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Last night, Judi and I went with friends to see a comedy show starring Pat Cooper (whose material seems forty years out of date -- literally, "today's long-haired kids" and "twist" jokes), and Robert Klein (still funny, though he's been better). Though I've paid money to see Klein twice, the first time in 1978, we probably would not have gone this time, had the venue, the Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida, not called us up, as regular gamblers there, and offered us free tickets. We said sure and took friends celebrating their fifteenth anniversary.
The venue was only about 60% occupied, and I know that many of those, like ourselves, were attending on "free tickets" offered us by the management -- the casino essentially giving away huge blocks of seats to regular gamblers in order to avoid the embarrassment of a a totally empty arena. (This is a common occurence, I understand, in Vegas.)
The size of the audience, in contrast to the size of the venue, was indeed embarrassing. And, as we walked in, Judi and I noted that we were younger than the vast majority of the people there by at least twenty years -- sometimes, thirty. Okay, understood. Pat Cooper is 77, Klein 64 (both mentioned their ages in the course of the show); both are comedians of past generations, but both are very capable of being funny.
I'll tell you, however, what was more embarrassing: the large number of the elderly audience members, up close near the stage, and for that matter right in front of us, who left during Klein's performance. For a long time I just felt saddened by this, but understood it. Klein's style is less bombastic, less punchline-driven, than Cooper's; he's also a smarter comedian (though he too has become dated, as he's still telling Bush the Elder jokes, and never mentioned Bush the Younger at all). His rhythms are slower, his demands smarter. I can understand an audience with a short attention span losing patience with him, EVEN IF I would rather see him than Cooper any day of the week. (For one thing, he has a helluva singing voice, Broadway-quality, which he used last night to belt out a love ballad to his colonoscopy.)
What totally horrified me was the sheer number of people who, having stuck it out to the end, decided to get a jump on the crowds and leave immediately before, and DURING, what was clearly Klein's closing song, an ode to the Bronx.
I mean, there were entire rows of them, from the middle of their respective rows, who decided that easy access to the urinals, ahead of the crowd, was not worth sticking it out through those last five minutes.
And then, he finished the song? And while he bowed and the rest of the audience applauded, the first five rows of white-haired old folks, en masse, just got up and started walking.
I mean, they just wanted to go and play the slots, and were taking even this moment of less-than-enthused applause as just closing credits they could walk out on, without even acknowledging the performer at ALL.
It wasn't that he was bad. Nor was it disdain for his performance, which was good if not great. It was that these people -- all of whom had grim, put-upon expressions stamped on their faces, as if their perpetually grumpy moods had not been pierced at all, by 90 minutes of performers who, if not at the very top of their game, at least showed professionalism and skill -- could not be bothered to so much as acknowledge him. They were just too eager to get up and leave after 90 minutes in a seat. So they could pee. Or gamble. Or just stand outside and suck tobacco.
They turned their back on him, and started pushing their way to the center aisle, while he was still on stage.
I had already muttered to Judi, during the exodus of the closing ten minutes -- when Klein was clearly wrapping up -- that I felt this audience to be one of the most obnoxious I had ever seen at any live performance.
When a couple of dozen people in the first four rows just got up and started hurrying to the exit, while Klein was still bowing to the rest of us, Judi gasped in horror. "HOW RUDE!"
I certainly think so.
Folks, I have noted this before, about behavior in movie theatres, but it applies even more to behavior at live performances: the cliche about young people who do not know how to behave in a theatre may carry some weight, but it is even more true of some folks who have passed seventy. In movie theatres, they are even less capable of shutting up than pre-pubescents and teenagers. They chat away and wrinkle their candy and conduct their "who's-that-again?" conversations at full volume. At public performances like this one, they sit in the center of their row and march out, in groups of four or five, not because what they're seeing is bad, but because they're eager to move on to the next thing, and the man on stage isn't real. He's 3-D television.
They, honestly, suck, and they should be ashamed of themselves.
November 2006
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