Life imitated art tonight at the Garrick theatre and had a little joke to make at its expense. In the first act of Indhu Rubasingham's stunning production of Red Velvet, in the middle of a scene in which actors discussed the implications of a cast members' illness and whether they'd be able to retain the audience, the play was stopped as the audience began to politely but hurriedly file out of the theatre. The front row spun around in confusion, with one gentlemen simply muttering under his breath: "terrorists?".
The cast were as confused as we were on the front row when a quiet commotion began, prompting us to turn around just in time to see three levels of the Garrick theatre stand up in almost total unison and calmly leave their seats. The reason for this wasn't immediately clear, although the past few minutes of the scene had been plagued by some light sound problems, namely some crackling through the speaker system. From our position in the auditorium, however, these crackling noises were obviously just sound issues, and certainly nothing worth abandoning the theatre for.
When most of the audience had left, we hypothesised about what might have happened, wondering between us what their reasoning could have been. A theatregoer near me suggested they might have thought the crackling noises had been gunfire, just as the front of house manager was clambering to the stage to reply to the confused stage manager's questions with a simple "I don't know what's happening, the audience just left".
Perhaps the greatest nightmare in theatre, it transpired that, possibly owing to different acoustics in the theatre, audience members in the rear stalls and circles were concerned the dress and grand circle were about to break and collapse. With many theatregoers fearing a repeat of the ceiling collapse of Nimax's Apollo Theatre from 2013, the audience collectively made the instant decision to vacate their seats, in spite of the many pages in the programme detailing the recent, extensive restoration work made to the Garrick theatre.
What I found most shocking about this otherwise incredibly uneventful event was how rapidly and unanimously the audience made the decision to leave their seats, faster and more eagerly than they ever seem capable to when a performance actually ends. It's startling to me, that a British audience, who are nervous enough to stand at curtain call, or laugh at joke lines, were all able to stand and interrupt a performance with no instruction and based on very little evidence of danger.
Is the West End still experiencing fallout from the Apollo Theatre incident, or are we all living in a post-ISIS London in which tourists and local theatregoers alike collectively fear random and deadly acts of terrorism and violence at any given moment for no apparent reason? Either possibility is disturbing news to actors and front of house staff alike, the knowledge that they may now need to be prepared to calm audience panic under the most trivial of circumstances, and the concern that performers may be required to work much harder to engage the audience's attention if their focus lies on the condition of the ceiling and not the scenes on stage. Perhaps there's more than mobile phones and drunk and disorderly behaviour to be concerned by these days when it comes to theatrical distraction.
The cast were as confused as we were on the front row when a quiet commotion began, prompting us to turn around just in time to see three levels of the Garrick theatre stand up in almost total unison and calmly leave their seats. The reason for this wasn't immediately clear, although the past few minutes of the scene had been plagued by some light sound problems, namely some crackling through the speaker system. From our position in the auditorium, however, these crackling noises were obviously just sound issues, and certainly nothing worth abandoning the theatre for.
When most of the audience had left, we hypothesised about what might have happened, wondering between us what their reasoning could have been. A theatregoer near me suggested they might have thought the crackling noises had been gunfire, just as the front of house manager was clambering to the stage to reply to the confused stage manager's questions with a simple "I don't know what's happening, the audience just left".
Perhaps the greatest nightmare in theatre, it transpired that, possibly owing to different acoustics in the theatre, audience members in the rear stalls and circles were concerned the dress and grand circle were about to break and collapse. With many theatregoers fearing a repeat of the ceiling collapse of Nimax's Apollo Theatre from 2013, the audience collectively made the instant decision to vacate their seats, in spite of the many pages in the programme detailing the recent, extensive restoration work made to the Garrick theatre.
What I found most shocking about this otherwise incredibly uneventful event was how rapidly and unanimously the audience made the decision to leave their seats, faster and more eagerly than they ever seem capable to when a performance actually ends. It's startling to me, that a British audience, who are nervous enough to stand at curtain call, or laugh at joke lines, were all able to stand and interrupt a performance with no instruction and based on very little evidence of danger.
Is the West End still experiencing fallout from the Apollo Theatre incident, or are we all living in a post-ISIS London in which tourists and local theatregoers alike collectively fear random and deadly acts of terrorism and violence at any given moment for no apparent reason? Either possibility is disturbing news to actors and front of house staff alike, the knowledge that they may now need to be prepared to calm audience panic under the most trivial of circumstances, and the concern that performers may be required to work much harder to engage the audience's attention if their focus lies on the condition of the ceiling and not the scenes on stage. Perhaps there's more than mobile phones and drunk and disorderly behaviour to be concerned by these days when it comes to theatrical distraction.