selfish bastards

Theatre I can only sympathise with Ian Hart who took it upon himself to give an audience member a going over at the end of a performance in which he'd had to deal with the lousy behaviour of the collective dark. Firstly because it seems he picked on the wrong bloke, something I've been guilty of in cinemas when I've asked someone to be quiet when in truth I could only tell the noise was coming from a general area and secondly because the issue came up at all.

I talked in the summer about the horrendous audiences I had to endure at the RSC; I had to get permission to move during the interval for The Winter's Tale because I was stuck next to a riddler/fidgeter/chunerer and during Julius Caeser had to put up with wisecracks from the coach party I was stuck in the middle of, ruining the tension of both Caesar's death and battles at the close of the show. In fact, I can't think of time in the past decade (other than for this) when I've been to the theatre and someone in the audience hasn't disrupted the people around them.

But to paraphrase Beckett, there's nothing to be done. If the theatre starts policing the audience, the experience is disrupted still further by their mere presence. The selfish bastards doing it don't think they're doing anything wrong because no one has bothered to give them an eticate class, but when exactly is that going to happen? Before the theatre even agrees to sell them a ticket? Should the theatre pass on a flyer with their ticket outlining suitable behaviour? Before the play starts an announcement asking people to shut the fuck up?