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Post by NorthernAlien on Jul 9, 2023 11:47:00 GMT
I am very much of the mindset that you can't judge any show until you've seen the whole thing, and plenty of shows have improved in the second act to make my point. However, when I used to pay the Belgrade Coventry £925/year (minus Gift Aid rebate) for their excellent, but now defunct, membership scheme that permitted two free tickets to up to 50 shows, I got to see some real stinkers, all of which were in the small B2 auditorium. I don't know how some of these touring one-star productions managed to secure funding, but a few tested my patience to the point that I had had enough by the interval. I've seen the term "experimental theatre" used, but the experiment often seems to be in how much money they can part from arts councils and unsuspecting punters. There are some people who are very good at getting money out of ACE, because they know how to answer the questions, and how to 'tick the boxes' - and bear in mind that the boxes which require ticking change relatively frequently, depending on ACE's current policies. Having tried to secure funding myself, and having several friends who have also tried, and knowing some shows which do/have receive(d) funding, my personal opinion is that there is often a disconnect between 'decent show an audience will enjoy' and 'received funding from Arts Council England'. And to say more would probably require us to establish a new thread, lest we de-rail this one...
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Post by lichtie on Jul 9, 2023 12:56:00 GMT
Never done it (mainly because with the exception of Leeds Playhouse I can't just leave and get an earlier mode of transport home). But been several where I definitely wished the option was there - top of the list is Salome at the Olivier. Susanah Clapp's 1* Guardian review overpraised it... Made me decide never to go to another Farber show ever. Macbeth, Common and St George and the Dragon at the National also came close, but there was a certain element of car crash about them that made it hard to look away (and they weren't as shouty). Quite a few mediocre RSC productions over the years tempted me to quit as well - the closest probably the recent Julius Caesar which was awful, but the weather outside was similar so squatting in the warm theatre seemed preferable. Mostly I just settle in for a quiet snooze if the first half is poor.
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Post by sf on Jul 9, 2023 15:31:56 GMT
The Man In The White Suit. Witless One Man Two Guvnors knockoff, and the cast couldn't save it.
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Post by alece10 on Jul 9, 2023 17:16:16 GMT
I've just remembered another. Funny Girl at Cliffs Pavillion Southend On Sea. Sheridan was off with glandular fever but main reason I left at interval was because I couldn't see anything. Having never been to the theatre before I didn't realise it is more of a mini arena than a theatre and stalls seats are all on one level with no rake. As I'm not 6 foot tall I really couldn't see so left at the interval and got back to London a couple of hours earlier.
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Post by zephyrus on Jul 9, 2023 21:41:45 GMT
I generally force myself to stay until the end of pretty much everything I see, although I make an exception maybe once a year. I remember I left The Duchess of Malfi at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at the interval about 10 years ago (mainly because, unsurprisingly, I was very uncomfortable, and it reminded me why I hate that particular theatre, and why I generally avoid everything at The Globe.)
Recently, I went to see When Winston Went to War with the Wireless at the Donmar, and I really wasn't enjoying it at all. I spent the whole interval toying with the idea of leaving... but, in the end, I went back in to the theatre and, for the next hour, regretted that I hadn't gone home early.
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Post by vickyg on Jul 10, 2023 8:19:13 GMT
I've only left at the interval once, which was very recently for Aspects of Love. I always worry that I would have enjoyed the second half and usually there is *something* that has potentially to develop. I do often regret not leaving though and wish I could be more brutal with my decision making!
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Post by stitcher on Jul 10, 2023 13:05:29 GMT
Just remembered a staying after the interval when we wanted to leave! Marti Webb in Tell Me On A Sunday (she took over after the Denise Van Outen run,2004?), - they'd closed the upper tiers and there were just a few of us in the front rows of the stalls - it would have been very noticeable if we'd left. She sounded great and gave it her all, but it was just quite an uncomfortable watch...
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Post by fluxcapacitor on Jul 11, 2023 8:54:13 GMT
I don't do it very often, but if something is bad enough (in my opinion) and I'm not enjoying it, I will.
The first time I ever left at the interval was a god-awful concert production of 'Little Women: the Musical" narrated by Sandi Toksvig at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in (I think) 2005. It wasn't the Broadway musical, but a new version by Lionel Segal. We had comps, but even free tickets weren't enough to make me stay for more. It was terrible.
Then most recently, the RSC's Don Quixote at the Garrick in 2019. We saw it towards the end of its run when closing was imminent, so I think the cast were just going through the motions, and it had been left to become laboured and sloppy. It was unfunny and felt amateur. We preferred a civil drink before heading home.
I also left the Sydney production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella last year. It was the perfect example of how a strong production (it was based on the 2013 Broadway version - using the same sets, costumes, staging and arrangements) can completely lose anything that made it special in the wrong hands. It was hammy, played like a pantomime in wide brush strokes, and felt targeted exclusively at primary school children. Watching bootlegs of the Broadway version is like watching a different show and I'm gutted they messed it up so badly.
