Oh no, another theatrical revival: but this time it’s a repeat of bad behaviour in the auditorium rather than an old classic wheeled out on the stage. On Friday a “mini-riot” broke out at the Palace Theatre in Manchester. Police were called and a woman ushered out after refusing to stop singing over the closing number of the musical adaptation of The Bodyguard, even after the production was halted twice.
I wrote about audience conduct recently — and this isn’t just a problem for Manchester, or for musicals, but an industry-wide issue that touches on class, race, age and a general collapse in public civility. It’s also about the inability of some venues to balance the profit motive with safeguarding. A survey of theatre staff found nearly half of respondents had considered quitting due to abuse or aggression from the public.
I personally think a culture of immediate gratification and aggressive self-expression has spilled over from online spaces into the theatrical world, but that’s a whole other column.
Staff and performers need to be safe, and people who have paid a lot of money for tickets should be able to enjoy a show without disruption. Equally, we don’t want theatres to become silent mausoleums of culture.
News reports tend to reflect the view of the older, wealthier audience, that this is caused by the “wrong” kind of people coming to shows: pissed-up working-class hen-dos and youths who won’t stop talking or texting. There’s also often an uncomfortable racist dimension, an implication that reverent silence is more appropriate than the lively engagement seen at productions such as Sleepova at the Bush or For Black Boys at the Apollo.
As Bristol University’s Dr Kirsty Sedgman, an expert on audience behaviour, told me, access and outreach programmes this century have, rightly, changed the demographic of audiences somewhat. But the new intake isn’t uniquely disruptive. There have been posh hecklers recently at the Royal Opera House’s Alcina and As You Like It at the new @sohoplace Theatre in the West End. Boris Johnson once sat behind me at the Old Vic, muttering audibly along to a King Lear soliloquy.
So even though it will hit profits, venues should stop allowing drinks (and food, FFS) into auditoria. Feelgood musicals should factor in special nights where sing alongs are encouraged.
A bit of light policing might help: punters at A Little Life had stickers placed over their phone cameras, nipping in the bud any urge to take photos of its sporadically naked star James Norton. Well-drilled ushers ensure the Bridge Theatre’s semi-immersive Guys & Dolls ends in a party every night where no one seems to push their luck.
The audience at Shakespeare’s original Globe came and went, heckled, and urinated where they stood. The way the modern-day Globe manages this interaction between both onlookers and performers could be a sane and useful case study that helps us find a sensible way out of this mess.
My viral Barbie gag is a one-off
Not wishing to boast, but I went viral this weekend. No, really, I did. The marketing campaign for Greta Gerwig’s forthcoming Barbie movie starring Margot Robbie includes an online tool where you can load a selfie into a crude promotional image. For a laugh, I put a picture of the brutalist architecture of the Barbican Centre into it with the caption “This Barbie is… the Barbie-Ken Centre” and tweeted it out.
Four days on, as I write, that daft gag has had 374,271 views and more than 4,000 likes, a level of reach and exposure quite literally beyond my ken. I’m now wracked with anxiety that I’ll never, ever be nearly as popular or funny again online. Maybe this is the reason I’ll finally leave Twitter. Not due to some high-minded objection to its ownership or its toxic effect on the culture. I just need to quit while I’m ahead.
