St. James Theatre — Attraction in New York

Mishandled Tickets, Zero Accountability — A Deeply Frustrating Experience at St. James Theatre

This was supposed to be a meaningful experience for my girlfriend and I – a long-anticipated afternoon at Sunset Boulevard, something we’d been looking forward to for months. Instead, it became an exhausting lesson in horrid communication and institutional indifference. We secured tickets well in advance for the 3PM performance on July 13. When the final week of the show was rescheduled, the box office took it upon themselves to move our tickets – without asking, without informing us, and without providing any confirmation. The new date they chose was one we couldn’t attend. We found out only because we thought to check. When we reached out, a box office employee called to assure us they’d fix the issue. My girlfriend was told we’d been moved back to the correct date, July 13th, no problem. But the next time she checked the tickets, days before the show (like most other humans would) she discovered we’d been moved the wrong month. The agent had mistakenly moved our tickets to June 13th, not July 13th! By then, the show we actually intended to attend was only hours away. What followed was a maddening week. My girlfriend called every day for five days straight, navigating a loop of scripted apologies and shrugged-off responsibility. Over four hours on the phone produced not one viable solution. The only offer? A refund for the original tickets, coupled with the suggestion that we re-purchase them at a now-inflated final-week price. To make matters worse, one of the customer service reps not only raised her voice and hung up on my girlfriend. Worse, and in my opinion, the rep profiled her based on her name and treated her in an incredibly racist and biased manner. So now, we’re left with no tickets, no refund, and no opportunity to see a performance we had both been excited to share. What should have been a joyful, even romantic occasion ended instead in frustration and disappointment – not because of unforeseen circumstances, but because of a series of easily preventable errors, a total lack of accountability and a biased, racist workforce. This is not a matter of entitlement – It’s a matter of basic customer care. The box office made the mistake, then failed to correct it, then penalized us for it, and treated my girlfriend as if she was a second class citizen. It shouldn’t be this difficult to attend a Broadway show. And it certainly shouldn’t be this difficult to get someone to care. Or to treat humans as humans. This was a disgusting experience. I personally do not care what show replaces Sunset Blvd, I will never step foot in that...

This review is about the current production of Sunset BLVD which really should close immediately. It opens with a confusing and sterile number that gets tiresome fast. While I get they want to imitate the black and white early films of the post silent era in their color palate the sparseness of the space is cold and does nothing to pull you into the story. I'm not saying the performers don't give it their all, they are exceptional but the production design severely handicaps the power of performances.

This production also utilizes a giant screen while may be cool for some scenes is used to tedium to the point we might as well be watching this in a cinema. Again, I get what they are going for but there are only so many mega close ups on a 20' tall screen an audience can take and most of the time it, like many elements and choreography, aren't justified in the story. It becomes a distraction.

Most irking is that for some reason this production insists on breaking the forth wall with modern elements. It is implied that Norma is ~40 (playing 17) which if she was 17 when she last performed places the story sometime around 1950 (assuming we're close to the end of the silent era and having the first talkie coming out in 1927). So why TF are they writing their screenplay on a laptop? Why does the second act begin with a non-sequitur tour of the backstage and the block around the theatre? How does this convey Joe's state of mind? It doesn't serve the story at all.

The treatment of Norma is also odd. As with most A.L. Webber shows the use of humor is usually distracting and again, undercuts the narrative of the story being told. Norma is a fragile, manipulative narcissist and it's played off for laughs at times which kills the tension being built for no justifiable reason.

This production is a horrific abomination of what is actually not a bad script or score (though Webber never learned how to give a motif meaning). Yeah, the crowed cheered like crazy and the cast deserves it but the direction, set design, obsession with fog machines, production concept all handicap them and I was almost ready to walk out at intermission and kinda wish I had, the people behind me did. I really think the people in the theatre were there to see the leads who were indeed great, but everything else is just a Starbucks cup in Game of Thrones placed their by cocaine fueled production leadership who should have been replaced but I guess the producers had already invested too much into this festival of bad ideas to abort this...

I am beyond disappointed with the St. James Theatre box office. What should have been a joyful experience seeing Sunset Blvd has turned into a frustrating, time-consuming, and ultimately heartbreaking ordeal.

I originally booked tickets for the 3PM performance on July 13 well in advance. When the final week of the show was rescheduled, the box office rebooked my tickets without my consent to a new date that didn’t work for me. No call, no email, no confirmation; just a unilateral change.

When I contacted them to fix it, someone from the box office called and assured me they were rebooking me for the correct date. Instead, they booked me for the wrong month entirely. I only discovered this mistake hours before the show when I went to download my tickets.

Since then, I’ve called every single day for five days, trying to get someone to take responsibility. I’ve spent over 4 hours on the phone with customer service, only to be told the best they can do is refund my original tickets and have me rebook online at a much higher price, since it’s now the final week of the show. Not only that, but in my final conversation, the customer service representative yelled at me and ultimately hung up on me. I am completely baffled by this interaction.

Because of their repeated errors and complete lack of follow-through, I am now left with no tickets, no refund, and no chance to see the show, a show my partner and I had been looking forward to for months. The box office has been unresponsive, unhelpful, and unwilling to take accountability for a situation entirely of their own making.

This is not how a Broadway theater should treat its patrons. The lack of professionalism and empathy is staggering. I expected better. New York...