Are Theatres Scared Of Tackling Bad Behaviour?

Home media’s become so good that I think the great outdoors has to make a much stronger case to tempt people away. If at home you can watch or binge on Breaking Bad and have all the food/drink/talking/texting/other unseemly actions people do at home, why can’t I go to the cinema and have all the food/drink/talking/texting/other unseemly actions I have at home? Thus I’ve been to the cinema where people eat a three course meal or text throughout or shag (and sadly I wish I was exaggerating), and the theatre where it's basically that bad. I also think thickos think that because Netflix allows you to enjoy finely honed art by great creatives entirely on your basis entirely on whatever cruddy device you fancy, all art is like that – so because I can watch 12 Years a Slave on my phone on the tube and play Angry Birds during the bits I don’t fancy focusing on, so too at the cinema and the theatre can I play on my phone and ignore the movie in front of me.

I like to think that's the thick minority, but because it's the noisy minority people confuse it for the majority, and are over-catering for the wrong audience.  People who text, over-eat, dance etc SHOULD be kicked out - not only would those of us on here be happier, but so would an entire auditorium.  One bad expensive experience will put paying punters off for life.  But people behind cinemas and theatres are getting it wrong and catering for the wrong people, assuming that what people enjoy at home (i.e. doing what you like and the art coming second) is what you want at the theatre.  This affects the wrong people.  I read on Twitter that someone walked out of Dr Faustus not because it's sh*t (it is, angry hate-filled write-up in progress) but because thick people nearby were making too many Game of Thrones jokes throughout. These are the people I would have shot banned - it's a shame one well behaved, well intentioned person missed the show (it's a shame they saw any of this bollocks in the first place) because other poorly behaved, poorly intentioned people were idiots.  THey should have been reprimanded, and possibly kicked out.  We should have stricter bans on people who behave like this, not half-arsed peace offerings. That cinema chain in America is allowing phones. Big mistake. Letting inmates run asylum, that is.  Ban them instead.  Ban them to hell.

One of my least favourite moments of theatre of last year was when Roger Allam had that speech about why it’s worthwhile paying extortionate fees for great art in Sir David Hare's The Moderate Soprano, but I begrudgingly admit there’s a point to that champagne socialist's plea for more champagne. Whoever it was at the ROH made the point a few years ago that casual evenings at the opera aren’t what people want, and one thing people do like about opera is the ‘event’ of it – the dressing up, the fanciness and foppery, the glamour of it all. You look at something like Secret Cinema – I went to one and found it overpriced hipster noodling to the worst degree, but there was something mildly liberating about knowing that everyone was giving away their phones, taking on a persona and throwing every bit of themselves into, in the end, seeing a movie.

So I think theatres ought to really up the live action immersiveness of it all, even though it’s hard to justify sitting in a comfy seat and watching Sophie Melville go through awful(ly written) poverty-related horrors or Wallace Shawn bang on about stuff that’s bothering him in government. I think the Globe is the best place for this, its grubby pit and sh*tty sightlines part of its charm, requiring us as an audience to pretend and invest far more than normal. Simon Evans is doing that with starry uncomfortable stuff at Found111 which really requires full commitment (and also, in such a small pit, means bad behavers can't hide). Dan Radcliffe and James Graham and Josie Rourke on Broadway, as they did at the Donmar, will encourage a new type of behaviour. The right kind of fringe theatre encourages involvement in the risks they’re taking. Actually, for all that people are snobby about celeb casting, I find that people who go for a Cumberbatch or a McAvoy or a Hiddleston are so intent to enjoy themselves they forego any potential distractions and behave themselves far better than the blue rinse brigade ticking off another Shakespeare before they shuffle off the mortal coil themselves.  And dare I say, the bad behaviour at jukebox musicals or feel-good pieces or some comedies (and dare I say some eejits at local theatres, where travel and other expenses aren't an issue) comes from people thinking their hard-earned money earns them the right to 'enjoy' it at everyone else's expense, though hopefully that's a minority of idiots.

So I just think theatres ought to have more than ‘turn off your phone’ warnings, but encouragements that this is a place that only works when you do put your outside life outside and give all to the inside – a good prologue, doing up the box offices, actual encouragement. I actually think people would prefer that to just being told off. It shouldn’t be enforcement, it should be encouragement, and I actually think more people would want to go to the theatre for themselves becoming part of the theatrics.  You do that and the bad behaviour will go down.

And if it doesn't, a knitting needle to the jugular does the trick.