No Standing O By Default

I attended the community theater performance of the The Man of La Mancha recently. The audience lept to its feet and gave the cast a standing O. I didn't think the production was good high school work, but I got to my feet along with everyone else. Mob psychology? Cliché? Cheapened taste? Philistinism? Pity? If this is (fair & balanced) candor, so be it.

[x NYTimes]
The Tyranny of the Standing Ovation
By JESSE McKINLEY

A few weeks back, just after "Taboo" opened to harsh reviews, lackluster ticket sales and rumors of its imminent demise, a press representative for Rosie O'Donnell, the show's producer, proudly announced that the production was a success.

The proof? "We've played 21 performances," the press rep said. "And have received 21 standing ovations."

Well, not to be a Grinch, but that and two bucks would get Ms. O'Donnell on the subway. Go to nearly any Broadway house, any night, and you can catch a crowd jumping up for the curtain call like politicians at a State of the Union address. And just as in politics, the intensity of the ovation doesn't necessarily reflect the quality of the performance.

The phenomenon has become so exaggerated, in fact, that audiences now rise to their feet for even the very least successful shows. Recent Broadway flops like "Jackie Mason's Laughing Room Only," which closed in less than two weeks, "The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All," which closed on opening night, and "Bobbi Boland," which closed in previews, all received standing ovations.

This sort of effusive praise can also be witnessed far from Broadway. Opera fans have never shied away from huzzahs (not to mention boos), but lately even classical music crowds have been getting in on the act — and out of their seats. Modern dance and ballet fans might be a tad more discerning, but they regularly rise up when the curtain falls. Even British audiences, who used to insist that they "only stand for the Queen," have been seen leaping to their feet on the West End like junior high school drama students on a class trip to "Cats."

"It's gotten totally out of hand," said Chita Rivera, the 70-year-old phenom who made her Broadway debut in 1955, when she sweated out curtain call after curtain call without ever seeing the audience rise. "It's become a bit of audience participation. What does it mean anymore?"

Liz Smith, the syndicated columnist who has seen a few shows in her day, agrees. "Now the standing ovation is de rigueur," she said. "They would give a standing ovation to `Moose Murders' if they could revive it," she added, referring to the infamous 1983 Broadway flop, which — just for the record — should never, ever be revived.

Most Broadway veterans trace the change to the steep rise, over the last decade or so, in the cost of a ticket. "I guess the audience just feels having paid $75 to sit down, it's their time to stand up," said the playwright Arthur Miller. "I don't mean to be a cynic but it probably all changed when the price went up."

Just how those rising prices produce rising audiences is not, however, an easy question. John Lahr, the theater critic for The New Yorker magazine, sees a complex psychological dynamic at work. "I think it's generally an attempt by the audience at self-hypnosis," he said. "They think if they go to a show and stand at the end they've had a good time. They're trying to give themselves the experience they thought they should have."

If it starts out as a kind of personal therapy, though, it quickly exerts an effect on group psychology. Kathy Duprey, who was visiting from Dallas, saw "The Phantom of the Opera" on a recent Monday, and was surprised to find herself on her feet during the curtain call. "I saw other people standing up, so I did too," she said. Her friend Samantha Hall, also from Dallas, agreed: "The emotion of the curtain call just gets to you."

Emotion, or maybe just plain old peer pressure. "Unless I'm terribly bowled over I don't want to stand," said Jonathan Sale, 30, a New York actor. "At the same time, I'm also not going to be the only one who sits down. That makes a statement." And dooms one, of course, to spend long minutes staring at a stranger's backside rather than a favorite performer.

Those who admit to being first on their feet, however, see no need for theorizing or socioeconomic speculation. They say they give standing ovations for one very simple reason: to show their appreciation. "A good audience can help a show," said Doug Friedman, 40, who in addition to seeing a lot of shows, has appeared in "Tommy" and "A Chorus Line." "A standing ovation can really make it easier to do eight shows a week."

It can also be a way to single out an exceptional performance. Kevin Kline, now appearing in "Henry IV," and Bernadette Peters, in "Gypsy," regularly get audiences to their feet, but so does Hugh Jackman, whose show, "The Boy From Oz," got mediocre reviews. "I generally stand for specific performers," said Susan Schmidt, 34, a mother of three from Westport, Conn. She most recently leaped up for one of the puppeteers at a performance of "Avenue Q," though, she later admitted, it was difficult to pinpoint which one, "when there are puppets involved."

The gesture can mean a great deal to performers — so much so that they've been known to actively solicit it. Harvey Fierstein, the star of "Hairspray," reports that through more than 550 performances, his show has received a standing ovation every single time. But years ago, during the last days of "Torch Song Trilogy," he found the audience to be a bit less forthcoming. So he learned how to coax them along: with a broad sweep of the arm he described as "Quentin Crisp doing Eva Perón." And sure enough, he said, "they would rise, rise, rise."

