Throwing good shows after bad

“Don’t like a show? Let us know at intermission and we’ll give you credit towards another season production so you can bring friends!”

So reads the blurb for Pasadena Playhouse’s new “Critic Credit” policy, offered to subscribers and intended as “a way to invigorate subscription sales,” Ken Novice, the playhouse’s director of external affairs, said last week.

If you’re a subscriber who’s so disgruntled that you want to leave at intermission, the playhouse promises to give you an extra ticket to a later production -- or two if you’re part of an exiting couple.

Actually, “we wouldn’t make them leave,” Novice added. “They’re welcome to stay and watch something they’re not enjoying” and still get the extra ticket.

As of midweek, however, all this remained theoretical -- no one had asked for the Critic Credit. Might that have had something to do with the fact that neither of the plays since the inception of the policy, “Talley’s Folly” and “Dirty Blonde,” has an intermission?

Well, yes, Novice conceded, perhaps the blurbs ought to make it clear that for plays like these the offer would apply even if you approached the box office after the show.

-- Don Shirley