Absolutely. But by the time the ovation comes, that ship has sailed. If the audience hasn’t been laughing at the funny bits and sobbing at the sad bits and otherwise engaging in all those ephemeral, difficult to describe ways for the duration of the show - then standing while you provide a polite clap at the end doesn’t make up for it. That’s the kind of ovation I’ve found just utterly humiliating when I was a performer.
I’ve never been in a show that we couldn’t tell onstage if it was “working” by the end of the first scene. Occasionally, you can come back from that and warm the audience up, but it’s rare. Usually the scene is set, as it were, and if a show isn’t doing it for you by intermission, it will not become your cup of tea in Act II.
Maybe it should be. I do have sympathy for this idea. But it’s clearly the case that society has decided that the threshold for a SO has dropped. So be it. Fighting this is probably a losing battle at this point.
Seriously? Hoi moi. I don’t know how “it bacame established”, but that was certainly how it worked when I was younger, and you can probably tell by the other responses that I’m not alone in thinking that. I guess it has become so commonplace that some people think it’s just an excuse to stretch!!
I don’t like ovation inflation. I usually stay seated unless it really was a great show. But it makes me feel a little rude.
Sondheim himself has an opinion on this matter, if I may dare paraphrase, it was something about how people see so little live performance these days, and when they do, it’s really expensive. So they need somehow to reassure themselves that they’ve engaged with the performers, and the ovation is that chance to do so. They’re really applauding themselves.
I must admit I have a thrill of dread at the end of a meh show and everyone around me starts to get to their feet. Don’t these people have a gauge?
However, when a small fraction of the audience rises to applaud, and that small fraction of the audience happens to be the King, then everybody else rises to applaud too. Although I’m not sure is peer pressure would be the right description for this.
I’ve noticed this just in the past year or so. Standing ovations have become much more common and thus, I think, devalued. I give a standing O very rarely, for a really terrific performance. How long until performers will feel dissed or unappreciated if they don’t get a standing O?
A standing O is de rigueur. What can we do to make an applause really stand out from it’s already bombastic form? Maybe at the end of the performance wave lit sparklers over one’s head while doing dog barks …WOOT WOOT WOOT WOOT!
I’m going to sound ancient, I guess, but I remember when standing ovations were rare. An excellent performance would get sustained, enthusiastic applause; a superb performance would get even longer enthusiastic applause. A standing ovation was reserved for the once-in-a-lifetime flawless no-hitter of a performance of a superlative work. Now I guess if you’re fortunate enough to go to a once-in-a-lifetime flawless performance, you have no way to express that.
I’ve been watching YouTube videos of classical music performed by some of the top orchestras (Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, etc) and noticed that at the end of a great performance of, for example, a Beethoven symphony, the audience remains seated. They applaud enthusiastically, of course, for a good long while. But there’s no standing ovation. Perhaps it’s the difference between Americans and Europeans?
I went to a theater downtown with friends last Christmas. The play was okay, amusing, but not fabulous. At the end when everyone was applauding, two people stood up to try and get a standing ovation going. No one else joined them, and they sat down again quickly. More embarrassing for them or for the people on stage?
Minus five years. At least. Just about every performance I go to - theater, dance, music - ends with a standing ovation, and this has been true for a long time.
Maybe audiences around here are a bit more reserved. A performance really has to be OMFG-amazing!!! for me to give it a standing O. I’m becoming quite curmudgeonly in my refusal to get up even when many (most?) around me have already done so.
DonLogan summed it up four years ago, when this thread first started, and I don’t think there’s much more to say about this, other than that it’s increasing.
People do it because, by giving a standing ovation, they are claiming that they have the critical powers to recognize what a extraordinary performance it was. It’s self-validation for the audience.
“The money I spent on this is justified, because I am a true connoisseur of the arts, and just to show how much I am, I will even stand up at the end.”
I have season tix to the Charlotte Symphony. It’s gotten to the point that there’s not only a standing ovation at the end of every concert, but also at the end of the guest solo piece as well, regardless of how well that is performed. I guess no one knows anymore that simply sitting and applauding a lengthy time is possible. And as a result, almost EVERY guest ends up performing an encore piece. I often refuse to stand when others are; since I sit right next to the current Chairperson of the Board for the Symphony, this often engenders wry commentary.