Producers have been known to work a few tricks, too, though in their case the motivation is less ego than business. To impress critics who see a show in previews, producers sometimes pack the house with claques and friends of the production who are all the more willing to pour it on. The likelihood of a standing ovation can even become a selling point for a show, as with "Blood Brothers," which ran on Broadway during the early 1990's, and advertised that it always got a standing ovation. There are even ways to write that imperative into the show itself. In "Mamma Mia!" for example, the Abba spectacle at the Winter Garden Theater, the last number is one for which the whole audience tends to get up and dance. "They get you up under false pretenses," Mr. Lahr said. "And you stay up."

To Mr. Lahr, it's all part of the effort to "enchant and infantalize" an audience. "Essentially, when you're talking about a standing ovation," he said, "you're talking about the spellbound."

When did all this standupmanship begin? The Greeks invented theater, of course, and the Romans — with those lions at the Colosseum — probably invented criticism. Much of the audience in Shakespeare's time stood up through the whole play because they didn't have seats in the first place. "Maybe when they really liked something," Mr. Miller said, "they sat down."

Opera fans probably began standing for exceptional performances sometime around the 17th century. But theater historians tend to agree that the standing ovation emerged in its current form on Broadway in the years after World War II. At first, it was reserved as a special honor for classic dramatic performances — Fredric March and Florence Eldridge in "Long Day's Journey Into Night" (1956), Zero Mostel in "Rhinoceros" (1961). Then in the mid-1960's, all that changed.

Ethan Mordden, a scholar of the history of the American musical, cites what he calls the Big Lady Theory to explain the shift. In classic 1950's musicals like "My Fair Lady," Mr. Mordden said, "the music for the bows is so short there's barely time for the ensemble to come running out and the leads to take their bows before the curtain comes down." But a new generation of musicals designed to showcase a diva — like "Hello, Dolly!" (produced in 1964, with Carol Channing) and "Mame" (1966, with Angela Lansbury) — saw, he says, "the advent of the staged, sung curtain call."

"The whole curtain call is built to a climax," he explained. "The ensemble bows and sings. The male leads bow, and supporting women, and everything builds and builds and builds, and then when everyone's attention is focused, the star comes out in her 37th Bob Mackie gown of the evening. By that point, you have no choice but get to your feet."

Audiences in other mediums found their own ways of showing special approval. Fans of the 19th-century ballerina Fanny Elssler were said to have boiled and eaten her slipper. More recently, jazz fans snapped their fingers and nodded, and rock 'n' roll fans lit their lighters (before they quit smoking). Fans in Eastern Europe still clap rhythmically or stomp their feet, while grateful Japanese audiences might applaud for as many as 20 curtain calls, all without leaving their seats.

In the realm of classical music, standing ovations emerged somewhat organically. Zarin Mehta, the New York Philharmonic's executive director, says that some classical pieces — say, Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto or Beethoven's Ninth Symphony — build to a climax that prompts the audience to its feet in a great rush. But it no longer takes that kind of swelling score to achieve that result. "The real, true standing ovations haven't become devalued," said Ara Guzelimian, senior director and artistic adviser of Carnegie Hall. "But we have seen more of the `I have to get out to Connecticut' type. The half — and half-hearted — standing ovation has become more common."

Still, Dr. Bertram Schaffner, a 91-year-old psychiatrist who has been attending classical music concerts in the city since the 1930's, says he finds it heartening, both as a ticket holder and as a trained professional. "I wouldn't call it mob mentality," he said. "I would say that people nowadays are simply more free about showing how they feel. People enjoy showing their pleasure."

WHATEVER the motivation, the effect of the rampant increase in standing ovations has been accompanied by — as with any other form of inflation — a decrease in value. If almost every performance receives one, then it ceases to be a meaningful compliment — and actors who don't get one cease to be able to console themselves.

Have we really reached the point in this crazy mixed-up world where even thunderous applause means nothing unless delivered from a standing position? Even actors — who never met a fan they didn't like — say that in an age when everything is worthy of the highest accolade, it's hard to tell how much an audience actually likes you. "It's a phenomenon that I think we can all do very well without," said Brian Murray, the South African-born actor currently appearing in "Beckett/Albee" Off Broadway. "If they do it automatically, they might as well not bother."

Tovah Feldshuh, who plays Golda Meir in "Golda's Balcony," on Broadway at the Helen Hayes Theater, says that now her favorite reception is the one that suggests the audience is hanging on her every word. "I like when we get what I call the stunned ovation," she said. "The other night, I counted 14 seconds before the first clap."

Her appreciation of that long pause, and her audience's self-restraint, may point the way to a less effusive, more meaningful future of dramatic feedback. But for the time being, though standing ovations may be overused, overexposed and downright cheap, most performers will still happily admit that they feel, well, awfully nice.

"Maybe it's become rather common, but I can't say it feels any worse," Mr. Fierstein said. "It's kind of like sex. Just because the guy down the street got it doesn't mean it doesn't feel good."

Copyright © 2003 The New York Times Company