Audio gift: The Phantom of the Opera - Broadway - February 7, 2023
So, last week I won the Phantom lottery and was ecstatic that after trying for months I’d won and would get one more chance to see Phantom before it closed. So I was prepared for a special evening.
What happened instead was that I was sat next to a woman, one seat down, who had decided they were going to use their phone for a majority of the duration of the show–and, the absolute worst part, talk…and at a pretty impossible to ignore volume…for a majority of the performance.
She ruined the evening completely for me. I am very conflict avoidant so I felt super uncomfortable saying anything myself. I spoke to an usher but the usher only caught her on the phone, and she didn’t put it away afterward anyway. So I spent the whole show anxious, upset, on edge, and completely unable to focus because she would not. Shut. Up. With about 20 minutes left in the show my anxiety hit a boiling point and I finally lost control and leaned over and very aggressively whispered “PLEASE STOP TALKING. I’M SORRY. PLEASE”. She had this ‘deer in the headlights’ look as if she was shocked there was something wrong with what she had been doing.
But it was too late. The show had been ruined. I couldn’t let that be my last experience. God bless my Grandma, when I told her about this she offered to pay the full price of a ticket for me to see Ted Keegan as the Phantom on April 3. So I’ll be able to erase this crappy memory and have the final time seeing the show experience that I had hoped for :)
So, I had been recording this audio and had the audio recorder placed on the arm rest of my chair as I was in the final seat in the row. Well–remember how I said the usher caught her on the phone? Well when she did, she put her hand on the arm rest and knocked my recorder onto the ground in a spot I couldn’t reach/find it. Eventually I grabbed my phone and set that to record for the remainder of the show.
As a result the audio quality is sort of in three segments, ”The Auction” through “Masquerade” sounds very nice, then right about “Why So Silent?” the recorder is knocked onto the ground and the quality drops a bit…I did some remastering/EQ work to make it better…and at the very end of the “Don Juan Rehearsal” the phone recording comes in and the sound becomes much nicer again.
And from the little bit I’ve listened to, which is not much as it causes me immense frustration, you CAN occasionally indeed hear the lovely patron a seat down who decided to spend $100s on a second row seat to use her phone, talk to her friend, and loudly sip her freakin’ sippy cup alcohol. If you ever see this–you’re an inconsiderate ass and I hope you felt like garbage once you got called out for you’re horrifically rude and selfish behavior.
Ben Crawford, Emilie Kouatchou, John Riddle, Nehal Joshi, Craig Bennett, Trista Moldovan (u/s), Maree Johnson, Carlton Moe, Polly Baird (u/s)
Broadway; February 7, 2023