Arts diary: Why the show should just go on for performers irritated by audience etiquette

The play itself was everything we’d hoped it would be. What I didn’t like so much were the rules which came with it. A sticker was placed over every audience member’s mobile phone camera before we could even enter the foyer of the Harold Pinter Theatre in Soho, in case anyone, god forbid, wanted to take a photo to remember the occasion. I didn’t, I hate taking photos, but that wasn’t the point.

“Once you’re in, that’s it, if you get up to go to the toilet, you won’t be allowed back,” the woman checking our QR codes barked. Fine, in theory. Go before it starts, no-one who has paid between £35 and £268 (yes, really, thank god for Scottish theatre) per ticket for a performance wants to leave unless they really have to.

Yet, if you are an elderly person suffering from a weak bladder, or someone with an acute urine infection, what exactly are you meant to do? There did not seem to be any wiggle room for exceptional circumstances. Not in London, where the etiquette of theatre-goers has become a matter of much discussion in recent times.

Rosamund Pike became the latest actor to add her voice to the debate when she returned to the stage after her final bow at Inter Alia on Saturday to reprimand a theatre goer for allegedly texting during the performance.

In April, Cynthia Erivo interrupted her one-woman performance of Dracula to demand of an audience member, “Are you filming right now?”. Meanwhile, a few years ago, Andrew Scott also famously stopped in the middle of the “to be or not to be” soliloquy in a performance of Hamlet because he spotted someone on a laptop.

I realise I am going against the groundswell of opinion of the entire arts community here, but I find this trend for performers interrupting shows to throw their famous weight around on stage in a bid to publicly humiliate a paying member of the public entitled at best. What happened to “the show must go on”? I’m not even sure how they can see clearly into the audience beyond the dazzling stage lights, they must really have to try hard.

While I don’t in general approve of anything distracting from the play, there could be good reason for specific phone use. Maybe the guilty party at Inter Alia was trying to deal with a family emergency or check their blood sugars on a diabetes app - Pike had no way of knowing. In fact, she acknowledged this when she took to the stage, joking that the person could be a doctor who was saving someone's life, yet she still indicated the area of the stalls where the accused theatre-goer was sitting and continued her rant, likely ruining that person’s evening.

Granted, some audience members do not exhibit great manners. Neither do some restaurant goers, people I’ve been in work meetings with, or shoppers buying their dinner in Tesco. People everywhere can be annoying. That doesn’t mean they should be put in the stocks and have rotten tomatoes thrown at them. Public shaming, whether online or in real life - or whether of a normal person or a celebrity - is not acceptable.

The Inter Alia culprit may well have been guilty of scrolling TikTok rather than saving lives, we will never know. Should an usher have perhaps given them a glare, or even spoken to them quietly after the performance? Yes, possibly.

But for the star of the show to get involved in such a public way just smacks of bullying.

Falling slowly for Pitlochry

Despite there being no visible rules, Pitlochry Festival Theatre seemed to have no such problems when I saw its new season opening show, musical Once.

The original “girl” in the story, musician Markéta Irglová, who created the character and starred in the 2007 film alongside Glen Hansard, travelled to Pitlochry to watch the production with her sister, taking to social media to pronounce it “wonderful” and “filled with stellar performances”.

As a major fan of the film, I’m happy she liked it.