Art & Music | Stage

Theater has forever been nicknamed “the fabulous invalid” for always seeming to be on its last legs yet always bouncing back, lurching forward and managing to offer the occasional extraordinary moment along the way.

Nevertheless, producers, theater owners, writers and audiences aren’t doing the state of the art any favors with their policies and behavior, so here, in Letterman-esque fashion, are 15 great ways to make Broadway virtually impossible for the average person to enjoy:

15) Please make me wait outside on a long line at 7:40pm to get in. Opening the doors earlier would just spoil me.
14) Raise the $1.50 per ticket “facilities fee” to $2.00. Oh sure, theater owners already get rent plus all the concessions, but why shouldn’t they skim a little more dough off the consumer’s back?
13) Make the seats so tight that the only way to fit is by cutting off your elbow and gluing your tush into a single buttock.
12) Find TV actors to do musicals they’re barely qualified for, even though there are brilliant, triple-threat performers waiting tables three blocks away.
11) Keep reviving George Bernard Shaw (My Fair Lady doesn’t count).
10) More Pinter.
9) Make Times Square so crowded that you can’t walk between 41st and 52nd Streets without a sherpa and a machete.
  8) New idea: A dance musical featuring the songs of Jim Croce. Dan Fogelberg? Foghat?
  7) Two words: country music.
  6) More storylines about homosexuality and gay life, because the 1980s should never end.
5) Revive Grease. Just make sure to keep a tub of cyanide punch in the lobby.
  4) The orchestra must be louder. And crank up that treble. I want tinnitus along with my souvenir CD.
  3) Since children take up a theater seat just as a grown-up would, charge them full price, no matter how old they are.
  2) Pick any movie of the last 30 years and add the words: “The Musical.”
  1) Charge $118 for an orchestra seat to, well… anything.