I just got back from a musical performed in a very small off-Broadway theater. One of my fellow playgoers, an older man seated one row ahead of me, was drunk–very, very happily so. He talked through most of the songs, then clapped loudly (and prematurely) when they were over, whooping and hollering for good measure. On more than one occasion he sang along with the performers, some of whom who were no more than fifteen feet from his aisle seat.
He was, in short, a nuisance and an embarrassment, and a half-dozen of his neighbors tried without success to shut him up. So did the director of the show, an exceedingly nice woman who tiptoed down the aisle midway through the second act and shushed him, to no avail whatsoever.
Needless to say, I would have been delighted to do to this man what I was momentarily tempted to do to the talkative woman with whom I shared a tram at Storm King Art Center this summer. (Alas, I neglected to bring the necessary equipment to the theater.) Yet I found the haughty dudgeon of the playgoers who chatted about the poor fellow at intermission to be slightly out of keeping with his actual behavior. Of course he was being rude–spectacularly so–but there was something innocent about his rudeness, exasperating though it was, if only because he was so obviously enjoying the show. Once it became apparent that nothing short of a baseball bat would silence him, I gave in to the situation and decided not to let myself get bent out of shape by it. Nor did I.
On the way home I remembered a story told by Mel Torm