Like many New Yorkers, we love movies and plays. These days, however, when the price, even for a discount theater ticket, often soars into three figures, before springing for a ticket, we find ourselves forced to factor in not just the cost, but one of our major New York Pet Peeves.
You can count on it happening whether you’ve paid nearly $11 for a senior movie ticket or for a $111 or more discount ticket to see a play. Not once, and clearly not by accident, but repeatedly, throughout the two- to- three- hour-“entertainment” for which you’ve paid. You take your seat. You stash your coat behind you, put your water in the plastic holder or on your lap, also place your purse (if you’re a woman) on your lap, your tote on the floor. Thankful that a giant or giantess is not seated right in front of you, you settle back in your seat as the lights go down. But just as the first preview flashes on the screen you feel a jolt. A jarring KICK! Once again you’ve been kicked by the person seated behind you.A mistake, you think hopefully. Someone just getting settled. Then BAM! BAM!! Two more jolts rattle the back of your seat. It’s happened again. No accident – a deliberate assault by an assailant who can’t sit still.
Fifteen minutes into the previews, you’re so focused on how soon the next kick will be aimed your way, you’ve lost track of what’s on screen or stage.
Some two hours later, battered from this endless torture, you settle back in your seat again. Finally you can take pleasure in watching, unmolested, as the credits roll on the screen, or the actors take their bows on the stage.
If you can see them, because of course, most of the audience is leaving now. As they stand in front of the screen or stage, taking forever to put on their coats and gather up their paraphernalia, they’re reading some of the credits or applauding the actors themselves, while blocking your view!
A night on the town at the movies or a play used to be our idea of New York bliss. Lately, though, we’ve begun to yearn for the day when we can have our own home screening room with one of those 70-to 103- inch flat screens for private viewing. If only the cost didn’t include springing for a whole new New York apartment large enough to house such a gigantic TV!