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Post by solotheatregoer on Jul 11, 2023 9:59:30 GMT
I generally force myself to stay until the end of pretty much everything I see, although I make an exception maybe once a year. I remember I left The Duchess of Malfi at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at the interval about 10 years ago (mainly because, unsurprisingly, I was very uncomfortable, and it reminded me why I hate that particular theatre, and why I generally avoid everything at The Globe.) Recently, I went to see When Winston Went to War with the Wireless at the Donmar, and I really wasn't enjoying it at all. I spent the whole interval toying with the idea of leaving... but, in the end, I went back in to the theatre and, for the next hour, regretted that I hadn't gone home early. I'm the same. I try and force my way though productions even if I am not particularly enjoying them just in case they redeem themselves. I've never actually got to a point of leaving at the interval for a live production. However, I did leave during the Best of Enemies NT Live showing a few weeks back. I just found it so incredibly dull and since it was a NT live cinema screening I felt less guilty about leaving.
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Post by ladidah on Jul 11, 2023 10:54:51 GMT
I left Grease last Summer.
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Post by mkb on Jul 11, 2023 11:14:22 GMT
Oh no! I've just remembered "Two Into One" written by, directed by and starring Ray Cooney, at the Menier in 2014. Not a happy memory (and I write as a fan of bawdy farces and with an affection for Carry On humour).
Not only did I leave at the interval, I also vented my anger at the box office, something I've never done before. This is the only theatrical production I've seen where I thought they crossed a line; not just crossed in fact, but leapt clear over it: this was NOT a team trying their hardest to make a piece work, and failing; this, in my view, was a cynical scam, designed to extort money from punters. It was clear that not the slightest skill or ability had been employed at any point. It was just complete and utter rubbish, devoid of anything that would even raise a smile. To actually charge for this tripe was disgraceful.
I figured that if I could complain in a shop about a product being sub-standard or not fit for purpose, the same rules applied to theatre. Needless to say, the box office were unsympathetic and not the slightest bothered by how upset I was at being duped.
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Post by CG on the loose on Jul 11, 2023 13:09:15 GMT
One play because my head hurt so much I was seeing stars, and not those up on stage who, from what I did see, were doing rather a good job.
Two musicals, because... meh, and I had a long journey home. A little surprised that 'long journey' hasn't swayed me into leaving at the interval more often, but the inherent optimist in me figures (wrongly on occasion!) that things can only get better.
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Jul 11, 2023 18:19:59 GMT
I left Grease last Summer. Summer lovin’ had you aghast? sorry… I’ll get my coat. 🙂
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Post by marob on Jul 11, 2023 19:49:29 GMT
Thinking about it, there is one show I had to leave at the interval: Ken Dodd. One of the rare times I went with someone else, and they had to be in work for 6 the next morning. And with it being Ken Dodd the interval wasn’t until about 10.30. Wish I’d seen that through to the end.
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Post by david on Jul 11, 2023 19:55:29 GMT
Thinking about it, there is one show I had to leave at the interval: Ken Dodd. One of the rare times I went with someone else, and they had to be in work for 6 the next morning. And with it being Ken Dodd the interval wasn’t until about 10.30. Wish I’d seen that through to the end. marob, I saw the great man himself once. Sat through the entire show and it must have been gone midnight before we left the theatre. A long day, but so worth it despite having to get up early for work the next day.
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Post by ladidah on Jul 12, 2023 7:18:01 GMT
I left Grease last Summer. Summer lovin’ had you aghast? sorry… I’ll get my coat. 🙂 I didn't get very far...
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Post by NorthernAlien on Jul 12, 2023 7:57:56 GMT
Thinking about it, there is one show I had to leave at the interval: Ken Dodd. One of the rare times I went with someone else, and they had to be in work for 6 the next morning. And with it being Ken Dodd the interval wasn’t until about 10.30. Wish I’d seen that through to the end. Yeah, Ken was notorious for being a long show - very often running until after all the buses in whichever town he was in that evening had stopped running!
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Post by danb on Jul 12, 2023 17:31:25 GMT
I’ve left several shows in the interval, sometimes for very specific reasons (boorish sweaty drunk next to me at WWRY, appalling understudy at Bat) and sometimes because getting home an hour earlier is more appealing than sitting through the 2nd half of a cast on autopilot giving 25%. I’ve paid good money to see you! (Les Mis a few times, Wicked etc).
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Post by intoanewlife on Jul 12, 2023 19:16:32 GMT
Actually left...
The Crucible - The National - My 2nd visit after previews. Once I realized no-one had bothered to inform the director that the audience don't really want to look at the backs of the actors for 3 hours, there was no way I was staying through the 2nd act. I'd have left much earlier if I wasn't with someone else. Not to mention witnessing the single most head scratching bit of casting I have ever witnessed in the theatre, so kudos for that I guess.
Chicago - Broadway - The dancers were all our of synch, the 2 leads were terrible and the theatre was so old and in such disaray I was scared it was going to collapse around me.
