't intend to not enjoy the play but they aren't used to the walking and possibly are not used to drinking at dinner. I also think the theaters have a moral obligation to provide something entertaining enough to keep the audience awake.

Bay Area Guy said...

C'mon - rich, upper West--Side liberals need their beauty sleep. Just because it happens to be at the theater is of no moment.

Etienne said...

They give people free tickets to pack the place.

It's called Madison Ave marketing. The tourists think the play is good if the house is full.

The object is to get the tourists in.

Etienne said...

we could not find a place to park

When we go to Dallas, we drive to the hotel, and then the rest of the weekend, we take cabs everywhere.

We just don't want to deal with idiots, and the cab drivers have gun permits.

My wife feels safer with an armed cabbie than me being armed.

I don't know why?? I have a freezer full of squirrels, so she can't think I don't shoot straight...

MadisonMan said...

Even if you sleep through Hamilton, you can still tell all your liberal friends that you went to see it.

Credentialed.

mockturtle said...

Michael K says: I paid $100 a ticket for two tickets to the Tucson opera, which was playing "Das Rheingold" but we could not find a place to park with a half hour trying. We sat in a line of cars only to be waved off by an attendant who said the garage was full. I think they had another event that night but they sure used poor planning. We finally gave up and went home. Our seats were in the front row and the Opera had begun.

Argh !


Yes. When we subscribed to the Seattle Opera and the Seattle Symphony we would zoom home from work [we both worked in the same location], change, and zoom up into town from our suburb, find parking near the opera house then walk to somewhere nearby to eat. After a few years we decided it was more trouble than it was worth.

Michael K said...

Blogger Etienne said...
we could not find a place to park

When we go to Dallas, we drive to the hotel, and then the rest of the weekend, we take cabs everywhere.


We live in Tucson and the theater is only about 15 minutes from home. We had gone to two other operas and had no trouble.

In Orange County, here we lived before, there was a nice restaurant walking distance that had a special "pro-opera" meal and we could leave the car there.

If there is such a pace in Tucson, I haven't found it.

Michael K said...

Sorry about the typos. "pre-opera" and "where we lived before"

Soem blogs have real time previews.

stevew said...

Theatre, Opera, and Ballet are not worth the cost and effort, as compared to the alternatives.

-sw

James K said...

After a few years we decided it was more trouble than it was worth.

We live a 10 minute walk from the Metropolitan Opera. The missus calls it "an expensive nap," so I mostly go with my daughter now.

As to the post, some cousins came to NYC on the way back from Europe, and saw several shows. Somehow they made it through the 4-hour "Iceman Cometh," but the next night, still jet lagged, fell asleep during "Travesties." They were mortified, and are going to see it again. The point being, sometimes people have the best of intentions, but circumstances can interfere.

Anonymous said...

I call fake news. One guy claims to have seen people sleeping at one play. He doesn't specify the play. He claims he "can't count" the number of times he's seen people sleeping at other plays (because you can't count up to zero?).

He has a deadline to meet, so suddenly this is a worrisome societal trend.

Forget it, Althouse, it's the WaPo.

MD Greene said...

I write about movies sometimes, and in the last year or so I have found myself dropping off for brief naps during the battle scenes of superhero films. I think for most viewers the battles are the most exciting parts -- can't be the character development, obviously -- but I enjoy the respite and wake refreshed without having lost track of any plot developments.

robother said...

A confession: About 6 hours ago, I was scrolling through comments on Ann's John McCain post and I fell asleep.

Tank said...

Many moons ago I took my kids and some friends to see one of the Muppet movies. After a short animation, which I enjoyed, the movie started and I fell asleep. Kids woke me up at the end, "Hey Dad, I think we have to leave now."

So it goes.

Drago said...

I fell asleep in the middle of Phantom.

Twice.

In my defense, that bastard Andrew Lloyd Weber dumped my favorite lyric from "The Music Of The Night".

Freeman Hunt said...

Maybe it was boring. Who hasn't gone to a show and realized five minutes in that it was going to be an interminable sleeper?

PatHMV said...

I think they're paying to be part of the theater-going set, not because they are actually interested in the performance.

The Godfather said...

I never knew that the job of a "theatre critic" was to criticize the theatre audience.

Michael K said...

I like Opera and one plus for Tucson was an opera (shared with Phoenix) in a town of 500 k and a university. Left wing or not.

My youngest graduated from U of A.

Now, if I only lived close enough to see Garanca !

Gregg said...

I'm sure this has never happened before, but what would you do, as a Professor, if your students fell asleep during your class ?

JaimeRoberto said...

I just spent a lot less to sleep through The Avengers.

Ambrose said...

The unbearable burden of being superior to other theater goers.

TheGiantPeach said...

Nobody slept when Pavarotti sang "Nessun Dorma."

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Left Bank of the Charles said...

$100 for a theater ticket is cheaper than a NYC hotel room.

FIDO said...

$100 for a theater ticket is cheaper than a NYC hotel room.

Yeah, but you can't (consensually) screw a hooker or the missus in a theater unless you spent extra for the coat check girl to take a break, so you better budget that in too.

Wilbur said...

My father used to say he didn't see any sense in paying a quarter just to fall asleep.

That's what a movie ticket cost the last time he went. He said it was "Going My Way" with Der Bingle.

A quarter was not to be trifled with.

Nancy said...

They sleep because they are there at the behest of their companion, who really did want to see the show. E.g. my father and mother at the opera.

tim in vermont said...

Broadway sucks. Waiting for Godot is a prank on the audience, for example. I slept through most of it. I am famous in my family for sleeping through battle scenes in movies.

Sydney said...

The esteemed Manhattan theater in which I spent several hours....!!!!!?

That’s why they were sleeping. No play should last several hours.

CJ said...

I fell asleep at a Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas because I was exhausted. I was 21 and hadn’t partied or anything - I was with my girlfriend at the time.

Show wasn’t boring - we were just tired and the seats were comfortable and the lights were dark.

Robert Cook said...

”I think they're paying to be part of the theater-going set, not because they are actually interested in the performance.”

There is no “theatre-going set” anymore. Or a literary set. That New York has been gone for decades.

tcrosse said...

That New York has been gone for decades.

Where did it go ?

Robert Cook said...

It died with the world that sustained it, killed by the rise of new media and new forms of entertainment.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Don't be modest, Bob, take a bow. That class of people was precisely that which your compatriots wished to herd into cellars and machine-gun. Instead you have eliminated them non-violently, which I guess is to your credit.

Robert Cook said...

Bad Lt., I think I may have asked this before: why bother typing pure nonsense? Why waste your own time?

Bad Lieutenant said...

I wonder the same about you, Bob.

Baelzar said...

It's because people go to the show directly from eating a big lunch or dinner. Shows start at 1 or 2pm and 7pm or 8pm. People foolishly have a big ol' carb-heavy meal then waddle to the show, where they are overcome.

Plan better.

Your Nation's Capital said...

A famous Jewish comedian (I want to say it was Mel Brooks, but my memory could be faulty) described opera as "two people singing and three thousand Jews sleeping."

It was funny, then, but probably a Twitter-mobbing offense now. Sigh.

mikee said...

In Japan at some of the more famous Noh plays, people get up and leave for a while during the boring parts, and come back for the exciting ones. Is that more or less polite than nodding off silently?

And because I snore like a locomotive in a Johnny Cash ballad, I may end a play with bruised ribs but never having slept through it.

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