The unpleasantness of that evening at R&J about a week ago is still with me. I've enjoyed the Szecheny baths both times I've visited, and Shakespeare is very close to me. But the attempt to create an experience that blended the two made for a very unpleasant evening.
Theatre is cognate with theory. It means point of view on the action. Gadamer tells the story well. You come to the ritual at Athens from a particular place, and that determines your vantage. The Romans, with their fondness for wild beasts, sea-battles, etc., destroyed this by making the theatre immersive--they turned it into a circle. Since there was then no angle of skene, of presentation, the play and the audience no longer faced each other. (Amphitheatre literally means doubled theatre.)
And discomfort is different than being in a bad place; we're talking here about the latter. I've sat in an uncomfortable posture on the floor through an all-night Taverner concert (in the presence of the composer, who rightly had a comfortable chair); I've stood in sunlight through a long play; I've sat on benches through long outdoor dramas and stood at the back of the house through a Ring Cycle. But in all of these cases, that was my angle on the action. I had come to that place, and found that position as the only or logical vantage. To be surrounded by an unpleasant event, particularly when you care about theatre, makes the evening very long, and tends to stay with the mind. It's certainly far from the worst in terms of regietheatre, and the playing was skillful. But the event was wrong. The room was wrong. (I can't say the play was wrong, because we weren't face to face.)