Supper's ready: Jane Asher in Festen, 2004. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
So it turns out I was far from alone in my fascination with actors eating onstage, as blogged about here earlier in the week. Sean, over at SeanInTheStalls, admitted to being particularly excited by one actor's heroic cheese puff consumption during Deborah Espect's new play Calling at the Old Red Lion in Islington, as well as being perturbed by the fact that, while a jam roly-poly is lovingly prepared every night in the revival of TW Robertson's Ours at the Finborough Theatre, no-one gets around to actually eating it.
Playwright David Eldridge, whose adaptation of Festen also merits a mention for containing one of the most striking examples of mass stage eating in its unnervingly tense, near-silent family banquet scene, pointed out that, when his play Under The Blue Sky was performed at the Royal Court, a chili con carne was prepared on stage for real. This will please those with a background in the catering profession who bemoaned the shocking substitution of microwave curry over real restaurant fare in Landscape With Weapon at the National Theatre.
Of course, the WestEndWhingers remain the champions, in every sense, of the onstage eating debate, dutifully logging every pallid looking piece of theatre toast and every apple munched for dramatic effect, on their superb blog.
However, and to the consternation of many theatergoers, the food consumed (or otherwise) by the actors is frequently not the only food that makes an appearance during a performance. People seem increasingly unable to sit through a play without sustenance of some kind.The traditional interval ice cream appears to be in danger of being usurped by food more suited to accompanying a summer blockbuster in the cinema.
On more than one occasion recently, during West End musicals, I've had people near me consume what amounts to a small picnic while the show was underway. Indeed during a recent performance of Fiddler On The Roof, while Henry Goodman was busy wishing he were a rich man, one family pulled out a bulging carrier bag which turned out to contain a selection of fruit, crisps, chocolate bars and yogurts, all of which had been eaten by the curtain call.
I'm in two minds to how I feel about this. Having someone munching away in the row behind you can irritate, but it's nowhere near as disruptive as, sin of all sins, letting your mobile phone go off during a performance. And, of course, not everyone can fit in dinner before a play, or indeed can afford to if they've already forked out for West End tickets. But all that chewing, rustling and gulping can break the spell that the performers are working to maintain, and does seem rather inconsiderate to other audience members.
Yet many West End theatres seem happy to encourage it, selling sweets and chocolates in the lobby, and even the Young Vic sells popcorn now. So maybe this is just par for the course, an inevitable consequence of the necessary quest to make the West End seem more inclusive and attractive to a younger generation of theatergoers?
