How the Other Half Loves

While I'm an active member of Harbour Theatre I'm not going to comment on J Raynor's review - due to other commitments I've not actually seen the play so can't comment - those are his thoughts and he is entitled to them. But to judge a whole theatre company based on just one performance ("Lets just say that will be the last time I go to that theatre") is very puerile. Every theatre, every play/musical/performance will be different. There are too many variables. Each play has a different director, cast, crew, FOH and a different audience and just because you didn't like ONE show you condemn Harbour and never what to see anything there again? How can you possibly extrapolate that one experience to generalise about the theatre. Over the years I've seen my fair share of bad plays in a lot of different venues, but that doesn't stop me from going back to those theatres, because I know that companies can have good days and bad days. Sometimes what sounded like a good idea didn't quite come off in the execution. Or one of the actors was off colour and not able to give their best performance on the night. Or a CD got stuck and the sound effect was a couple of seconds late. Or the coffee was too hot/cold at interval. Or any number of things that can, and do, go wrong from time to time. And this occurs in both 'community' and 'professional' theatre. Would you condemn the whole of the West End if you saw ONE bad performance? Or even two, three? I'm not saying that we are of the calibre of the West End, but Harbour Theatre has been around for 45 years, and if we where putting on consistently bad plays then our audience (or lack of) would have let us know and we would have folded a long time ago. I hope, J Raynor, that we'll see you back at Harbour again sometime. Hopefully you'll have a better experience. Maybe the food will be better at Clancy's (BTW we have absolutely no control over that!). But if not, no worries - you can't please everyone all the time. And some people you can't please any time...