Do You Have The Courage to Do The Broadway Bolt?

C'mon, get up and walk out of that terrible show.

I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself because scant hours ago I stood up in a packed theater with my friend Herb and did The Broadway Bolt.

We did not sneak out during intermission. There was no intermission, which was the one smart thing the producers did as legally, in a Broadway theater, you are not allowed to lock the exits. Other smart things might have been giving Brian d’Arcy James and Kelli O’Hara, the king and queen of Broadway musicals as far as Herb and I are concerned, something melodic to sing and a story with a little dramatic tension. 

Sure, I knew the show, “Days of Wine and Roses”, based on the 1962 film about two alcoholics, was probably going to be a downer, but Steven Sondheim made a career out of misery. Inability to allow anyone to get close, cheating husbands, failure to turn your enemies into meat pies that people would savor – Sondheim could work that room.

“Every day a little death/ in the parlor, in the bed,” there’s a melody you can hum leaving the theater to pick up your anti-depressants.

I knew “Wine and Roses”, which Herb and I caught in a matinee and is still in previews, was going to be hell two minutes in, when Brian D’Arcy James, as a sleazy press agent procuring women for clients, started singing dialogue.

“Aaah, Betty, we spoke. Welcome aboard. Glad you made it. You look like your voice on the phooone..”

 Unless the composer is Giuseppe Verdi, sung dialogue, for me, is a bad sign. It screams arty or, worse, Les Misérables,  and makes me twitch.  But the show was my birthday gift from Herb, which I had told him I’d love to see without doing a bit of research.

You don’t toss away an expensive and thoughtful gift, even when the giver is as miserable as you are, which I knew that Herb, being my best friend, was. You fix your eyes on the stage and let your mind drift to things you’d rather be doing: Waiting on hold for the Spectrum tech. Buying stool softener. Canceling match.com because nobody ever contacts you. Vacuuming under the bed.

Also, we were barricaded by the half dozen theatergoers in our row and the sack of money Herb had paid to get these seats. This was Broadway orchestra, baby, where you don’t get a seat with full visibility for under a hundred and twenty bucks, even in preview. My guess is that Herb has put down $130 a ducat, which is what a ticket would have been called in “Guys and Dolls”, a glorious show. A female teetotaler gets loaded for the first time in that one, just like Kelli O’Hara does in “Wine and Roses”, but when she’s high, she belts out, “If I Were a Bell”, a fantastic song.

Still, as I always say when I’m initiating a newbie into live theater exits, walking out of a show does not mean you’re wasting the money you’ve spent on the ticket. It’s choosing not to waste more of your life by sitting through something you hate.    

Sure, there are the feelings of the actors to consider.  But what about my feelings?

Shouldn’t Brian d’Arcy James, who I’ve mistakenly confused with Brian Stokes Mitchell in a magnificent “Kiss Me Kate” revival, have thought, “Gee, I don’t know. There is not one song with breakout potential in this score; this number is like singing, ‘What should I make myself for breakfast?’. I’d love a house in Provence, but I cannot in good conscience put Joyce through this.”

Shouldn’t Kelli O’Hara, so good in Lincoln Center’s “South Pacific” that I saw it three times, been thinking, “Broadway tickets are so expensive. Joyce could have a wonderful lunch at Le Bernardin for what this will cost. Prix Fixe and not including wine, but wine gives her reflux anyway.”

I try not to make my restlessness obvious when I find myself in a show I dislike. I put my watch low behind the seat in front of me when I light it up to check the time left to curtain. Sure, I would prefer something like the maps you can check on long flights, with the little plane showing how much time you have before you get to Paris. In this case, it would be an icon of me, with the amount of time before I get to Joe Allen, the theater hangout on 46^th Street. One of the things I love about Joe Allen is that they have posters of Broadway flops on the walls. The one with pride of place is “Moose Murders”, which opened and closed on the same night in 1983.

 "From now on, there will always be two groups of theatergoers in this world, those who have seen 'Moose Murders,' and those who have not,” Frank Rich, then the theater reviewer of The New York Times wrote, “…For much of Act One, this ensemble stumbles about mumbling dialogue that, as far as one can tell, is only improved by its inaudibility."

The running time of “Days of Wine and Roses” is one hour and 45 minutes. In a bravura display of restraint, I wait a full three minutes after Brian D’Arcy James sings, “You look like your voice on the phooone”, before looking at my watch.  I check it again,  after losing myself in a reverie about needing to do a dark laundry, fifteen minutes later. At 2:45, I feel I’ve served my time.

I turn to Herb and murmur the three little words essential to self-preservation wherever people gather together: “Anytime you’re ready.”

We climb over the half dozen human roadblocks slowing our exit, cackling with relief and disbelief the moment we hit the lobby. Then we hot foot it the eight blocks to Joe Allen.

“If you don’t have a poster for ‘Days of Wine and Roses’, you should get one,” Herb tells the maître d’ when we arrive.

Then I order a really hot bowl of chicken barley soup and Herb has an enormous chicken Caesar and we split the wonderful banana cream pie and when the check comes, I tell Herb it’s on me. I figure I owe him.