THE QUACK

Audio Quack! Let me read it for you! Skip Introduction 1:30

Last week I went to see Streetcar Named Desire. It’s one of my favourite plays and this production had Paul Mescal playing Stanley. I had spent an hour in a virtual queue getting tickets. It was like my version of Glastonbury.

It was around thirty minutes into the first half of the play, when I heard some commotion kicking off behind me.

 “I can’t stay any longer. I’m sorry, it’s just not my cup of tea!” A hushed voice said. I glanced behind and saw a row of people standing, as an old man in tweed shuffled past them. My inner snob came out. I tutted. How does one not know if Tennessee Williams is not their cup of tea?

Further on in the play, in a silent, intimate moment, someone cracked open their can. ……*click!…fiizzzzzzz*

My inner-snob could have exploded. CAN NOBODY DO THEATRE AROUND HERE?!

Despite the audience, I thought the performance was superb. Marlon would be proud. But the disruptions did make me reflect on all the times when it wasn’t the play that went wrong, but the audience, and that includes myself.

The problem with the theatre is it brings out our more pompous side. When you tell people that you went to the theatre on the weekend, you make it sound like you wore a gown and arrived in a horse-drawn carriage. (When, in fact, you wore Levis and arrived in an Uber that smelled of lemons and vomit.)

But simply going to the theatre on a normal ticket wasn’t enough for my Farrow and Ball Mother. When we went to see Long Day’s Journey into Night with Brian Cox, she had, for some reason, bought a VIP package. 

When we got to the door, we let them know we were the VIPs. The man whipped out his walkie-talkie. “Sinead, the VIPs have arrived.” Mum looked suddenly worried about the fuss she was causing. After all, the real reason why she paid for the package was because it included a private loo. Fair point though, queuing for the loo in the theatre is like queuing for Dishoom on a Friday night.

A lady named Sinead appeared and escorted us through the back ends of the creaky theatre. We went through a small door and then an even smaller one. I was beginning to worry that my family had set me up again, and that I was a door away from being on stage. (Read about my West End debut here.) 

Eventually, we entered a very strange-shaped room. It was a corridor decorated like the Age of Innocence. There was champagne, wine, fizzy drinks and crisps laid out on a shiny brown dresser. Mum and I sat close together on a hard floral sofa. We could hear the muffling sound of the other audience members having fun in the bar… together.

Sinead stood to the side with her hands clasped as we sipped our drinks. 

*….Sip…*

“Is anyone else a VIP tonight?” Mum asked.

“No, just you guys,” Sinead said and glanced at the floor. We could hear her thoughts…this is stupid.

We felt bad for Sinead having to stand in a room with two of the dullest VIPs ever. (I don’t even drink alcohol). But we didn’t want to be rude and leave the room early, so we resorted to trying to befriend Sinead by firing a zillion questions at her about her job.

“Do you get to meet any actors?”

“Do you get to work in other theatres?”

“What’s been your favourite production so far?”

Mum gets up. “Must pop to the loo.”

Please don’t leave me….

I smiled at Sinead. She smiled back. A roaring laugh came from the bar many, many doors away.

“So…” I began. “Have you ever seen a ghost in this theatre?”

Thankfully, the theatre was riddled with ghost stories so that filled the silence until show time. (Thank god for ghosts).

When I was in Manhattan, I took myself to Broadway to see Appropriate. The Americans are a different kind of theatre audience. They are enthusiastic. When Sarah Paulson came on, an eruption of whooping and cheering took over the theatre. I wanted to shout in my most BBC accent, “Can’t you see the lady is in character?!”

We Brits do not applaud actors when they come on stage, no matter how famous they are. Even if Laurence Olivier came back from the dead and appeared on stage, we would wait until the end of the performance before giving him a clap. That applause will be made with two hands. NO WHISTLING. Sometimes, we will even give the actors a standing ovation – IF they deserve it.

Yes, the Brits are a hard audience to crack. In the interval, you often hear mutters in the bar like, “I just think the director was missing the point that Miller was trying to make.” Or “She’s no Elizabeth Taylor.”

The last thing you want to do is to trust one of these audience members with a microphone, but that’s precisely what they did in An Enemy of the People, starring Matt Smith. I went along last summer to a matinee. It was all going brilliantly, (well I thought it was going brilliantly), until the interactive scene. In the second half of the play, they turn the audience into the ‘townspeople’ in the ‘local town hall’, and you have the choice to voice your opinion on the ‘council debate’.  This would work in theory, but on a Saturday afternoon in Soho, not everyone understood the rules of drama.

“So, we’re going to open it up to the townspeople. What do you think we should do?” The actress announced.

The first person to speak was a man a few rows behind me. “I think Henrik Ibsen should have written a better play.”

“OOOOOO!” The audience went, like we were kids in a classroom. 

The actress, a true professional, stayed in character. “What play, Sir? Who’s Henrik? We’re in a town hall, Sir.” The mic was swiftly moved on to the next person. “You there, the man holding the giant stick!”

The audience cracked up.

“The stick is because I’m disabled,” snapped the man in the mic.

The laughter stopped and every single person, including Matt Smith, squirmed.

The angry man began to speak. “I think this play…”

“What play, Sir?!!” repeated the drained actress.

She was going to get her agent on the phone after this.

Usually, I’m an impeccably well-behaved audience member. I put my phone on do not disturb, flight mode and turn it off. I don’t crack open cans in intimate moments, or wear my hair in a high bun. But there have been times I have let myself down, such as when I fainted in the middle of the stalls during A Little Life. (Read here).  But even then, Mum waited until the interval to check if I needed to go to the hospital. (To disturb the audience in the middle of a play, even if your daughter may have died, is still unforgivable). 

Sometimes, it’s not you, but the company you bring along. I like to go alone to the theatre so I don’t have to worry if the other person is enjoying the show. But when I went to see Tosca, I brought along one of my more eccentric pals.

We should have gone through Door D, but there was a small queue, so my friend insisted on going to Door E. We got to our row where everyone was settled. At the other end, we could almost see our empty seats. Basically, we either could disturb 15 people or 4 people. It was a no brainer. But before I could drag him back up the staircase, he ordered the row to their feet.

“Excuse me, we need to get over there!” he said, pointing far in the distance to the two empty red chairs.

The row glared at us like we had asked them to get up and strip off. 

“Can’t you go to the other side?” barked the woman sitting directly below us.

“Yes, we can,” I said through gritted teeth, and attempted to drag my friend away, but it was like trying to drag a big stubborn rock.

“No, we’re here now. Come on everyone, get up!”

The woman surrendered, getting to her feet, angrily. The row reluctantly followed, all moaning and groaning as we shuffled past. “You should have gone the other way.” “You were meant to go through the other door.”  Meanwhile my friend was firing back sarcastic comments to wind them up.

“I know. I know. It’s terrible.”

We finally got to our seats, and my friend had one final kick. He turned to the row and said, “OH NO! Wrong seats! Back we go!”

The row glared.

“JUST KIDDING! HAHAHA!”  

I yanked his arm to sit him down. And then, because this was an opera, we had to sit in our row which we had been socially exiled from for the next three hours. If you’re going to make enemies with your fellow audience members, make sure it’s on your way out of the theatre.

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