I had earlier purchased seats for my family and my parents friends from Alor Star and didn’t know I was going to inherit really good seats on the opening night and Friday night. So I had to give up my expensive seats for the first night but never mind, at least I watched it with my parents.
What shrouded the play for me was this lady (my parents friend) C, who requested for 1 ticket a week after I purchased our seats. Of course I could not get the same seatings as ours but got hers just one seat diagonally behind our row. The night before, C kept whining about how afraid she was of getting lost, insisting we all switch our phones on after the event in case she gets separated from the rest of us. I ignored her and just told her curtly that the seat wasn’t too far off and she completely ignored me.
So last night, she still kept on about getting lost even as we were approaching the doors to enter and my mum, bless her, opened her mouth:
“Dad, maybe you’d like to take her seat instead?”
“Oh, would you really? Thank you!”
You can probably guess I wasn't jumping over the moon with my Mum. Dad drove them down and housed all of them in the PJ house as guests. I paid for the tickets as a treat to my parents and it was MY prerogative to give the ticket away if I wanted to. And SHE was the one who booked the tickets late!
Mum then tried to retract her words but of course the damage was done. In the end, Jan offered to sit alone and as she stood up to give up her seat to Dad, C said, “Oh look! Your daughter is so nice and thoughtful”. If we were in NZ where the slightest sounds are audible, you would have heard my teeth grinding.
So that set my mood for the show. Then when the curtains went up, this grandmother sitting beside me started to ask her two companions (daughters or granddaughters I didn’t bother to check) about what was happening. They proceeded to give her a commentary in Cantonese. “Oh! Hey tei hai lap sap yan ah?” (referring to the flower girls at the start). I glared at them but elicited no response until I shushed them. It continued off and on throughout the entire show.
Then one of the companions decided to make the show a sing-along. Maybe she attended the recent The Sound of Music Sing-Along but she must have gotten the dates and show wrong. After several bars, she stopped, thank God. But this happened to several songs and also provided script prompting.
The good thing was that people actually switched off their phones (until after the intermission, at least!). And there was at least one guy who gave a standing ovation. There were more who gave a leaving ovation. I wonder if I should give up watching anything here in
1 comment:
That sounds completely horrid. All those people would be ushered out of a theater and have their tickets refunded.
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