EXCLUSIVE I’ve just gotten off the phone with a woman from Washington DC who had the misfortune to be sitting at the table next to Shia LaBeouf’s on Thursday night at Studio 54. They were there for a performance of “Cabaret” but got a whole lot more.
The woman is a friend of a friend who asked not to be identified. I’ll call her Sally, for Sally Bowles, the main character in “Cabaret.”
Sally told me: “We didn’t know who the guy was. He came and sat at the table next to ours, a table for four. Two middle aged women were sitting there. Shia sort of plopped down with them. He kept draping his arm around one of their shoulders, and making a scene. It started out slowly. Then it got worse.”
Everything happened before the intermission, Sally says. “We didn’t who he was, but people were coming over and taking pictures. Eventually someone told us. He was putting on a big scene. Then the show started. Every time the audience applauded, Shia would applaud loudly, twice as much, hands in the air and very disruptive. I kept hoping an usher would come by, and I was looking for some one to alert.”
He was ruining the show for this couple who’d paid good money.
Sally continued: “Then Alan Cumming comes into the audience as part of the show. And it seemed like Shia was trying to get his attention at first. He was trying to distract him. Cumming was trying to get away from him. If I didn’t know better I’d have thought it was targeted at Cumming.”
Finally, LaBeouf created a huge scene. He fell backwards over his chair onto the floor and just lay there. “On the ground,” says Sally. “And the wood chair hitting the wood floor made a big noise. And he didn’t get up. He just lay there.”
The minute the lights went up for the intermission, Sally says she did try and find some help. “But all of a sudden these giant security guards came over and surrounded him. They whisked him out. We didn’t see him again.”
Says Sally, a regular theatergoer: “I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life. I don’t know if it was too many drugs or a lack of drugs. But something was definitely wrong with him.”
On a personal note: I’ve had a lot of conversations with Shia LaBeouf. He’s always been extremely polite and nice. in casual settings without publicists. But something is clearly wrong. As with Martin Lawrence, Amanda Bynes and Britney Spears, LaBeouf needs someone to intervene soon.
