“The Bodyguard cut short in Manchester due to rowdy singalongs”
I think they meant “due to pissed-up twats”.
Singalongabodyguard
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
Isn’t the point of the Big Finish number in that sort of show so the audience can sing along? They must have been making a hell of a racket.
Only in certain shows, and usually after the show/during the ‘encore’/finale. This was during the actual showcase number, ‘I Will Always Love You’, the song the whole thing builds up to, the one that the lead actress has spent years training towards.
There’s a lot of it about. At the last performance of the Rocky Horror we saw, a Saturday matinée at Wimbledon last year, we watched from the front row of the balcony as a large blonde woman in a lab coat got up from her front row seat and danced for the benefir of a woman I guessed to be her girlfriend, with her back to the stage and cast, and obstructing view of the next few rows. When a front of house member of staff asked her to sit down she more or less gave her girlfriend a lap dance until the manager throw her out. Even then she protested until her girlfriend stormed out in embarrassment and she eventually followed.
I went to see The Jersey Boys for a matinee at The Palace recently. It was full of delinquent pensioners, rustling their crisps, talking loudly about Beryl’s bladder, guzzling their booze, frequently visiting the loo mid act causing whole rows to stand up, and bellowing the songs totally out of tune (no-one could match Frankie’s falsetto). One bloke was so drunk, he could barely stand and security had to carry him out.
Yes! We went to see Les mis and the people down the row from us had an ample stock of cans of beer which they popped with tiresome regularity all the way through. I think people think they are at a club or something, they are there to drink, chat and have a laaarf and occasionally look at what is going on on the stage. If it’s a singalong type show that’s great but otherwise they shouldn’t have grog in the show at all IMHO. Inevitably what goes in must come out so these are also the twats shuffling along the row to hit the loo, pop in at the bar and start again.
It’s not acceptable even at a ‘singalong-type show’ unless it’s advertised as such. Jukebox musicals are still professionally created and performed events, to be watched and enjoyed until such a time when the audience can participate and show their appreciation. It’s like a comment I read that you wouldn’t go to a restaurant and start chopping onions …
That’s what I meant, shows where singing along is part of the thing. I’ve always fancied “SingalongaSound of Music” but have never taken the plunge.
I have a poster for a show at The Lowry entitled Singalongawickerman.
🎼 And in that theatre was a seat / And in that seat there was a woman / And in that woman was much gin etc etc 🎵
It’s a cliche but there really is a view in the business that audience behaviour is significantly worse post Covid. It’s almost as if everyone got so used to watching tv at home that when they come out now they feel entitled to behave entirely as they please, with no regard to everyone else. Just last week we were a theatre to see a serious play, and the people behind us were eating out of a bag of crisps and yakking about the play on and off as if they were auditioning for Gogglebox.
The only exception to this is cinema trailers where a pithy comment from a patron can be puncture the pomposity and be very funny. Otherwise STFU.
It might on here somewhere but yesterday I heard Jason Byrne’s story of being invited by Bono to do a brief comedy set for his friend, Gavin Friday at his 60th birthday party. Bono assured him there’d be a stage and a mic set up, but there wasn’t – it was just a bar, full of people talking and drinking and laughing. At about the expected time, Bono hushed the room and introduced Jason to the partygoers and then he had to do his set right there at the bar.
He said that the interesting thing about it was this – because most of the room were performers or were involved in performing, he got immediate 100% attention. With a more random group of people, you’d get people chattering on regardless.
In a bar full of people laughing, talking, drinking and socialising, why would anyone expect a comedian to get total attention from people. It’s not the primary reason that they’re there.
The twice-monthly pub jazz gigs I go to have a lot of punters who come in little family groups and have a meal from the Thai restaurant upstairs while they watch. They are appreciative of the music but they talk to each other as they’re eating, same as they would in a restaurant or at home. If there wasn’t food on offer there would probably be less chatter but about ⅔ of them probably wouldn’t come. If you’re seated near the back, sometimes the buzz of conversation can be almost as loud as the band, so I always try to get seated at or near the front.
