Buckle up chickadees, because today I want to tell you about the worst play your friend the blogger has ever had the misfortune to witness, and the only play I have ever had to escape from (i.e, ran down the backstairs and left at the interval).
The year was 2017. This blog was very much still in its infancy, and I was working as a severely underpaid marketing assistant for a regional arts organisation that shall remain nameless. My latest assignment (of many, pity the overworked and underpaid) was promoting a touring play based on the stories of Victorian gentleman thief.
To say this had been a difficult sell was an understatement. I’d exhausted seemingly every avenue – post, email, flyering, everything short of hiring a skywriter, and all under the harsh eye of the management, who viewed every unsold seat as a personal failing of mine. I’d put blood, sweat and tears into promoting this sodding play (largely hanging on one actor’s fleeting appearance in an ancient BBC comedy), and sales limped towards barely passable figures, selling just enough to justify not canceling the whole run.
In hindsight, that might have been the better option.
In the end, we resorted to the old chestnut of offering free seats to our colleagues to make up numbers. The take up was unenthusiastic, so I decided to take one for the team and go. I mean hey – at the end of the day, it was free theatre. That was always good, right?
Wrong. Oh good lord, so very, very wrong.
The low attendance should have been a clue. No – a warning. Somehow local audiences had known better than me, known to avoid this utter dirge like the plague.
The lowlight of a pretty lowly first act was a scene where three of the characters sat down at a rickety circular table…and remained there. Their rear ends glued to the seats, restricted by the director to remain anchored to this centre spot, gesturing and pointing in some vain attempt to create any interest. A waiter ambled onstage occasionally, possibly to create tension? Honestly, who knew at this point.
The scene was deathly, numbingly boring, and was supposed to end act one on some revelation in the plot. Instead things sort of jumbled to an end, and the house lights zipped up, jolting a dozing audience to scattered, lukewarm applause.
As the ushers marched in bearing their ice cream trays, I remained in my seat, mortified. This was – there was no other word for it – utter shit. I’d poured my time and energy into promoting this, bigged it up, believed the production company’s claims that this was quality theatre and passed it onto the audience. I was embarrassed that people had parted with their hard earned money for this.
I rose from my seat, stiff and aching. It had seemed like the longest first act in existence. At least an hour must have passed, maybe even 90 minutes…
I checked the time on my phone. Barely 40 minutes had elapsed from curtain up.
This was the final straw. I gathered up my belongings, edged out of the auditorium under the guise of visiting the toilets, and nipped down a quieter staircase I knew of from my work visits. I dashed out the front doors and was away, appalled by the crapness of the play, my misplaced hard work, and somehow my own marketing proficiency in actually persuading people, no matter how few, to come.
To this day, it remains the only play I have ever walked out of. I have no regrets about leaving, but I would like to somehow reimburse (emotionally, if not financially) my poor fellow audience members.
Have you been involved in a terrible play that wasn’t your fault? You may be entitled to compensation!
Riot in the Cheap Seats 