Front of House: Observations from a Decade on the Aisle by Denise Reich Read Free Book Online Page A

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    On one memorable night, when I was working the mezzanine at Phantom with my friend Sheila, a woman stomped up the staircase. She was roughly hauling a teenage boy behind her. The boy was in full-blown hysterics; he was frantically flailing, crying, and struggling to get away. As the woman dragged him up the stairs by one arm, he kicked his feet, pulled backward and screamed.
    Sheila jumped right into the fray: “Stop that right now!” There wasn’t any time to be gracious about it; we were dealing with an emergency. The woman was being downright horrible to her son, and in the process she was endangering every single person on the staircase. If either she or the boy had fallen backward during their struggle, they would have tumbled down the steps and severely injured themselves or others.
    Even though the woman immediately stopped yanking the boy’s arm when Sheila told her to stop, the scene was still horrific. The boy sobbed, the mother yelled, and the father and another child stood ineffectively to the side and stayed out of it.
    It turned out that the kid was absolutely terrified of heights and didn’t want to go to his seat in the mezzanine. The mother was trying to force him into it. She thought he was faking his terror so he could avoid seeing the show. Sheila and I disagreed. The boy was shaking, crying, and having a full-on panic attack. He kept spluttering, “You knew I couldn’t do this. You knew!” which brought that point home even more.
    We sent the father off to speak to the house manager, and two places downstairs were located for the boy and his dad. The mother and the other sibling were sent up to their original seats in the back of the mezzanine. I was honestly glad that the boy got away from that dreadful woman for at least a few hours.
    It certainly wasn’t the only time we dealt with intense acrophobia at the theater. In another instance at Phantom, a woman climbed all the way to her seat in row L — that’s the very top of the mezzanine — without incident. Unfortunately, she then looked back toward the stage, realized how far up she was, and completely melted down. She was so overwhelmed and terrified that she cowered behind the last row of seats and cried. It took several ushers walking in front of her, behind her and beside her to coax her back down to the mezzanine landing so she could be relocated. She crawled down the stairs on her hands and knees, sobbing.
    Why would you buy a mezzanine ticket if you were afraid of heights? I give people the benefit of the doubt on this one. Price is an issue. Broadway tickets have become horrifyingly expensive, and if the only affordable section happens to be the balcony or rear mezzanine, that’s where you go. If a show is hot and tickets are hard to come by, those might be the only sections available. I also really think that sometimes when customers buy their tickets, they just don’t realize how far up they’re going to be. When you hear that you’re in the eighth row it sounds all right, until you get to the theater and realize that the eighth row is up a sharp incline.
    It doesn’t help that the seating configurations and architecture at every theater differ, too. That eighth row might be feasible at one theater and completely frightening at another. A positive experience at one show doesn’t indicate what you’re in for at another house. Some upper levels, like the mezzanine at the Winter Garden Theatre, are very gently raked. I don’t recall ever hearing a single complaint about the mezzanine height at the Winter Garden. Other mezzanines and balconies are so steep that they resemble the Hillary Step on Mount Everest.
    In particular, the balconies at some of the oldest theaters can be really, really scary. At a few places, like the Lyceum, I honestly felt as though I were walking up and down a ladder when I traversed the balcony. It was really that steep, and even though I had no fear of heights, it made me dizzy. I hated late