A Broadway theatergoer loudly called out a group of “loud and obnoxious” women over their alleged poor etiquette towards his family during a performance of “Mamma Mia!”
The man, who did not give his name, was sitting alongside his teenage nieces and wife in the Orchestra section at the Winter Garden Theatre when he launched into his viral verbal tirade on Jan. 3.
During intermission, the man alleged that the group had been singing obnoxiously loud, clapping, laughing, and talking throughout the first act of the Catherine Johnson-created musical.
“You want to make a scene, I’m going to make a scene,” the man says while calling for security, according to the now-viral video posted by witness Derek Kahle. “Mess with my teenage. nieces again. It’s bulls–t!”
“Because these ladies and this whole section knows they’ve been loud and obnoxious. Now they want to use profanity in front of my nieces.”
The women shot back that they were singing along with the on-stage performers.
A security guard approached the fuming uncle, who apologized for his outburst but doubled down on his actions.
“I’m so sorry. Once you start messing with my teenage nieces, then I got an issue with that,” he says.
He claimed he had made “numerous requests” for the women to quiet down throughout the roughly hour-long first act, but was ignored.
The man confronted the women again during the break, but claimed that he, his wife and nieces were cursed out.
He said that he saw one of the women hovering her arms over his nieces when he stood up and walked to flag down an usher before the stunning outburst.
“Intermission hit and again asked them ‘please keep it down for the second act,’ where they replied with profanity on separate occasions directed at my nieces, directed at my wife, directed at me,” he said in a video posted to social media late Thursday night.
“That’s where I thought it had gone far enough,” he said, adding he “had enough and it had gone way too far.”
Actress Carly Sakolove, who stars as “Rosie” in the musical, said she heard the women singing during the popular number “Money, Money, Money,” calling the behavior “unreal.”
“They were asked nicely by this man, at first, to please stop,” she said. “They responded back with some expletives, not a very nice response.”
Sakolove said the women were removed for the rest of the show and the man returned to his seat “very apologetic.”
“What you don’t see is the man did begin out asking them to stop and they responded with f-bombs and other choice words,” Amy Cannella, who was sitting four seats away from the group, wrote on Kahle’s post.
Cannella said one of the women was “definitely singing” and at least two in their party were singing during the performance.
Security removed both parties from the theater before the man was allowed to return to his seat for the second act. The women were removed from the performance.
Standard orchestra seats for Saturday performances start at $187 and can soar up to $448.
Social media users were divided on whether the man’s reaction was appropriate or not.
“I actually understand this 100%. I love Broadway and I blow a lot of money on great seats so I can have a special experience. So many people have no common decency or respect when it comes to live theater anymore. I’ve had people talk a full volume behind me, sing, along to the songs, stand and dance, put their feet on the back of my chair like up where my head was it’s insane,” one person said.
“If they were singing during the performance (not the curtain call) then they deserved this. Period,” another wrote.
“Says the guy who used profanity making a scene. Even his niece is embarrased,” one person pointed out.
“All he had to do was find a security guard and explain the situation instead of acting like a maniac and causing a scene, pretty easy,” one critic said.
Some argued the ushers weren’t doing their jobs correctly and they should’ve handled the situation before the outburst.
“Mamma mia, here we go again,” another quipped.
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