No Glass - No Class

Throughout March and April I have been fortunate to attend a large number of live performances including numerous acts as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival but also international touring acrobatic and theatre groups. The performance venues have ranged from spaces that appear to be converted storage cupboard in a pub attic to some of Melbourne’s grandest theatres. All of them with liquor licences that allow people to consume alcohol in the performance space.

The cheaper end of the venue market allow punters to take any beverage into the theatre area in glass (bottles and glassware) yet the expensive up market venues only allow plastic.

Ironically it is the audiences in the former venues that are most likely to use the vessel as a weapon and occasionally a performance that might illicit the launching of missiles by its audience out of sheer boredom.

Why do the fancier theatres not trust their patrons with glassware?

Even more confusing is that the drinks when purchased from the in-venue bar are served in glass vessels, because it is a classy establishment. Only to walk across the aisle and be stopped by a vigilant attendant who demands that the drink be in a plastic container before entering the actual seating area. Patrons then have to either return to the very same bar line up again waiting to be served by the very same bar tender who then pours the exact same drink out of the glass container into a plastic one. Worse are the venues where the door attendant merely hands a plastic cup at the door and requires then to transfer the contents themselves before the glass container is whisked away.

Not classy.

What is also not classy is how cheap the plastic ware provided to patron. The general admission bar at the MCG on boxing day serves its light beer in better plastic cups than this.

A waste of time and a bigger waste of money.

Purchase decent plastic ware (if we cannot be trusted to go all Wayne Carey on the person sitting next to us) so it still looks half decent. Then it will be only one glass required per purchase – first cost saving – and there will be no need for an attendant at the door to treat the adults like children who are not allowed to touch the big people things – second saving.

If we buy a snack from the bar before the show or during interval will the door attendant also cut it up into bite size pieces?

That would be classy.