BOYCOTT Theatre Royal Haymarket

To Whom it May Concern,

I have been involved in professional theatre for a very long time, whether it be working the front of house, the box office, in administration, or behind the scenes as part of stage management, direction, and more recently as part of the board of directors. I can understand that sometimes the house is small, like in yesterday's performance, and you move your patrons forward with upgrades to fill in the empty spaces in the stalls, and in our case, the royal circle. And what should have been a pleasant afternoon with my group of friends became marred by what is perhaps, the worse example of customer service I have ever witnessed.

I'm fairly certain I won't be the first person talking to you about this. I heard patrons complain on our way out, and the group I sat with may also raise their voice in protest, and hopefully they follow through and stand up on behalf of the appalling 'customer service' displayed in the Royal Circle. I'm sure you'll be familiar when I summarise: a young couple came to the theatre to find two senior citizens in their seats. What at first appears to be a double sell is in fact the simple mistake of the senior citizens coming on the wrong day (and in fact believed they had exchanged their tickets for that afternoon's performance).

What I expected to happen, and what is just common theatre practice) was the front of house manager to come by, have the young couple take their seats and then kindly escort the senior citizens to another set of seats in the (obviously) empty theatre.

Instead, and in an act of courtesy, the young couple said, no harm, no foul, we'll take the other seats as these are senior citizens. No need to move them.

What we didn't expect was the front of house manager (or at least we can assume it was as he wasn't professionally dressed for the theatre) came over and as loudly as possible, berated the seniors so that they would essentially feel guilt and shame, even though they thought they had done the exchange correctly. Without coming out and saying it, he accused them of lying (continually and adamantly saying 'no you didn't' to their statement of we had exchanged our tickets). So not only did he spitefully make this (already paying) customer feel shamed about their mistake, you essentially ruined their afternoon. THEN on top of things, the young couple felt guilty for putting this sort of discomfort upon the seniors, thereby making their afternoon a little less perfect as well.

Then there was the rest of us in the peripheral who got to witness the event and quite frankly, what should have been a lovely afternoon for everyone was ruined by someone being pissy and rude and obnoxious.

I don't expect much from this theatre to do in recompense, and quite frankly, I don't want anything from you. But I do want my voice heard. Therefore, the only way I can repay you for your unprofessional and lack of respect to the patrons of your theatre yesterday afternoon, I'm cc'ing every single person I know who would have seen Sweet Charity, I'm cc'ing every single theatre professional I know in this city and world wide about this classic example of unprofessionalism, and seeing as I have a blog and Facebook page, I'll be posting it there too.

So thank you for ruining what would have been an extremely delightful afternoon for the people of the Royal Circle, and I hope you take pride in shaming the senior citizens who were at the epicentre of this situation.

Giovanna Schipani