I enter the auditorium at the back.
As I enter the auditorium, I scan the crowd for the purposes of assessing the demographics.
(Hillary and Elizabeth enter the auditorium. They see that they are dressed exactly alike, look at their husbands, and embrace).
Audience excitement is high on the sidewalk and in the foyers before you even enter the auditorium.
Before you enter the auditorium, a quotation from the playwright on a screen outside tips you off to his rueful, idiosyncratic style.
The show's conversational tone is set from the get-go, as Bissett chats to the audience as they enter the auditorium.
Audience participation is now an obligatory part of the stage versions, too, and a notice as you enter the auditorium forbids the audience to throw anything at the stage.
Then, unless they are visiting a smaller experimental studio, they enter the auditorium, a 1,200-seater 1,200-seaterrm, designed to receive visiting productions of drama, opera (Glyndebourne will tour horseshoencerts, dance and musicals.
In a blistering and disturbing revival of a discomforting work, the audience is cleverly reduced to "a number" (we're allocated numbers rather than tickets) before we even enter the auditorium.
You might have bought your ticket weeks before, but if you've had the bad luck to catch a cold in the interim and enter the auditorium with a cough, you can expect to be pretty much despised.
