Hail Stones & Heart Attacks at “Arcadia” on Bway!

Last night’s venture onto the Great White Way now that the Theater Season is starting to bloom, despite the sudden plunge back into wintry temperatures, was pretty eventful, and rather dwarfed the experience of the seeing the three hour PLUS “Arcadia.”

I’ve never experienced a hail storm IN MY LIFE! Especially on Broadway in mid-town Manhattan in the theater district! It was merely raining a bit at first but soon it turned into an all-out hail storm as New Yorkers were subjected to something REALLY new ~ being pelted with these tiny little balls of ice. I.E. Hail! I couldn’t believe it! And it kept up as I missed my bus stop and had to get off and walk back three blocks, being thoroughly pelted my these tiny little pellets. Bang! Bang! Bang! It must be what being shot at feels like.

And you couldn’t duck them. Of course, one could go inside and wait til it was over, but it didn’t seem like it was EVAH going to be over, it was so intense. It was like a down pour, except it was tiny, round, hard, and solid little balls coming down! And as they accumulated they finally started getting smushed under foot by the HOARDES of Spring-time theater-goers packing the narrow Broadway side streets all rushing to their appointed play or musical.

THEN, they took their bloody time OPENING THE DOORS to the Ethel Barrymore Theater, so the crowd crowding in under the overheard marquis(fortunately there was one) was PRETTY angry as they waited and waited and waited IN THE HALE until they finally got in!

THEN in the middle of the first act of Tom Stoppard’s VERY abstruse and difficult to follow play(at best), an elderly gentleman two rows ahead of me, seemed to being having a heart attack!

The woman he was with who was later identified as his daughter, ran out  from the absolute middle of Row K, which is smack dab in the middle of the Orchestra seats of the theater, edged her way disruptively out to the aisle and then ran out of the theater, something no one ever does. So I thought it was a bathroom emergency. Or she just hated the production(with good reason). I think it was in the middle of the impossible to understand ANYway scene about algebra, yes, algrebra, and iterated algorythms, whatever THEY are.

Then I was alarmed when she returned, and had an EMS guy with her in full regalia, with what I recognized as a heart attack pack, as they say.

THEN the lights came up and the spectral voice of the house manager, I assume, announced to the actors AND the audience “Actors on stage and members of the audience we have a medical emergency.” And another EMS guy or two came in and all of the now VERY disrupted Row K had to get up and leave their seats so they could haul this man who seemed at first slumped in his seat, then completely immobile. So much so that they had great difficulty extracting him from the center of the theater.

I remember Raul Esparza, who has been on my TV show several times, was onstage in the middle of a scene, and barefoot, being the actor who had the “Oh no!” look on his face, but he smiled and immediately left as did cast mate Lia Williams.

As an entire STRETCHER was moved into the aisle right before me(I had an aisle seat, so could see everything that was happening), I heard that the man was a critic. His review, I’m guessing was “Bored to Death.”