The BBC website on its Culture section has an article on the etiquette for theatre goers, including this great quote from Zoe in Burnley “I will be singing – but low key,”
No! You should be singing in the same key!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-65224777
Part of me is on the side of the unruly punter. These kind of shows are meant to be part of a great night and are plainly a bit karaoke. They aren’t exactly thought-provoking art. They can hardly be surprised when people turn up having had a few drinks and start singing along with the songs they know so well. I believe in Shakespeare’s day, the audience were more than willing to express themselves.
Heckling, barracking, stuff hurled at actors, stuff hurled back by actors, fisticuffs, brawling, knife fights, pocket-picking.. What fun they had!
During long runs Bat Out of a hell has dedicated singalong shows where people who want to can bellow to their little hearts’ content; at other shows it is rightly expected that the audience will sit back and let the cast do the work. The clip in this item has a couple of seconds of the amateur accompanists’ contribution to the evening’s entertainment and they sound fucking awful. I would not have been chuffed to be in hearing distance of them, which appears to be an area stretching from Deansgate to Piccadilly.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-65224777
That sounded like the soundtrack to Eraserhead.
With great respect, Tigger, that’s absolute condescending bollocks and I’m actually surprised that you would even suggest such a thing. Musicals are an art form as much as any other theatrical production, and in the same way some are of better quality than others but that doesn’t mean the incredibly hard work of everyone involved should be treated with such disdain. You wouldn’t get that kind of audience even at the smallest local am-dram production.
Hell, how many times have we all rightly condemned the appalling etiquette at concerts these days? In a theatrical context, such behaviour is infinitely worse and out of place.
I struggle to accept it as a musical. It’s a series of songs shoe-horned into a story. In this case, it’s a kind of biography of Whitney Houston, just as The Jersey Boys is about The Four Seasons. These shows are not a patch on The Sound Of Music, West Side Story, or even The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It may be theatre, dahling, but not as we know it. At best, they are a subset of the musical, the karaoke musical, and everyone joins in for karaoke.
Here’s an article from four years ago debating the same issue.
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/dec/27/singalong-or-keep-shtum-etiquette-musicals-west-end
The Bodyguard is actually an adaptation of the film which indeed starred Whitney, but is definitely not her life story.
And your comment putting Rocky Horror in with the alleged ‘serious’ musicals is the ultimate irony, as that is the one show where audience participation is a requisite.
The comments below the line on that article explain very clearly what the majority of theatregoers think.
And in the Rocky Horror gaps have evolved for the audience to play their part, they don’t sing along with every word. I met Richard O’Brien once and asked if the participation was part of the original plan but Richard said it was something that happened by itself.
There are plenty of other Whitney hits featuring in the ‘musical’ that were not in the movie. Let’s agree it’s an adaptation of the movie to fit Whitney’s life story better.
As for Rocky. Of course it’s a musical. Once the communal singing and dressing up began, they knew they were on to a winner. Wisely, they now encourage it.
If the actors, writers and venues don’t want audiences to singalong to these karaoke shows, warn people not to and don’t serve them alcohol. The latter simply won’t happen.
Many shows do request that audiences refrain from singing. The alcohol issue is endemic in any public gathering these days. And it fuels the increasingly entitled behaviour of audiences across the board post-Covid. And again, please lose the condescension about ‘karaoke’. It is nothing of the sort.
In the BBC link I posted above there are pictures of clear signs on the doors asking the audience to refrain from singing along.
I enjoy these shows (see post above about The Jersey Boys) but I can see why people want to singalong when they wouldn’t dream of it for West Side Story, say (another show I’ve seen, this time at the Exchange in 2019 with an extremely well-behaved audience).
I’ve just discovered that the correct term is ‘jukebox’ musical.
Love a bit of am dram. We have two local theatres and only last week we went to a rollicking “Treasure Island”. Arrrr.
Yeah, nah.
Not true, even at the community level.
