As the promoters of the event MCD have to bear most of the responsibility for what happened on site on the night.

The committee recommends that:

1. MCD make restitution to those complainants who had to stand or chose to stand and did not have seats. This should be in the form of a full refund.

2. The complainants who ended up in seats which were not their original seats and were in a price tier below the one they had tickets for, should be considered for compensation. These people will be compensated the price difference incurred; e.g. people with €551.75 seats who ended up in a €270.75 seat will receive a €281 refund and people with €270.75 seats who ended up in a €193.50 seat will receive a €77.25 refund etc.

3. For the other complainants who experienced difficulties on site e.g. car parking, disruption, people standing in front of them and similar experiences, MCD should consider some form of compensation in terms of vouchers for future shows. €100 Vouchers will be the maximum amount given and they will be non-transferrable. This should only apply where it is considered that MCD had some responsibility. To land all the responsibility on MCD for the weather and traffic issues would be unfair and in our view unsustainable.

Almost 2,500 concert goers will be compensated, according to MCD.

There is no mention in the report of the fact that stewards told exasperated people to sit in any empty seats that they could find, something which I personally witnessed a number of times in the chaos. This explains why so many people were stubborn enough to refuse to give up seats when the rightful ticket holders arrived.

As I am going to be offered compensation for my ruined concert experience in the form of vouchers for other MCD concerts, I am going to take the advice of the National Consumer Agency and decline it, and take action in the Small Claims Court:

…the NCA would advise patrons that, if they do not wish to accept the compensation now on offer from MCD, they are entitled to refuse it and to take action against the company in the Small Claims Court. Similarly, patrons who are not being offered any compensation may have grounds for action in the Small Claims Court.

Anyone who was at the concert is welcome to comment here.

From the press release:

The Sale of Goods and Supply of Services Act, 1980 provides for the consumer to expect that:

• The supplier has the necessary skill to provide the service and that;
• The service will be provided with proper care and diligence.

This, clearly, was not the case in this instance.

Hello,
In response to the issues raised by yourself and other fans who attended the Barbra Streisand concert, MCD set up a specialist committee on 17th July 2007 to conduct a thorough examination of concerns expressed. The establishment of the committee has been welcomed by the National Consumer Agency.

The committee is chaired by Pat Byrne, former Garda Commissioner and includes Health and Safety expert, Michael Slattery of Slattery & Associates along with Julian Davis, Communications consultant on the 2003 Special Olympics World Games. Senior MCD personnel, Denis Desmond and Justin Green, are also working on the Committee.The committee began its work immediately and has already held a number of meetings and conducted site visits to Castletown House and Celbridge. It is anticipated that the committee will have completed its work by early September and your concerns raised, including the assessment of all complaints, will form part of this examination.

MCD again wishes to apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Kind Regards,

MCD Customer Care

Why should this be? While I find it fascinating that a blog can become the place for people to vent their frustrations over a particular event (and, indeed, I’m gratified, for the purpose of doing my theatre reviews is exactly to encourage debate), I would have thought that somewhere like boards.ie would be far more suitable for something that has affected so many people. But then, of course, MCD have the clout to prevent debate from happening on the internet, and the good folks in boards.ie have felt obliged to ban all mention of anything MCD related. This is so unhealthy it reeks. So unhappy consumers come here to comment. But with the Streisand Generation, perhaps that sort of bullying can’t be sustained.

Public Inquiry asks some very pertinent questions – why should MCD be allowed to set up its own committee to examine its own role in the fiasco? Why isn’t the National Consumer Agency leading the enquiry?

Would you go left or right? Forward or backward? What idiot thought up a system like this?

At least the shambles wasn’t due to the much-feared bad weather. With breath-taking timing and symmetry, as the show started, a beautiful rainbow arced over the main stage, with the majestic mansion as the backdrop, heralding the passing of the last shower of the evening. But the show started 45 minutes late, way past the publicized “8pm sharp” programme time, because the traffic on the way to the venue from Dublin was impossible, and at 8pm the seats were only half-full. Tailbacks had stretched for miles through endless roadworks. Everyone who had tickets for the flat central area, the vast majority of us, wandered around in the slippery mud trying to make sense of the unforgivably incomprehensible seat numbering. Stewards who were well-meaning but poorly trained did their best to direct people, but there were those who knew how the numbering went, and those who didn’t, and if you asked the wrong person you’d be directed to join the queue behind the woman who possessed the secret code to unlock the mystery of the numbering. I know this because I was sitting on a seat on the aisle, and my view, and that of those all around me, were continually obscured by damp lost frustrated people holding tickets in their hands.

