(Bare with me as I have thoughts running all over the place as I think of going to see my first show since March 2020 when the COVID epidemic started.)

As a very young man I was often told you get what you pay for which is why you should get the best no matter how much more it may cost and I found that out AGAIN last week. I received an email about a website luckyseat.com where you could buy seats for $35 and possibly get a $100+ orchestra seat for "Ain't Too Proud; The Life and Times of the Temptations". The last time I tried anything like that was in New York City in the 1960s when they used to have 2-4-1 tickets and I always got good seats.

Back to luckyseat--just out of curiosity I looked up what seats cost for the show at the Adrienne Arsht Performing Arts Center in Miami and tier 4 seats were anywhere from $35 to $179 a seat.
With the exception of the front orchestra, all the other sections had plenty of seats available so it was very reasonable to think I would get a better seat for the $35.

The next day after receiving the notice I had 'won' the 2 tickets (no seat numbers given) and how/when/where to pick them up I got another email about parking. Due to Allen's back and my leg problems we have to valet park which only costs $35--something sounds wrong about a theatre seat to see a musical and valet parking cost the same amount of money!

81 years ago I saw my first Broadway show--the original "Oklahoma"--my mother belonged to the Theatre Month club--and since then, even when I 'second acted' a show I either sat in the orchestra or, for a musical, the first couple of mezzanine row seats.
If you look at the pictures above you will get an idea where our seats were, which were in the 3rd tier and the 4th tier hangover right above our head. Just before the curtain went down you could see there were plenty of empty seats including 2 rows right in front of us! And listening to conversations it seems most people were luckyseat 'winners' which made me wonder if anyone was seated in the 4th tier!

Lesson learned: if I go to only one show a year I am going to one where I can pick the seat I want even if it costs $100 plus!
I don't know how many hundreds (heck, I have seen "A Chorus Line" a hundred and one times!) if not thousands of shows I have seen in the past 81 years but I have only walked out of 3: Terrace McNalley's "And Things Go Bump Into The Night" in1964, Tennessee Williams' "A House Not Meant To Stand" in 1982 and "Ain't Too Proud" in 2023. This is NOT a reflection on the show as I don't know whether it was good or not.

It was difficult to see the actors from where we were sitting though the choreography looked great. The major problem was when the actors talked the sound was so bad we had no idea what they were saying and when they sang it was so loud and distorted if we didn't know the songs we never would have known what they were singing. It was obvious, even without hearing the narration and talk, that the show is fast-paced and, maybe, with a better sound system, even though we couldn't 'see' the actor's faces, we would have stayed for the second act.

I had been listening to the original Broadway cast album all week on Spotify so at least I was familiar with the songs and I didn't have to pay $35 for the seat and $35 for parking. I do know luckyseat.com is not for me and I have no idea whether "Ain't Too Proud" is or isn't a good show.