Among the many talents of my wife, she is a very. very good singer – a solid reputation on the semi-pro circuit where we used to live. That meant I got dragg – I mean, happily went along to musicals with her, whether or not she was in them.
In not one of them did the audience start singing. They were there to appreciate the efforts on the cast, good or bad. At the community level, there is a fuck-ton of work that goes into a production, so Christ alone knows how much work there is in a professional setting.
These aren’t communal participation events. Foo Fighters at Wembley, yes; We Were Promised Jetpacks at Jammin’ Java, yes. Everyone understands that, and it’s part of the implied social contract.
Musical theatre? Unless it’s advertised as communal participation, the audience came to hear the performers sing, not you, you pissed up old cun – I’ve been told I can’t use that word as much.
(To be clear, you’re not the C in question, Tigger. You’re just wrong)
Leaving aside the AW snide: The Pussycat Dolls included someone who could actually sing? Who knew?
Again, I’m no fan of the Pussies, but they have actually trained and worked damned hard to be where they are. Aside from Melody Thornton in this show, Nicole Scherzinger is a very good singer…and I’m a poet who didn’t know it.
People just get too too pissed
I was at a Jimmy Carr show last week and there were some pissed punters heckling and trying to join in the whole concert. Carr is pretty good at putting these people down but even he was on the verge of getting them thrown out
And this was in fancy Richmond!
it’s more and more common across all types of entertainment. Go to watch Rugby at Twickenham and it’s full of way way too pissed people. It’s definitely got worse over the years, I’m not sure COVID is the cause
These days Brits are known, wherever we go in the world, for our drunken bad behaviour.
This is not a new thing, certainly not a result of Covid, although the lockdown may have exacerbated the already-existing problem.
People don’t seem able to just have a few social drinks with their friends. They end up getting wrecked.
Whenever I go to a Shakespeare production, I always join in the soliloquies with great gusto. I’m sure it adds to people’s enjoyment of the play.
I think this is what’s described as main character energy.
We’ve discussed this before, but it really is putting me off going to see anything live where people may sing along, but the talking at shows has become endemic it seems.
However…weekend before last we went to a Saturday afternoon gig at a blues club in Billericay held in a social club – the drinks were ridiculously cheap (when was the last time you bought a round for 6 people for £13?) and there was a complete ban on talking while the act is playing. Bloody perfect. The act was good too – the Guy Tortoro Band (me neither), and well worth checking out.
The Jazz Cafe used to have STFU in big letters on the wall.
…but not everyone took notice. Even when the artists pointed it out to them. It was’nt ever enforced when I was there in those days.
I don’t expect people to be silent at a standing gig but I think people who can’t/won’t stop gabbing shouldn’t be down front or in the thick of the crowd.
Talking apart from the occasional whisper at an all-seated gig is extremely bad manners. Except when food is being served and eaten at tables, when all you can realistically do is hope for the best.
My local jazz night is generally quite civilised but there are stand up tables behind the seated ones and invariably someone will be talking loudly.
I was at one of the rare concerts about 14 or 15 years ago where Van (the Man) Morrison performed Astral Weeks in full with a sh*t hot band. This was at the Madison Sq Garden Theater in New York. A guy next to me insisted on talking to his friend throughout the first couple of songs, telling him loudly all about what the song means, what key it was in and so on. I had had a couple of beers, and am a pretty big guy, I turned to him and said “I have paid $120 for a ticket to hear Van sing, not to hear you talk” I wasn’t threatening, but I wasn’t particularly friendly either. He apologised profusely and I didn’t hear another peep from him. Sometimes it’s worth asking and in the end it was a sensational gig.
*Applause*
I drove up to Edinburgh to see Leonard Cohen in 2008 thinking this would be my only chance to see him. Unfortunately some pisshead decided to singalong in the first half. I’m not a pretty big guy but after awhile I said something along the lines of “can we all join in?”. He chuntered and said he could singalong if he wanted to but luckily was far enough away not to reach me.
He was quiet after that, and never returned after the interval.