Weeee! Priciest Ticket for A DOLL’S HOUSE Lands You in the Spinny Chair
- Broadway Beat
- Mar 18, 2023
- 2 min read
by Jennifer Haining. @itsraininghaining.
NEW YORK, NY. - Amy Herzog’s limited engagement of A Doll’s House announced today that their most expensive house seat is going to be Jessica Chastain’s Spinny Chair.
“For some reason, Sad Beige Broadway isn’t selling the way we thought,” noted Gregory Stillwell, Box Office Manager at The Hudson Theater who says he has loved Jessica Chastain since he saw her in Jurassic Park. “So we nixed the bummer that was our lead actress quietly baring her soul in a slow, orbiting thought experiment. We added 10 speeds to the revolve, slapped some brightly colored paint on the chair and bam! We got ourselves Broadway’s only Tilt-A-Whirl.”
Allison Brasmusin, a 23-year-old heiress who owns a whole SoHo Brownstone but thinks people “just don’t wanna work for their money anymore," purchased the first chair-y-go-round on Opening Night.
“Oh God, oh God make it stop,” noted Brasmusin in between fairly vicious bouts of projectile vomit. “Why is there no break? I think I’m dying. I am definitely dying. Someone stop this thing. Help. Help. Oh God. Help.”
Academy Award Winner Jessica Chastain, who has spoken in only whispers and melancholic air expulsions since the start of the show’s run, was more than happy to relinquish her intermission spinny-spin.
“They pay this money thinking it will make them special,” Chastain noted, dark eyes glowering at the latest audience member to ride the Broadway Scrambler. “They writhe and scream, strapped into the chair as it rips through space and time. Garish grins litter the audience faces. The bystander effect is real. In the end we all die alone and screaming and no one comes to help. That’s what their money buys them, prideful fools. Also it helps us recoup on the merch which is good.”
For the more rotationally-challenged audience members, producers briefly considered alternative attractions such as a Dunk Tank featuring various Run Crew. However, A Doll’s House is a deeply serious and beloved play which would never dare subject itself to such mockery.
Great writeup. Side note for the Broadway Beat team: between reviews, ticket guides, opening-night coverage, interviews, Tony season coverage, and the cumulative archive across Broadway / Off-Broadway / regional, the site has built a real depth of NYC theater journalism — but readers searching for "currently running plays with [actor]" or "best minimalist productions" face a wall of nav. A "Find Your Next Show" sortable landing page (filter by genre — play / musical / revival / new work + by theater + by star + by closing date + by ticket tier + by accessibility — running time / content notes) would dramatically improve repeat-reader engagement and SEO discovery. I help small arts publications build that with a copy…
The spinny chair has become a meme in NYC theater circles, but Jamie Lloyd's minimalist staging genuinely earned it — Chastain holding a single static frame for 90 minutes is the kind of physical control that revivals rarely demand of their leads anymore. I help with content for a small theater-press account on IG and use an AI image and editing tool to clean up production stills before posting (Broadway press photography is brutal mixed-light — stage warm + house cool always fights for white balance). The Doll's House stripped-back palette photographs beautifully once exposure is correct. Bookmarking for the next NYC trip.
this is a wonderfully sharp and funny piece of satire. the idea of monetizing existential dread with a spinny chair is a perfect critique of modern broadway spectacle. the quotes from the fictional box office manager and the heiress are particularly well-observed. it captures that specific tone of theatrical insider humor while making a real point about commercialization. AI Image Editor
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