The Shining City on Oxygen

The Shining City and the Respirator.

The Shining City
by Conor McPherson
Directed by Robert Falls
BU Theatre - Mainstage, Huntington Avenue, Boston,MA
March 7 - April 6, 2008
Running time 1 hr 30 min, no intermission

We had terrific seats. First row, mezzanine. Smack in the center of the row.

Before curtain time, my companion tugged at my sleeve. “Look, aren’t they adorable. That’s the happilyeverafter relationship I want,” she said, The woman to her right was holding her elderly man’s hand, perhaps as she did the first time they’d witnessed a play together fifty years ago.

Lights dimmed, the house quieted to a religious silence. Lights came up for the first scene of “The Shining City”, a quiet tableau showing a therapist arranging his office before a patient’s visit.

Pffffttt…pfffftt.

What was that? A sound from my right, then stillness for several seconds. A buzzer rings in the therapist’s office. He scrambles to put away an item on his desk.
Pffffttt…pfffftt from our right again.

The patient arrives up the stairs in a comically nervous entry scene.
Pffffttt…pfffftt. Like clockwork every several seconds.

Good Jaysus. Could this be what I think it could be?
Pffffttt…pfffftt.

Omigod.
Yes.
It is.

The man three seats to my right was using an oxygen tank. Loud pfffttting oxygen. And assuming the man was not going to die somewhere in scene one, the pfffftting was going to last the entire play. A play, I might add, in which there were zillions of pregnant pauses as, remember, this is taking place for the most part in a therapist’s office. And, you guessed it. No intermissions. Ninety minutes.

Pffffttt…pfffftt.

My companion’s initial delight in ideal mature matrimonial bliss was disappearing faster than ice from the Arctic pack.

“We paid $70.00 apiece for THIS?” she whispered in dismay.

Pffffttt…pfffftt.

We’ve all had experience with coughers, candy wrapper crinklers, cell phone boors, digital watch beepers, and the occasional snorer. But an oxygen tank?

How do you politely turn to a playgoer and whisper, "Say, would you mind turning off your life support for an hour or so while I and the rest of the people in your audio range can enjoy the play without that disconcerting Pffffttt pffffttting every few seconds?"

Righteous indignation was colliding fiercely with my customary tendency toward compassion. Indignation was in the lead. This was not one of my shining moments.

About forty-five minutes into the play, at the third of the five scene changes in which the lights dim for actors to scurry about to change scenery, we abandoned ship.

We scooped up our belongings and headed to the $25.00 seats in the nosebleed section of the Huntington Theater. The high five we gave each other after this guerilla move may have appeared unseemly to other patrons but never mind. The stage from there was like looking into a dollhouse but, ahhhhhhh, no more Pffffttt…pfffftting.

So here we are at the crux of the matter in our age of PC and everyone has the right to do what they please as long as it does not break the law. Rights can be defined by law but where is responsibility defined?

The man certainly had a right to be seated for the play. Did he have an obligation to forewarn his seatmates of the sound his oxygen canister emitted? Were he or his wife so inured of its sound that they didn’t hear it? Should he have asked the theater to place him where the sound would not disconcert his neighbors? Did I have an obligation to approach the couple after the play and tell them why we moved away in the middle of it?

Hindsight is always 20/20. I wish I had talked it out with them after the play. I don’t wish that they shut themselves off from culture or the community that produces it but engaging them about my experience of being jolted from the flow of the play by the sound of the oxygen tank while sitting next to them could have opened some avenues of solution.

I hope to be going to plays for years to come and lord knows what kind of medical gadgets I might need to do that. When I walk away from a performance, I want people to look at me with admiration for staying connected with the world, not wishing I’d stayed at home with a noisy machine that allows me to live.

Comments

[Dick]

Hi Paul,
I really enjoyed this piece!  Thanks for the laughs and the things to think about, particularly since I just became a card carrying MediSeniorGuy!

[Geoff]

That was funny! Not for you, but for us readers......
PS - Pffffffttttt, pfffffftttt.

[Carolyn]

I love this discussion. The oxygen tank sound is really maddening. I am amazed you lasted so long.
I think it needs to be worked out with the theater not the patron. It makes my skin crawl thinking of you there. I hear it in church. Just like oversize text hymnals and auditory aids, maybe the play/theater needs a place, like a crying room in church for mothers, where you can hear and see, but the "babies" screams are not heard.