Shaw: coughing in theatre is getting louder
HE HAS tackled violent crime as the hard-nosed detective Inspector George Gently and handed down judgments as the austere Judge John Deed.
But Martin Shaw, the actor, has now turned his attention to wrongdoing of a very different kind: audience members who cough too loudly.
Modern theatregoers make more noise when clearing their throats than previous generations, he said. Shaw has observed that the behaviour of those watching stage shows has got worse in recent years. In particular, he singled out those who cough excessively loudly.
“There were always people who coughed,” he said in an interview with The Mail on Sunday.
“Now they seem to cough louder in the theatre than in their own living room.”
Shaw also bemoaned the trend for people checking their mobile phones during performances, rather than watching the stage.
“Even if people aren’t answering their phone, they are scrolling through their tweets, you can see the light,” he said.
“It’s the most distracting thing and changes the dynamic of the auditorium.”
But while it is difficult for actors to do anything about distracting behaviour during the show, Shaw thinks he has found a solution in telling off audience members for their phones ringing, while still in character.
“The last time it happened I was playing Henry Hobson in Hobson’s Choice,” he said.
“I pointed at the owner and said in character, ‘Turn that off or get out.’ It got a huge round of applause because most people feel the same.”
Shaw admitted he gets “way beyond stressed” by ringtones interrupting the show. If someone else is speaking and he has to keep quiet, a “nuclear explosion” goes off in his head, he said.
He is not the first actor to speak out about the bad behaviour of audiences.
Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey, reprimanded an audience member for coughing too frequently at a performance of the Royal Court’s Posh.