Matthew Winn

armadillo, on 22 May 2013 - 09:14 PM, said:

I saw that. I didn't think audiences were that low, but it was a tragically dreary production that fully deserved its lack of success. Its unfortunate audiences suffered so greatly that someone on rec.arts.theatre.musicals was inspired to set up the Tess Survivors Association. There was a TSA web page too, but it no longer exists. It's not even in the Internet Archive.

(In terms of numbing lack of eventfulness it was later overtaken - by a mile - by Behind The Iron Mask, from which audiences stumbled out into the daylight in shell-shocked horror, but in its day Tess was quite remarkable.)

I once turned up at a performance that was cancelled; it was The Contrast at the Cochrane. I don't know how many people had bought tickets for that night but when I went back on a more popular night the scattered audience spread itself out and managed to occupy two rows.

I was an audience of one at the cinema once, to see Tangled one Sunday morning very late in its run. The projector broke down just as the film was about to start and the projectionist had to get it working again just for me. He got his revenge by rewinding to run the entire sequence of advertising right from the beginning instead of skipping through it to get back on time.

 John_Rebus, on 10 May 2013 - 08:23 PM, said:

Putting on my "cynical" hat for a moment, on top of the many other "cynical" hats I'm already wearing...

The economics of West End theatre are unusual in that there's almost no return business: apart from a financially insignificant fraction of the audience, people see a show once and never return to that show. Most of them won't return to the West End until a year later at the earliest. That means that it's in the interests of the business to get as much money as possible in advance and let whatever happens afterwards take care of itself. What does it matter to them that your enjoyment is diminished because the food is noisy? They've already extracted every penny out of you that they're ever going to get.

Obviously there's a brake on this strategy because if too many people get upset then word gets round and business suffers, but the West End is one of those places where "I'm never coming here again!" is a meaningless threat because it's almost always true even with the most delightful of experiences.

blackoutpete, on 11 May 2013 - 07:29 AM, said:

In a few thousand million years the sun will swell up and everything humanity has achieved on Earth will be reduced to isolated atoms drifting through space. In that context, everything we do is a waste of time. But from a more parochial point of view this thread has been interesting enough to run into three pages in as many days, and we always like to hear from people about their own shows.

vertigo1, on 10 May 2013 - 09:07 AM, said:

Are you aware that is it actually a criminal offence to pretend to be a consumer when promoting a product or service in which you have an interest, with a fine up to £5000 on summary conviction or a fine plus up to two years imprisonment on indictment?

It's not a problem when someone parodies someone else's advertising. It is a problem when they draw attention to it without owning up to what they're doing. Fortunately for everyone involved it's all in the open now so the matter has become a non-issue, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a problem in the first place.