By now, you’ve probably heard about Patti LuPone’s show-stopping incident on the next-to-last day of Gypsy’s Broadway run, on January 10, demanding that an audience member stop taking photographs. If you didn’t read about it in the Village Voice or Gawker or Life’s a Pitch blogs, you’ve heard the actual outburst itself: in an ironic stroke worthy of an O. Henry short story, someone in the theater managed to audio-record the moment, which is now on YouTube. 

I was at the Gypsy performance the night before this happened, and although there were no such stop-the-show scenes that evening, people were taking photos despite explicit warnings not to do so. They should have known better. The pre-show behavior announcements were so far from the usual mild warnings, so unusually severe (“The taking of photographs is prohibited by New York City law. Members of the cast can see you from the stage and will report you to the police.”) that it was obvious ahead of time this was an important concern for the cast members of this show. Perhaps standards of theater behavior have so deteriorated that people don’t know what’s real and what’s not; on the evening I went, my friend’s initial reaction was that the warning was a joke, delivered a la Mama Rose, Patti LuPone’s character in the show. I told her I thought it wasn’t any joke, and was probably specifically requested by one or more cast members.

LuPone’s anger and frustration are so intense it’s a little scary to listen to, and from a public relations point of view it’s either a brilliant move (“no publicity is bad publicity”) or a terrible one (producers shying away from hiring a brilliant but demanding performer, though reports have surfaced in the last few days that LuPone has gotten hired for a role on 30 Rock). I have to say: I’m on LuPone’s side. The contract between audience and performer has broken down in so many ways, whether it’s in a Broadway theater, concert hall, or movie theater—and sometimes drastic action is needed to fix it. A few months ago, I went to the movies, where I sat behind a row with three tweens, one of whom texted THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE MOVIE. In fact, while I was at Gypsy I sat next to two girls, one of whom furtively texted periodically throughout the show. (Could she not just PAY ATTENTION, uninterrupted by various electronic devices, for a few hours?) Last week, at one of the New York Philharmonic’s concerts of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, conductor Gustavo Dudamel had to stop between movements and wait while someone turned off a cell phone. Come on, people, how long is it going to take to figure out this simple rule: TURN OFF (or silence) THE CELL PHONE before the performance starts? Public spaces are not your living room.

I tell you what: Next time I’m riding the subway on the same car with someone misbehaving, I hope Patti’s also riding my car, because you know after she’s done with him, he will be OUT OF HERE.