Emma Brockes argues that Broadway is “the last bastion of a certain kind of thinking, which is: if it hurts, it must be working”:
For many of us, going to the theater is still bound by notions leftover from school that art is occurring and we’d better knuckle down and enjoy it, or else. If it’s uncomfortable, all the better, and everything is set up to encourage this mindset: making you wait outside the theatre, no matter the weather, until the last possible moment.
Even in the West End, where the seats are as small but the tickets at least cheaper [than in New York], you’re allowed to mill in the foyer long before showtime – and then marshaling you brusquely across the threshold, past the bar where you can drop $20 for a gin and tonic and on to your seat, where, getting up to let others pass, you threaten to pitch forward into oblivion, never to return. (Unless you’re in the expensive seats, where all you suffer is the indignity of a chest or knee bump with the person you’ll be listening to breath for the next two hours.) At the end of the performance, you are chucked out a side-door into an alley by the dumpster. …
The odd thing is that these conditions persist in an age when all forms of entertainment are subject to such fierce competition. As the tech expo, CES, has been demonstrating this week, the sophistication of home entertainment is such that it is a wonder any of us ever leaves the house. Even going to the movies, at $20 a shot, looks increasingly unappealing in the face of new 4S screen technology: “four times sharper than HD,” say the releases, which Netflix among others will be filming in this year and will presumably make reality look like a shabby also-ran. In such a climate, you would think theaters would make an effort to coddle their patrons, but perhaps they know something we don’t.
The Dish 