(Image: Matt Crockett)
WOULD you tuck into a ready meal while watching a show in the theatre? Since I can barely even slightly rustle a sweet packet without wincing in the audience, the thought of scoffing a meal at the theatre fills me with horror.
Yet for some people such behaviour appears to be perfectly acceptable. Actress Kristin Scott Thomas has revealed in an interview that while on stage she saw someone on the front row eating a ready meal. The comments beneath the online article were mixed, with some folk saying that if you’ve bought a ticket you have the right to eat during the show. “They did it in Shakespeare’s day,” someone chirped.
They were also hanging people in public and slopping human excrement into the streets in Shakespeare’s day - that doesn’t mean we should be doing it today.
Why do some audience members have such a sense of entitlement? Paying for a ticket doesn’t mean you can do what you like, and to hell with everyone else.
The Slow Horses star isn’t the only big name actor to be distracted by audience members. This week Gillian Anderson addressed a group of giddy superfans sitting in the front row of her play. The actress was filmed talking to the fans outside the London theatre where she’s currently starring in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She said that, in an intimate venue, them coming to see the play 20 times, taking up the front row, was visibly distracting.
Cate Blanchett recently pleaded with a National Theatre audience not to film her on stage. She said filming the curtain call for her play Electra/Persona spoilt it for the next audience.
Theatre etiquette is becoming quite an issue, with actors increasingly calling out audiences for unacceptable behaviour. In the summer I wrote a column about Rosamund Pike berating an audience member for texting during a crucial moment in her emotionally charged West End play, Inter Alia. Returning to the stage at the end, she said the texter had broken the bond between audience and cast. Her impassioned speech was applauded by the audience.
Cynthia Erivo halted her one-woman show of Dracula after confronting someone for filming it on their phone. More recently, Amber Davies revealed on Instagram that she’d had someone thrown out of her Legally Blonde audience for filming the show. “Let’s just enjoy the two-and-a-half hours together, we don’t need to film everything,” she said.
Audiences know full well they’re not allowed to film shows or take photos, yet they do it anyway.
Olivier Award-winner Lesley Manville blasted those who took photos of her on stage in Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Speaking about it on BBC Radio 4, she lamented that some theatre-goers can’t ‘let it live in their souls’.
And that’s just it - there’s something about sharing a live experience, whether it’s a play, a musical or a concert, that should make the soul sing. Only by being in the moment can you experience that connection between audience and performer. But I’ve noticed in recent years that some audience members are so absorbed in being the centre of their own universe they have no regard for anyone else. People talk a lot at gigs, even during the quiet bits. At a recent concert I went to there was a poignant moment when the singer paid an emotional tribute to a band member who’d died - as he was speaking, a woman came barging through the crowd, clutching drinks, yelling to her noisy mates to take a selfie. It was so disrespectful.
Sports audiences have a lot to answer for too. A group of influencers, invited to the recent US Tennis Open, made a film, with flashing lights, while a match was in progress.
And my friend said she was dismayed to see lots of parents talking loudly and using phones all the way through her daughter’s graduation ceremony.
Why can’t grown adults behave properly at live events? Surely people can refrain from wittering on, or faffing about with their phones, for a couple of hours. As Cate Blanchett told her audience: “There are few places on this planet where we can simply be together and be present.” We should cherish those places, not disrespect them.