One wouldn’t have minded this so much if it were just the first five minutes of a show; but because of the disastrous traffic, people were continually arriving in a disgruntled stream right through the first half. Friends of mine who left Dublin at 6 arrived at 9.45, just as the interval had started. Empty seats had been taken by people who were fed up searching, encouraged to do so by stewards, only to be unseated by the rightful owners later when they eventually arrived. Some people were told that their seats had been “done away with”. Tempers were fraying all around us; it was a “fiasco”, a “disgrace”, it was “ridiculous”. People would stand in front of us because they didn’t know where else to go – this picture represents my view for most of the show – but the stewards themselves got fed up, and seemed to give up moving them along, so we ourselves had to take turns to ask them to move aside and let us see.

People seemed bizarrely oblivious that they were standing in front of rows and rows of people sitting in a supposedly classy concert – so much so, that voices behind me started hurling abuse at them, who were so exasperated that they argued back. It was a hellish atmosphere in which to try and enjoy a concert. I don’t remember much of the first half, I was so distracted. The two screens on either side of the vast stage holding the orchestra were, of course, barely visible in daylight, the sound wasn’t enveloping enough to enable me to feel connected, and I might as well have been watching a television a hundred feet away. And so, classics that have meant a lot to me in my life like People and Evergreen passed me by.

After the interval, the crowds again milled about for an unforgivably long time, but it was only as it got dark that I began to relax, at around 10.30pm. This clear viewing window lasted for approximately 15 minutes, at which time people began streaming out in front of us, desperate to beat the traffic home.

Her voice is still amazing. Not quite as piercing as it once was, it’s like a blade that has, perhaps, lost its razor-sharp edge; in her upper registers it was noticeable how she was dampening the top notes down a little, to avoid exposing its limits. She is still pitch-perfect, and utterly in command of the music and the stage, and it was obvious how this show is something she enjoys immensely. She was well supported by her quartet of male broadway singers. But I could have cried when, during “Papa, Can You Hear Me?” a group of angry people milled around in front of us again, thus ruining one of the most important songs in her canon for me. One wonderful uninterrupted number was “Have I Stayed Too Long At The Fair?” from Color Me Barbra, which was mesmeric. “Cock-eyed Optimist” was an eye-opener, fresh and amusing. “There’s a Place for Us” was beautiful.

As an artist, Streisand delivered a wonderful show, and if a DVD was produced of the evening it would probably look and sound spectacular. As producer, she failed dismally. This was the wrong venue, logistically, completely unsuited to hosting a crowd of this magnitude. Her show is not suitable for outdoors in daylight. The Irish production team let her down spectacularly, unforgivably.

Too many people had the opportunity of a lifetime ruined last night. For the sake of a romantic picture-postcard backdrop, thousands of people were treated as cattle, mere extras for the DVD. The trouble is, when you are an extra, you get paid. Do I want my money back? Everyone around me was talking about it. But, life is full of disappointments. I certainly hope MCD never get a contract like that again, they deserve to go out of business. As Barbra was talking in her well-rehearsed scripted contented wise-old-woman way about enjoying life to the full, how she was a glass-is-half-full kinda gal now, enjoying the indescribable smell of a gardenia, appreciating the unconditional love of a pet, a baby’s smile, saying how she valued truth above all, I was, I’m afraid, moved to call out “You can’t handle the truth!” and the crowd around me laughed.

Update #1: I’ve been reminded of MCD’s capacity to silence debate and would ask that people stick to direct, incontrovertible personal experiences here, if you wish to leave a comment. You may contact MCD directly here.

Update #2: Ann FitzGerald of the National Consumer Agency has asked that people register a complaint. You can do so here.

Update #3: She says here: “We would ask all consumers with complaints to contact MCD directly and to copy the NCA on all communications”

Update #4: As we’re getting close to 70 comments, I’m closing the list for discussion, it’s too unwieldy, it prints out at 24 pages! But if there are any other first-hand accounts of the concert, you may still post them. When there are other developments, I will post a new entry in the blog.

Update #5: First response from MCD here.

Update #6: Consumers’ Association of Ireland issue a Press Release.

Update #7: MCD committee produces report. Discussion here.

I am no longer a Gay. Everything that I am supposed to be about has just been proven to be a sham. This morning I failed, dismally, to put my money where my mouth is. The most crucial pouff test of all, and my litmus paper failed to turn pink. I sat in front of my computer, just before 9am, transfixed. The screen was informing me that I could buy two tickets to see Barbra Streisand live in Ireland, on her first European tour, on her post-retirement comeback. The clock ticked, and I was paralysed. My cursor hovered over the “Buy” button, but I didn’t go click. I was not prepared to pay the price. I had attempted to get the promised cheapest tickets, at €118 each, but, suspiciously, they were unavailable, right from the start.* The cheapest available were €200. I’d have probably stretched, in a grudging way, in the heat of the moment, to paying 20% more, so used am I to Ryanair’s gimmicks at adding fees and charges to basic prices online, but nearly double was too much for me. Despite being single for so long, I usually buy two tickets for gigs and concerts, hope springs eternal and all that, and there’s always a friend that’s glad to come with me nearer the time. But €400? And not even counting transport, drinks, etc? Too much. The moment passed, the screen timed out, and I got on with my day. I was being sensible. Practical. Grown-up. I had resisted the pressures of conforming to the collective gay identity, and felt liberated. I was anti-gay, and proud of it. I was making a statement of individuality, of going against the crowd. Again.

