Theatre critic Mark Fisher argues there’s an intriguing link between stories of badly behaved audiences and recent criticism that musicals are pushing plays out of the West End 
 

What is happening to popular theatre? Ever since February when Edinburgh Playhouse theatre director Colin Marr said he was ‘disgusted and angry’ with the behaviour of unruly audiences, there have been reports of disruption across the country. Marr was writing in the aftermath of a brawl during Jersey Boys in his Greenside Place venue. Two months later, a disturbance in a Manchester theatre brought The Bodyguard to a premature end. 

It has got so bad that BECTU (Broadcasting, Entertainment, Communications And Theatre Union) has launched a campaign to tackle what it calls ‘increasing and extreme anti-social behaviour’ among audiences. Playing on the name of a musical, the campaign is called Anything Doesn’t Go. The union said more than 90% of theatre workers who responded to a survey had ‘personal experience of bullying, violence, intimidation, harassment or abuse at work’.

Certain shows have a reputation for attracting the worst behaviour; rows often kick off between those trying to out-sing the lead actors and those who wish they’d shut up. But no show is immune. A London production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It was interrupted by a man claiming it was ‘discriminating against hearing people’ on account of deaf actor Rose Ayling-Ellis playing a lead role. Add to this the comments by playwright David Hare that musicals were ‘strangling everything in their path’, and that straight plays no longer had a place in London’s West End, and you would think the end of civilisation was nigh.

You would think this even more if you read all the reactions to Hare’s comments, which he made in a brief diary piece in The Spectator and hardly represent his most considered thoughts. Everyone from Andrew Lloyd Webber to the Daily Mail weighed in, rubbishing Hare’s opinions and championing the art of the musical. The arguments against Hare are easily made: the West End has always had a lot of musicals, you can see plenty of straight plays elsewhere, and many musicals are bold and adventurous (if you’re anywhere near London’s Bridge Theatre, do everything you can to see Guys & Dolls). It is also right to endorse BECTU’s campaign as no worker should be abused.

But both stories have something fascinating in common: the age-old concern about public space. How interesting that, whether on-stage or off, we are still arguing over the ancient business of theatre, still monitoring each other’s behaviour, and still making moral judgements about how we like to be entertained. 

Mark Fisher is a theatre critic, feature writer, editor and freelance journalist; markfisher.theatrescotland.com. Follow Fisher on Twitter.