Frank Skinner: Introducing Misbehaviour Mondays, when punters can be as boorish as they like

The much-loved actor Lesley Manville has caused a stir with her comments about theatre audiences taking photographs during curtain calls. “I find it insulting,” she said, adding that she’d glowered at someone for photographing her at the end of a recent performance. I’d love to see that picture. I suspect that theatricals will look back, in two or three years’ time, when audience members are routinely photographing, videoing and probably vaping throughout the performance, and conclude that curtain-call snapshots weren’t so bad after all. We live in the age of pics-or-it-didn’t-happen, where every anecdote has to be backed up by visual aids from the teller’s phone, lest the listener doubt their veracity or just lose interest because there’s nothing to see. Manville says she doesn’t understand why anyone needs photographs to capture that curtain-call moment.

“Why can’t they let it live in their souls?” she asked. I must admit, I witnessed something emotionally significant to me recently, and when my hand instinctively went for my phone, I stopped myself and resolved to do the soul thing instead. I’m damned if I can remember, now, what the emotionally significant thing was. And that’s a true story. But I can’t prove it because I don’t have the pics.

I’m a keen theatregoer and have witnessed many potential soul-dweller moments over the years, but none of them have been curtain calls. Curtain calls make me sad. All that hand-holding and whispered, clannish camaraderie reminds me of standing alone by the school railings, watching the other kids laugh and play. My fellow theatregoers are elated, but I’m just estranged and need to get away. When they’re reaching for their phone, I’m reaching for my bus pass.

I suppose if you’re in a drama, you need a curtain call to find out if anyone liked it. As a standup comedian, I don’t have to wait till the end of the show. I get regular updates, good or bad, from the audience, at the end of each joke. I can hear how it’s going. Emotional involvement doesn’t come with an accompanying sound. Well, maybe on a good night.

Manville’s comments have opened up a debate about audience behaviour in general. When I was living alone in a Birmingham bedsit, drinking sherry for breakfast, I decided to try living by the samurai code. It’s less about swords and man-buns and more about rules for a better life. When a sparrowhawk approaches a flock of birds, the code says, it singles out one bird and no longer sees the others. This intense and exclusive focus on any goal brings us success. When I’m part of an audience, I adopt this same approach. I focus intensely on the show and let the talking, ringtones, fights, glowing screens, snack-sounds and space-invading elbows fade into a background blur. If I allowed myself to tune in to those around me, it would be, as George Eliot wrote in Middlemarch, “like hearing the grass grow”. I’m told that the latest audience-behaviour trend is singing along at musical theatre shows. It could be worse. Bob Dylan fans used to take harmonicas to his shows, and play along with the solos.

I saw the Romeo and Juliet that’s currently playing in the West End. It was brilliant. When they got to the final bows, the stars of the show, Sadie Sink and Noah Jupe, having just been drugged, poisoned and stabbed, still looked decidedly washed out and tearful. This was my kind of curtain call. I almost got my phone out, but to photograph them in that state would have felt ghoulish. As I left, I heard a woman behind me say, “Well, they could have bloody well smiled for the curtain call.” I feel Ms Manville is fighting a losing battle. Maybe we can learn something from the parent-and-baby screenings they have at more forward-thinking cinemas. There, a screaming baby is a badge of belonging. Theatres could create a similar sense of community with, let’s say, Misbehaviour Mondays, where boorish, antisocial theatregoers can pay their money, be with their own, and not be judged. The actors, battling on amidst this mayhem, can, meanwhile, gather enough anecdotes to get them through the most demandingly-witty dinner at the Garrick.

An Arts Council report, published this week, said that, between 2019 and 2024, the number of touring drama productions fell by 72%. These are desperate times. I’m afraid actors who are prepared to smile for the red carpet paparazzi might also need to grin and bear it for those phone-wielding patrons who’ve paid through the nose to see them perform. They should remember that AI is cheaper and smiles on command.

Photograph by Hoda Davaine/Getty Images