Then, the doubts began assailing me. For the rest of my life, at every dinner party I attend where there is another gay man, especially one of my generation or older, the topic will come up, and I will be asked whether I was there. I will have to answer “no”. For the rest of my life, I will have to explain this morning’s decision, to justify it. For it is on a par with the visit of Judy Garland to Dublin in 1951, when she sold out her twice-daily show for a week at the Theatre Royal, the biggest crowds a woman had attracted on this island since the visit of Queen Victoria, fifty years earlier. Don’t assume, dear reader, if you are not in the tribe, that Madonna or Kylie are in the same league – for all their gay following, they are mere upstarts, pretenders to Streisand’s throne. Nevertheless, trying avoid whining, I will, in measured non-defensive tones, assert my prudence, my caution, my individuality, and I will ensure that it doesn’t appear that my decision had anything to do with cowardice, cheapness, internalized homophobia, or a lack of joie de vivre. I will endeavour to sit there with a relaxed demeanour, listening to tales of rhapsodic devotional gluttony that the event will no doubt produce, and I will not feel a moment’s guilt or regret. I will feign good-humoured boredom with the topic. I will grin indulgently, acknowledging my oddity, asking merely that people respect my right to self-determine. I will even accept it when people humour me, and when the last crumb of tiramisu has been scraped off the plates in the kitchen, I will ignore the private glance between the hosts, as they reconsider whether this heretic will be welcome again in their house. You see, they would have supposed, quite reasonably, that I was one of them. I will, gamely, offer a family precedent: my mother passed up the chance to see her lifelong love, Frank Sinatra, on his last tour, on the principle that she would rather remember him in his prime, and she could not have enjoyed hearing his failing voice. In time, I am sure that I will persuade myself, trying not to sound petty or defensive, that of course such extravagance could not have been worth it, that there are much better things to do with that amount of money. More realistically, even if she were past it, and produced a bland, mediocre saccharine-sweet event, high on schmaltz and low on talent, the collective homo hysteria would inevitably paper over any cracks to ensure her deification remained unchallenged. What would be the point of actually attending? Like cult members drunk on the opiate of adoration, the glassy-eyed article of faith will be, despite any evidence to the contrary, that the event will be the epitome of fabulousness. Begrudgery will not be an option.

It’s not that I couldn’t afford it – at the very least, my credit card company wouldn’t complain. I’m sure, if I went, I’d forget the sting of the price tag. “Well, it is Babs.”

Yes, it’s Babs who was Dolly Levi, with the incredible “Don’t Rain on my Parade”, insinuating herself into my pre-gay (?) consciousness as a boy. From the same film, the gentler duet that we used to sing along to as children, the gravelly Louis Armstrong beaming out all the love in the world to the feisty dame in Hello, Dolly. Babs who wrote and sang the Oscar-winning “Evergreen”, the love song that hit me at my most sentimental and romantic teenage period. Babs who sang the extraordinary duet with Donna Summer, “No More Tears (Enough is Enough)” that hit me at age 16 – if ever there was a song that epitomised the bright lights and promises of the glamorous life ahead of me on the disco floor in gaysville, that was it. Even then we knew something precious and contrived about that track (and possibly apocryphal, but hey, it was part of the myth) – the two divas hadn’t bothered to be in the same studio to record it. We marvelled, as we span our silly selves into a tizzy on the dancefloor, at the soaring voices, outdoing each other to impossible heights. Babs as Yentl: it’s a great musical, still, and it’s a soundtrack I’m still fond of, in particular “Papa, Can You Hear Me?” We loved her ballsiness in putting herself right out there, playing a man, directing and producing, doing it all, and getting away with it. In the thoughtful Prince of Tides, she gets Nick Nolte to cry, and not many women can do that. She’s impossibly humourless in so many ways, can’t improvise to save her life, her stage shows are pre-scripted with giant teleprompters at the back of the auditoria, and yet she made her name in cooky comedies, and was in the recent Meet the Fockers, which was the highest grossing comedy in history. She’s one of the top ten recording artists in the US. She’s won Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, Golden Globes and a Tony. She has a gay son. She sings Stephen Sondheim. She’s political. She’s into Jung. She’s a diva, pouring scorn in her website on all the fake tales of her divadom that get published, but by repeating them she ends up sounding even more peeved and diva-esque. She makes up her own rules. She’s just fabulous.

Damn. I’ve talked myself into it. One ticket. Just one. For curiosity’s sake.

*On the first day that tickets were on sale, the lowest ticket price was not available at Ticketmaster.

Update: Review here.