'This Is What We Want' ... West End theatres are now barred from using misleading quotes in advertising. Photograph: Sarah Lee
Much as I relish the prospect of certain producers and publicists spending up to two years in jail, the new EU directive banning misleading quotes in theatre advertising strikes me as a bit heavy-handed. Pinching selected phrases out of reviews is obviously a dubious practice. But it hardly seems to me equivalent to peddling dope or driving, as Jeremy Clarkson has admitted he does, at 186mph on public highways. Let's keep a sense of proportion.
What no-one acknowledges is that the critics are often as much to blame as publicists. I learned a lesson early on in my career when I ended a hostile review of John Hanson in The Student Prince by saying "a lone voice from the gallery cried 'This Is What We Want.'" You can guess the rest. The last phrase was extracted from the review and embarrassingly plastered all over the Palace Theatre for the rest of the show's short life.
Lesson one: don't give hostages to fortune. The critic who ended a review of Gyles Brandreth in Zipp by saying "If schoolboy innuendo is your bag, book now" was simply falling into the publicist's trap. Lesson two: avoid heavy irony because it always rebounds. If you begin a review by saying "Anyone looking for a riotous, fun-filled, laugh-crazed extravaganza would do well to avoid the new musical version of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu" is asking for trouble. Lesson three: don't report audience reactions. You know the kind of thing. "I personally sat stony-faced through the new farce, Not Now Vicar, while around me everyone else was busting a gut and rolling in the aisles." Sure as eggs, you know what will appear on the billboards the next day.
The ban on dishonest advertising, while admirable for dodgy car dealers or people who make spurious "free" offers, also seems a bit draconian when applied to the roguish world of entertainment. I believe it was PT Barnum who, at a fairground, put up a sign claiming "This way to the Egress" leading punters to expect an exotic animal. Only when they were outside did they realise they'd have to pay to come back in again.
And one of my favourite theatre stories concerns the Broadway producer David Merrick. With a mega-flop on his hands, he scoured the New York phone book to find people with the same names as the critics, invited them to the show and then displayed their enthusiastic quotes all over the advertising. It was a one-off joke which could never happen here for the simple reason that you'd have to hunt high and low to find people in the real world with names like Benedict Nightingale or Quentin Letts.
By all means let the Society of London Theatres discipline producers who use misleading quotations. But let's not get too solemn, self-righteous or legalistic about it. The public isn't stupid. And, yes, you can quote me on that.
