It’s human nature to think that rules don’t apply to you. Ask Rosamund Pike, who interrupted the curtain call following a performance of her brilliant Inter Alia to bollock a punter who’d texted during the emotional finale, “breaking the bond between the cast and audience”. Or ask one in three people who visit the theatre at the same time as me, who arrive late, chat loudly, seemingly write their debut novel on their phones, eat a grab bag of salt and vinegar crisps so loudly it sets off the “Loud Environment” notification on my watch, then fellate their fingers after every bite.
But what about the things you’re allowed to do in the theatre? Like laughing? A recent family trip to the theatre (I won’t doxx myself, my kids, or Bluey, by saying what the production was) ended up marred by my husband J’s laugh – or rather, other people’s reaction to it. Every time J launched into his trademark eighty-decibel cement-mixer cackle, perhaps for longer than the dog in question’s antics necessarily deserved, heads would whip round and at one point a person even shh’d.
J was outraged on the journey home, protesting that it was a show for under-fives and that the audience shouldn’t need to sit in hushed silence like it was a two-hour presentation of The House of Bernarda Alba. And then he was doubly outraged when I politely took their side. “You’re just jealous nobody laughs like that at your shows,” he spat.
