Call waiting for Godot ... Ohio Impromptu at the Barbican. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
I have just emerged, quaking, from the worst mobile-phone-in-a-theatre incident of my life.
I was at the opening evening of the Samuel Beckett centenary festival at the Barbican, which kicked off with a double bill of his short dramatic pieces from the early 1980s, Rockaby and Ohio Impromptu (of which more in a later posting).
Ohio Impromptu is as intimate and as softly spoken a piece of theatre as you could imagine, with two actors on stage, one of whom reads quietly from a book. The Barbican Pit is a small theatre. The audience was hanging on every word. Until a phone started ringing. Persistently. From somewhere near my feet.
Naturally, this completely ruined the show. Audience shoulders perceptibly stiffened. The actors ploughed on with utter professionalism, but I could have sworn their faces set into expressions even more glum than those dictated by the text.
The worst thing was that I knew it was my phone. I thought of reaching for my bag, but I was sort of frozen into position. Panicking. Then, after seconds (centuries?) of inner turmoil, reason returned. It couldn't be me. I had switched my phone off. It is always set to silent, dammmit (or vibrate, when I'm feeling daring).
And anyway, the Pit is set in the very concrete depths of the Barbican. Only supersonic, futuristic, next-generation phones have a signal from that nuclear bunker, certainly not Guardian standard-issue.
A few seconds later the piece came to an end (not that I was listening) and the applause started. I discreetly checked my bag and proved my innocence. Felt glad that I hadn't scrabbled around in it, thus appearing guilty and incurring the ire of the foregathered modernists.
You in the red top in row B, you know who you are. Thanks a bundle for ruining Beckett - and for making me feel like a criminal.
