A few words on Eh-Tick-Ette

AKA etiquette. Meaning behavior.

That you shouldn't talk during a performance seems to be common sense...yet people do it. It's not the flicks. People around you can hear.

Another problem is they make those pre curtain announcements about turning off cell phones too blamed folksy. This one, people are pretty good about following. I can only recall a couple of instances where someone's phone went off in the middle of a performance. The offenders were justifiably mortified.

They frequently omit the absolute most important directive: noisy, crinkly, candy or cough drop wrappers. It shouldn't be a choice. The announcement should not be, "And if you want to enjoy a hard candy or lozenge, why not take a moment to unwrap it now." (chuckle, chuckle). Ix-nay. It should be, "Do not, under any circumstances open a lozenge or candy wrapper DURING any portion of the play you happen to be seeing or you will be evicted from the theater, because it sounds like this...

(insert sound of awful crinkly static)

...and makes your fellow theatergoers feel like this

(insert sound of rampaging elephants)."

In fact, I think I know exactly why so many theaters don't bother with pre-curtain wrapper announcements: because their administrators know that there are a finite number of people idiotic enough to unwrap a piece of candy while someone is speaking on stage in a quiet theater, and those people only ATTEND the theater when I'm present, and they can sit somewhere within my earshot.

I admit, I have issues.

I also have backup. I spoke with Joan Collins, currently on the road with the comedy "Legends!" When I asked her about what's going on in the audience while she and Linda Evans are duking it out, she replied, "Sometimes we have the coughers, the people who really should be home wiping their noses. Sometimes we have the screamers and laughers on every line. Most of the time we do get huge vociferous applause and sometimes standing ovations."

I had forgotten about the coughers. They bug me too.

Oh, and "Legends!" opens next Thursday, Jan. 18, at the Wilshire Theatre. www.Broadwayla.org.