Browsing the local news reports recently, I spotted the following headline:
‘Woman “singing badly” removed from The Bodyguard musical’
‘A woman who sang “loudly and badly” through a performance of The Bodyguard was ejected from a theatre after she became aggressive to people who told her to shut up.’
I’m a bit disappointed over the state of humanity after reading this. It’s not even so much the fact that a group of humans at a public event apparently ganged up on one defenceless human. (If you read the article carefully, you’ll see that the people further away from the woman were apparently undisturbed by any loud singing, but could not fail to notice – and I quote – ‘the audience shouting at the woman’.
‘Sacha Gainard […] said the atmosphere at the Royal Concert Hall “felt more like a football match” than a trip to the theatre.’
It is not even the collective stupidity of the audience members next to the unfortunate singer that gets me. OK; maybe if someone were, say, literally screaming in my ear, completely out of tune, so that I couldn’t hear a thing, I can see how I might get a bit tense. (Without recordings and eyewitness accounts, however, we can’t really know how ‘loud’ the singing was.)
Yet in an ideal world, if someone were singing loudly and badly at a music event, one would hope that the people in the vicinity would have the heart to join in, and help the person out a bit. You know, boost the vocals.
No, what really got me riled up wasn’t any of that. Let me get this straight:
only ONE person singing along, loudly and badly, to The Bodyguard??…
What is wrong with people? They forked out for the expensive tickets, and none of them even had a go at the ‘I Will Always Love You’ rendition which they’d lovingly practised that morning in the shower?…
Frankly, I’d want my money back.