Wished I'd left...
Cats - Nuff said. I've spent the rest of my life apologizing to the person I dragged along with me. And it was free...if I'd have paid I would've been hysterical.
Falsetto's - The Other Palace - This was actually worse than Cats, but the entertainment value of the woman in the front row sitting her book on the stage 10 feet from the actors and reading it throughout the whole of Act 2 was so apt and deserving I couldn't help but stay and watch her do it.
Moulin Rouge - It could be so amazing, but the utter laziness of it all just left me stunned.
My Brilliant Friend - The National - Those puppets...oh the puppets...something I will NEVER forget as long as I live...
Hello Dolly - Broadway - Obnoxious leading lady playing an obnoxious character in an obnoxious musical surrounded by obnoxious audience members hysterically over reacting to the utter mediocrity of it all. The whole thing was embarrassing beyond human comprehension.
War Paint - Broadway - 2 'legends' trying to out scream each other for 2 hours. I stayed on to hear some song everyone was losing their **** over, I shouldn't have bothered.
Fun Home - Broadway - I wouldn't even know where to start with this one.
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Post by bordeaux on Jul 13, 2023 11:24:04 GMT
I've left five times in 35 years of theatre-going, probably over 1500 shows. Gogol's Government Inspector at the Tricycle in the early 90s with Sylvester McCoy - I didn't realise quite how allergic I was to McCoy till the play started. A terrible double-bill of Mike Leigh plays at Stratford East also in the early 90s entitled It's a Great Big Shame. I usually love Leigh's work for cinema and theatre but this was tedious in the extreme. 1953, Craig Raine's adaptation of Racine's Andromaque, a rare misfire for the Almeida in the 90s directed by Patrick Marber with a very good cast, I seem to remember; certainly Emma Fielding was in it. Stephen Jeffreys' The Libertine at the Royal Court one New Year's Eve. One this century: Mike Bartlett's Earthquakes in London, NT production on tour at Bath Theatre Royal about a decade ago; can't remember why - did I just feel I was being preached at?
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Post by Dave B on Jul 13, 2023 11:25:52 GMT
Just the once for me in what must be coming up on 1000 shows, Baghdaddy at the Royal Court very recently. In hindsight and following some discussion in a thread here, I regret it and so it'll have to be really really awful for the next interval leaving as a second half might change things up.
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Post by londonpostie on Jul 14, 2023 12:38:49 GMT
I didn't though have done more this year, probably due to booking later in the evening when my judgement is sometimes blunted. Some that I left at the interval for just not been right for me inc. The Secret Life of Bees (US, trite, unsubtle, mess), The Unfriend (different humour), ENO's Yeoman of the Guard (ditto) and - what was I thinking - To Kill a Mockingbird, which I convinced myself about on the tube ride in (Lee + Sorkin, in a middle-class liberal double helping of half-witted, over-written, smug, melodramatic sentimentality). A bit like the least obnoxious parts of The West Wing
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Post by ellosey on Nov 29, 2023 9:10:09 GMT
It’s never something I’ve done, even when I haven’t enjoyed a show. But last night I went to see a preview of a very small show at a tiny theatre, and about half of the audience walked out in the interval. It was absolutely horrid, you could see the way the actors came out from backstage and realised, and who I assume was the director looked as though she was going to cry in the audience. I can understand why people may have walked out (show was good, but there was a roaring gig that started downstairs, and the show had a delayed start time, so trains were a worry) but seeing the looks on that poor team’s face, I would feel just too guilty to! What are people’s thoughts?
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Post by ladidah on Nov 29, 2023 9:17:36 GMT
It's hard when it's out of the performers control - like a noisy neighbour and a late start time. But an audience are also allowed to leave whenever they wish.
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Post by Dave B on Nov 29, 2023 9:26:31 GMT
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Post by anita on Nov 29, 2023 10:40:42 GMT
Never done it even if hated show.- Don't want to waste my money.
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Post by amyja89 on Nov 29, 2023 10:41:59 GMT
Never done it, usually because I feel like I have to justify the money I've spent, but there have been times I was tempted!
Off the top of my head:
- Touring production of Sound of Music with Connie Fisher, way after her voice had started to go. - Viva Forever - A couple of lesser quality Rocky Horror Show tour productions where the crowds were slightly too drunk to be on the right side of appropriate participation! - Mary Poppins on Broadway circa 2009.
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Post by ceebee on Nov 29, 2023 11:56:13 GMT
Yes - I left "The Witches" last night at the interval having seen a very clunky first preview. I wanted to give it a second chance but was bored senseless. Only redeeming factor was some of the humour, but not enough to keep me for the second half. I also left "Wicked" at the interval as I found it abysmal, and wish I had left "Frozen" at the interval. I have never walked out of a play though - probably because I've not yet seen something bad enough to warrant it.
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Post by BurlyBeaR on Nov 29, 2023 12:09:07 GMT
Merged
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Post by n1david on Nov 29, 2023 16:31:17 GMT
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