Aisles full of noises ... the Edinburgh production of Three Sisters was greeted by insistent jeering. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod
To boo or not to boo? That is the question. Is it better for an audience to show its disapproval at the end of a show or are they entitled to make abusive remarks while it's in progress? After a nasty experience at Edinburgh's King's Theatre on Tuesday night during a performance of Three Sisters, I've decided that terminal boos are better than a drizzle of derision.
I must first explain what happened on one of the most bizarre nights of my theatregoing life. It began when, during an obviously sotto voce prelude, a loud voice from the stalls trumpeted "We can't hear you." Even when the volume was turned up, people sidled out, ostentatiously snored or muttered darkly during an admittedly interminable first half.
But it was during Chekhov's wonderful last act that disaster struck. Almost every line became a potential minefield. Masha only had to say "Isn't it awful?" or "I'm going out of my mind" for a torrent of jeering, derisive, mocking laughter to issue from the stalls.
Obviously spectators have a right to protest. They have, after all, paid their money. And Krystian Lupa's production was so provocatively slow as to test the patience of even the most dedicated theatregoer.
But what should a dissatisfied customer do? A friend of mine who loathed the current RSC Tempest sat down and wrote a letter of instant protest to the company boss, Michael Boyd. That's one answer. Another solution is to leave at the interval. A third possibility, constantly deployed in opera houses, is to save your anger till the curtain call and boo your heart out. Any of those options seems to me preferable to that of sending up the actors on every line, which is what happened in Edinburgh.
The argument against that is simple. The actors are simply carrying out a concept determined by the director. To jeer at the performers themselves strikes me as rude and cruel; which is why I always dislike the courtly mockery of coarse actors at the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Love's Labour's Lost. As one of the victims says in the latter play, "This is not gentle, this is not humble." And the sound I heard in Edinburgh on Tuesday night was similarly that of contemptuous arrogance.
Which is why I think booing is the best bet. Even that isn't a pleasant sound. And there is something depressing about the way any production at the Coliseum or Covent Garden that mildly deviates from the norm is always greeted on the first night by a torrent of booing. But at least booing focuses the discontent.
Artists have even been known to retaliate. There's a famous story of Adrienne Corri, on the disastrous first night of John Osborne's The World of Paul Slickey, responding to the avalanche of curtain-call booing by raising two fingers to the audience and shouting "Go, f**k yourselves." Which is certainly telling them.
But how should playgoers protest? If you think a show stinks, do you catcall during the show, boo at the end or write a dignified protest to the theatre manager? Critics are lucky because they can simply write a sharp notice. But what is the dissatisifed punter to do? You tell me.
