Broadway is a sacred place
NEW YORK — Remember when you bought tickets to a Broadway show, and simply watched the performance?
Alas, Broadway theaters have adopted the movie mojo, hawking concessions once exclusive with film-going.
I have a frank confession about concessions. No, no. no. If you book seats for a Broadway show, you don’t go there to eat. Or drink. Or share snacks.
You go, supposedly, to watch, to be entertained, to witness a musical and sing your way out, or cherish a chuckle about a hilarious moment or character in a comedy, or wipe off tears if you experience a heart-tugging or impactful chicken-skin scene element in a drama.
Leave the food in your hotel room. Eat it before or after the show, please.
We need to restore the dignity and respect for theater performers. Please?
There was a time –back in the day when with shows featuring legendary and outspoken actors like Patti LuPone — would halt her show if someone was eating or chatting during her performance. Ballsy LuPone would stop her show, if faced with distractions from the stage. She would find you to shame and yes, shame on you… so you don’t mix eating and chatting during a performance.
Similarly, I recall Glen Close halting her performance and pinpointing a spectator in a Los Angeles theater, when a cell phone rang.
Popcorn, candy and munchies are not suitable for theater. Ditto, iPhones. Theaters become circuses and ballparks when viewers bring food to the table. To me, that’s a worrisome wrinkle on Broadway.
Perhaps it’s too late, to sound off the alarm, since the flood of food at Broadway shows apparently began as far back as the 2000s, when you could only buy a drink with a tight lid to sip and watch a performance. How the movement has changed. I noticed this year, folks were hauling in gigantic soft drinks, and kids were carrying drinks with sealed lids, as if there’s a drought outside. Many theaters allow wrapped candies and soft drinks and sealed wine glasses, and I haven’t seen spilled drinkables. Yet.
Remember, Broadway theater seats don’t have cupholders on the arms, which means that a careless drinker could kick and spill a filled cup left on the floor. Messy and sticky, if this happens.
The Shubert organization, which operates 17 Broadway theaters (nearly half of the show houses), used to be the strictest in the snack parade, allowing only quiet-opening candies like Kit-Kats and M&M. Times have altered operations; theater owners know concession sales will make the proverbial cash registers ring and jingle and yield more bucks to combat rising costs.
The Nederlander chain embraces the movie-style, too, with common candy, chips and popcorn, normally at shows with family and kiddie audiences.
The volume of snack sales go up with family shows like “The Lion King,” “Aladdin,” and “Lost Boys,” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and perhaps fewer sales in dramas like “Giant,” and “Death of a Salesman.”
I didn’t see it at the abridged “Harry Potter” this year, but several years ago, when “Harry Potter” was a twofer Part 1 and Part 2 – there were snack and drink menus at the theater seats. So if you ordered before intermission, the bounty of orders was delivered at the break.
The theater fare so far excludes pizza, a concerning edible since it can be messy and it smells. But some shows approve popcorn, which of course signals whiffs of buttered popcorn as the lights go down.
All theaters now have that standard plastic cup for soda and booze, and special promotions boasts logos of the show, a means to charge even more. But you get to take home a souvenir.
At a “Harry Potter” performance I was at the Lyric Theatre in early July, a boy’s phone rang, with bonus of bright lights shining, but he was quick to shut down the phone, wisely without answering. But it gave him an op to share candy with his girlfriend.
Alas, LuPone was not in the cast. That’s food for thought…