Audience Member Faints At Bette Midler’s Hello, Dolly! Would 'Rather Die Than Miss Act 2'

Sometimes a great performance can leave you breathless, other times it can literally knock you out.

According to Page Six, a 53-year-old theatergoer refused medical treatment after fainting halfway through the first act of Hello, Dolly! The Post cites a source saying the viewer "started to feel dizzy and made his way to the aisle. But he lost consciousness and collapsed before the end of his row." Paramedics took him into the lobby and suggested he go to hospital for a full check-up. What! And miss Bette's second act? Unthinkable. "I'd sooner die than miss Act 2!," he insisted, striding back into the auditorium. Quick, someone give this guy a show of his own.

Related | Bette Midler to Return to Broadway in Hello, Dolly!

Fainting in the theater has a long history. Only last year, five people fainted during a performance of lesbian playwright Sarah Kane's Cleansed atthe National Theater in London,but that had more to do with the play's themes of torture and rape. And the faint-hearted struggled through a production of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus at The Globe Theater (also in London) in 2014, where five people fainted at the sight of Lavinia emerging from a brutal rape, her tongue cut out and holding bloody stumps for arms. What is it with Brits and theater? But Hello Dolly! is just a musical about a matchmaker. What gives? Perhaps the stress of fighting for a ticket was to blame. This incarnation of Hello, Dolly! is already one of Broadway's best-selling shows, and tickets are harder to get than, well, um, Hamilton tickets. But you can try your luck here.