I mentioned here the other day that when I went to see Dick Van Dyke in The Music Man at the Pantages Theater, the sound was kind of wonky. Some years later but still before they'd done a full upgrade, I took a lady to the Pantages to see Herschel Bernardi star in a touring company of Fiddler on the Roof. We sat in the first row of the balcony where you could hear, as we Jews say, bupkiss.
My friend kept whispering to me and asking, "What did he say?" and since I knew the show pretty well — not because I could hear what they were saying that night — I could whisper back and tell her. As the show progressed though, the people on either side of us and behind us were leaning in to hear my whispers and I started speaking louder as I "translated" the unintelligible muttering from the stage into audible dialogue for all of my date and those around us. That was how the Pantages was then.
This has happened to me often in my theatergoing. I remember seeing Tony Randall and Jack Klugman doing The Odd Couple (the original play) at the old Shubert Theater in Century City. Couldn't understand half of what they said. I ended up whispering line after line to my date. The same thing happened when I took my friend Carolyn to see Patti LuPone doing Gypsy at the St. James Theater in New York. In that case, half the problem seemed to be Ms. LuPone mumbling many of her lines but we also couldn't understand some of the other actors.
I don't know why this is allowed to happen, especially as ticket prices climb and climb.
Obviously, it was not true for everyone in the theater at the performances where we couldn't hear. But it was true for the folks in our section and for Gypsy, we were on the center aisle of the fifth row. From there, we should have been able to make out every word if they'd turned off the sound system.
I do not blame the actors. I may not even be blaming the construction of the theaters, some of which were built back in the days when the performers went unamplified. I just think the managements of theaters need to do a better job of checking for "pockets" in their buildings where the sound just plain is not as good as it should be.