Withering Glance: Taming uncouth audiences

Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.

CP: It's my first concert at Temple Israel's stately worship hall. Given that winter's deep-freeze is upon us, it's amazingly quiet and cough-free. We can hear the dog-whistle pianissimos of violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Then it begins.

RN: Ruh-roh.

CP: #Crinklegate.

RN: Oh, that's what you meant. You know I slavishly follow your every character on Twitter. I sincerely hope that this episode did not end in one of your violent outbursts.

CP: An elderly couple behind us decided to bring out a bag of hard candies wrapped in what sounded like the loudest, crispest, hardest-to-open cellophane yet invented by humankind. The unwrapping was both protracted and herculean.

RN: You know those scientists who just landed a spacecraft on a comet as it hurtled through the cosmos at 84,000 miles per hour? Perhaps Halls could hire them to develop a silent cough-drop wrapper.

RN: Don't just silence the smartphones, put them away. Last weekend, a woman seated in front of me at Orchestra Hall spent the bulk of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony lighting up Row 22 in iPhone glow. I was hoping that maestro Eiji Oue would enlist his baton to knock Ms. Cretin off Instagram or Cat Physics or whatever pressing business she was tending to. No such luck.

CP: Also, Earth to shutterbugs: If photos are allowed, as is sometimes the case, go ahead and turn off that setting that makes an old-fashioned ker-chuck when you snap a picture.

RN: What's with the beverages in auditoriums? The spillage is bad enough. The ice-chewers and audible slurpers are even worse.

CP: Spoken like a true temperance evangelist. Odd — I like to drink, but not inside theaters and concert halls.

RN: Here's a for-instance: Say you're in a packed, no-reserved-seats cineplex. You've arrived early enough to land perfect seats. Then latecomers show up and ask you to move a seat or two, so that they may sit next to one another. Your reaction?

RN: I move, and then I fume inside, like the good passive-aggressive Minnesotan that I am. Oh, then I take a few Junior Mints runs, requiring my new acquaintances to make room as I shuffle in front of their seats.

CP: Let them rue the day they inconvenienced you. Know what I love? Any theater that has been designed so people can pass in front without making you stand up. Outliers, such as Guthrie's proscenium theater? Not so much. That place vies with Spirit Airlines for legroom scrunchiness.

RN: I adore theaters that acknowledge we reside in a place where duvet-size winter coats are the norm. And not just a single coat check with a maddeningly long line, either. To the genius who thought to line Orchestra Hall's corridors with lockers, you have this ticket-holder's eternal gratitude.

E-mail: witheringglance@startribune.com