I’ve really been enjoying my season tickets to the Pantages. I’ve still got one more show to go there, but since I didn’t renew my tickets I know that I won’t be seeing as many musicals as I have in the past year. I’m hoping that even without season tickets, I’ll still get tickets to one or two shows in the next season.
And I’m also trying to get to more theaters than just the Pantages. So when I saw that Matilda the Musical was going to be at the Ahmanson in downtown LA, I knew I wanted to see it again. I loved seeing it in New York last year and I was curious to see how the touring show would differ from the Broadway show.
The run of Matilda is coming up to a close so I was worried that I wouldn’t get a chance to see it again (I’m not bold enough yet to go to a musical alone but I’m working on it). I got an email that they were doing a promo for 4 balcony seats for $99. So I posted it on Facebook and my friend Erin said that she’d love to come with me!
Erin thought her daughter would love the show and then also invited one of her daughter’s friends, so that was a group of 4. I bought the tickets online and managed to find some pretty centered seats in the middle of the balcony.
We went to the show this past Tuesday (while I was working on getting over my cold). Sadly, Erin’s daughter’s friend ended up having a fever and couldn’t come to the show. We couldn’t find someone to come with us at the last-minute, so we were just a group of 3.
Our seats were pretty much at the top of the theater (there’s the orchestra level, then the mezzanine, then the balcony). But since the seats were similar to stadium seating, we had a pretty great view of the stage.
The show was just as great as I remembered it from New York! And it was so impressive how much they were able to do unchanged from the Broadway show. I really thought more of the sets would be changed (and the sets were one of my favorite things in the show), but it was pretty close to what they did in New York.
While the show was great, some of the audience was pretty horrendous. There were 3 people in front of us who spent a good majority of the first half of the show on their phones. Erin had asked one of them if they could put their phone away, but he ignored her. I don’t know if they were in a group together or not, but they all were doing the same thing. They were constantly texting, checking Facebook, or commenting on Instagram. One person was also taking photos, but that was actually less annoying because the screen wasn’t as bright.
At intermission, Erin asked again if they could please not use their phones during the show. One of them said that it was business and he had to take care of it. That’s just ridiculous to me! If you can’t go an hour without checking your phone, maybe you shouldn’t go to a show. Or if you do, sit in the back corner so you can turn away from everyone. Or maybe watch from the lobby.
Erin decided enough was enough and went to go find an usher. Then she came back to get me and her daughter and said that the usher was moving us to new seats. Sadly, their policy isn’t to talk to the people breaking the theater rules because of fear of confrontation. But at least we were getting out of that situation so we could enjoy the second half of the show.
Funny enough, a few days after this happened to us, there was an article about Patti LuPone taking away an audience member’s phone because they were texting during a show. I wish she was in the audience with us!
The usher moved us to the last row of the mezzanine. So we were a bit farther back, but not nearly as high up.
The second half was much better since we didn’t have the glaring cell phone screens right in front of us. The only issue was since the show was so late, Erin’s daughter was getting pretty sleepy at the end (it was way past her bedtime).
Erin and her daughter loved the show and we had a great girls night out! I’m hoping that we can go to another show together soon, but maybe we’ll make it a weekend matinée.
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