Is the Theatre Really Dead? (The audience is, from the necks up)

People who spend $100 and $200 for a good seat at the theater...are ENTITLED to snap photos, jabber to their friends or to the people on stage, slobber food, and even throw up in the aisle.

Enough people believe it to make going to Broadway a risky experience. The most successful and notorious show on the boards now is "The Book of Mormon." It was written by the same team that created the annoying cult cartoon hit "South Park." (It's the show where kids are depicted as inert round blobs, and somebody is always shouting "They Killed Kenny." Har har. Why, they are almost as hilarious as the yellow-faced Simpsons).

Tourist assholes who love "South Park" buy tickets, get loaded, and then barge into their seats, rowdy as football hooligans. They sneak more drinks or buy some at intermission and the bathroom or even a back aisle gets a splash of puke. How charming.

Meanwhile as divas such as Patti Lupone have found out, even older audiences are prone to talk on the phone, snap pictures, and be abominably rude, to the point where the star has to step out of character and lecture the miscreants.

At one time there were ushers around, but like the ones who were once in movie houses, they either have no power, or are too frightened to try and deal with self-entitled loudmouths.

Which brings me to today's POST, where some dyke who does most of their reviews (a fag does the others) bitched about the crowd attending a one-off Whoopi Goldberg performance:

Going to the theater was bad enough when there'd be a smelly jerk next to you, a big headed bozo in front of you, some clown kicking the back of your seat, or some mouth-breather wheezing in your ear. Now you can add the rest of the boors who somehow insist on coming to a show while having more fun disrupting it and taking souvenir photos and ad-libbing to their friends.

An actress-friend dragged me to the theater one night, since she was a Broadway star herself and still has nostalgia for it. She wasn't so amused after the show was over. She told me the fag sitting next to her (typical homo idiot with stubble, wearing a tight T-SHIRT, and his nostril in permanent flare) spent the entire show not only chewing gum but pulling it out of his mouth in long strands and staring at it and tucking it back in.

It seems like it's up to fellow audience members to act like ushers and say "Shhh," and "behave yourself." But you do that you risk getting attacked. Or, at the very least, being shouted down with: "I bought a ticket and I'm ENTITLED TO DO WHAT I WANT!"