Sex and drama at the theatre – and that’s just in the stalls!
WHEN Stephen Fry played Malvolio at The Globe, he told me that the most frequent commendation he received was: ‘I could hear every word!’
To be audible is indeed an achievement, because theatre patrons today make an incessant, unapologetic racket.
As the unnamed West End producer who has written this hilarious book says, bad manners are rife.
Audience members forget to turn off their cameras, phones, recording equipment, beepers — even pacemakers.
They unwrap the cellophane around sweets, noisily crunch crisps, take off their shoes, talk loudly, snore and laugh inappropriately. Our producer is sick of the stalls stinking of Big Macs, kebabs, and pizza. Sadly, there is ‘no escaping these annoying people. It is something you simply have to put up with’. Well, not quite. Hitting offenders with a rolled-up copy of this newspaper is always a good gambit.
On the other hand, when what started to concern me more than the entertainment was getting a seat on the aisle, the interval drinks, easy access to the gents’ and the race to catch the train home, I finally decided it was preferable to remain on my sofa and watch television instead.
By not ‘sitting through three hours of dreary, posh shouting’, I am also saving a fortune. On top of a basic ticket price will be a booking fee, agency fee, service charges and a ‘restoration levy’.
Then there’s the souvenir programme, merchandise, interval ice cream and ‘nasty overpriced wine in a plastic beaker’.
Seats are cramped and claustrophobic, views often ‘restricted’. But what everyone can always see are young couples getting up to monkey business in a box. ‘A theatre box is not a hotel bedroom,’ admonishes our author.
It is a false economy to sit in the balcony, or the gods. You get vertigo, altitude sickness and deep vein thrombosis up there. Not that a seat in the front stalls is free of hazard. Patrons have risked drowning in Ian McKellen’s spittle.
Previews are a good idea for those on a budget, though before the show officially opens, it is a work in progress: ‘Lines are altered, songs added, scenes removed and actors killed.’ I myself saw an early preview
of Les Misérables at the Barbican which lasted longer than the French Revolution. The producer explains where the ticket revenue goes.
Mounting a show is a ruinously expensive operation: hiring the venue, making the costumes, printing posters and leaflets; the cost of the cast and understudies, front-of-house staff, musicians and technicians and ‘royalties to creatives’.
It is important not to skimp on the first night party, where ‘Amanda Holden wanders around in a revealing frock helping to give the impression that the show is a hit’.
It’s a general rule of thumb, says the producer, that the more glowing the reviews, ‘the more free booze the critics were given in the interval’.
The late Beryl Bainbridge, who had a theatre column in The Oldie, once got so refreshed, she wandered out for a fag, went back into a different foyer, saw the second half of a different production and thought it marvellous and experimental.
Of course, not everybody takes much notice of the professional critics — or theatrical prizes, come to that. Winning an Olivier Award today is less of a career boost than being on Celebrity MasterChef.
Our campy author divulges fascinating nuggets of information: the flying car in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang cost €850,000 — the most expensive prop in history.
Should you run into actors later on in the pub, don’t say, as my mother did to Mark Rylance: ‘Were you meant to do it like that? Do you do children’s parties?’ Fortunately, he is my son’s godfather, so knew it was a cue to laugh.