Donald Buka says he learned the hard way that the Broadhurst Theater takes its seating policy seriously.
The 86-year-old former movie and TV actor claims in a lawsuit that he was beaten by ushers, then rudely bounced out of the performance of the Tony award-winning “History Boys” and finally thrown onto the floor of the theater lobby.
According to Buka, he and four friends from L.A. took a taxi to the theater after dinner at Buka’s Upper West Side apartment.
The group arrived shortly before the show began. Buka left his seat to help his friend, Bill McGough, 76, who walks with a cane, find his place.
While still standing behind the last row of seats – not blocking anyone’s view, Buka insists – the ushers confronted him and tried to kick him out. He first explained why he was standing, and then began to argue that he should be allowed back to his seat.
The altercation then sparked a flurry of violence in which theater ushers pushed him toward the door, picked him up, carried him over to the lobby, and then dropped him on the floor, he alleged.
“The manager said ‘toss him out,’ and they literally did that,” said Buka.
Peter Entin, president of theater operations at the Shubert Organization, which owns the Broadhurst, said Buka was disrupting the performance.
“He got into an altercation with another customer and the other customer punched him,” Entin said.
The theater management called the police, Entin said.
“Suffice it to say it was not the ushers,” he said. “The police were the ones that got physical with him.”
Buka’s lawyer, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, filed suit last week for $300,000 in punitive damages on behalf of the former actor in Manhattan Supreme Court against the Shubert Organization and its security staff.