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| Kit Harington defends theatregoers criticised for eating and talking | Kit Harington defends theatregoers criticised for eating and talking |
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| Kit Harington, the Game of Thrones star who found himself at the centre of a row over theatre audiences’ behaviour this week, has said criticising young fans could kill theatre. | Kit Harington, the Game of Thrones star who found himself at the centre of a row over theatre audiences’ behaviour this week, has said criticising young fans could kill theatre. |
| Harington rejected claims made by award-winning theatre producer Richard Jordan in The Stage that audiences had behaved inappropriately at the final night of his Doctor Faustus at London’s Duke of York’s theatre. | |
| Harington, who rose to fame as Jon Snow in the TV series, said: “I am afraid that, if the theatre is going to die of anything, it will be from exactly this type of stereotyping and prejudice aimed towards a new and younger generation of theatregoers. | |
| “I have been a theatregoer since childhood and I didn’t feel that our audiences were disrespectful in the slightest. In the whole run of 10 weeks, I can count one time that a phone went off in the audience. | |
| Related: Game of Thrones fans 'ruined theatre show by eating chicken nuggets' | Related: Game of Thrones fans 'ruined theatre show by eating chicken nuggets' |
| “Of course pictures were occasionally taken, as unfortunately cannot be avoided in any audience anywhere today, but on the whole it was not a huge amount and definitely not off-putting as a performer. I found our audiences to be hugely enthusiastic, energised and responsive. I can’t think of a greater support I’ve had as an actor on the stage.” | “Of course pictures were occasionally taken, as unfortunately cannot be avoided in any audience anywhere today, but on the whole it was not a huge amount and definitely not off-putting as a performer. I found our audiences to be hugely enthusiastic, energised and responsive. I can’t think of a greater support I’ve had as an actor on the stage.” |
| Jordan wrote that television audiences enticed to the West End by big stars were ruining the experience for others by talking, eating loudly and answering their mobile phones. | |
| “What amazed me most was this audience, many of them Game of Thrones fans, could see nothing wrong in talking, eating and taking pictures throughout the show – or complaining when asked to stop,” he wrote in The Stage. | |
| “A couple saw nothing wrong in producing from their bag a box of McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets and a large side of fries. At the interval, they had popped out and purchased these to consume through the second half. | “A couple saw nothing wrong in producing from their bag a box of McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets and a large side of fries. At the interval, they had popped out and purchased these to consume through the second half. |
| “Munching certainly seemed to be the order of the day. The couple to my left ate their way through a large tub of popcorn during act I, while the couple on my right chomped through a packet of crisps. It was like listening to eating in Dolby Stereo, and sadly at the expense of being able to properly hear the lines being spoken on stage.” | “Munching certainly seemed to be the order of the day. The couple to my left ate their way through a large tub of popcorn during act I, while the couple on my right chomped through a packet of crisps. It was like listening to eating in Dolby Stereo, and sadly at the expense of being able to properly hear the lines being spoken on stage.” |
| Others in the arts world agree that audience behaviour has declined, but say that young people are not the worst – or only – offenders. | |
| Anthony Biggs, artistic director of the Jermyn Street theatre in central London, said: “The issue of young people misbehaving at the theatre is a complete red herring. I don’t know why critics are demonising them. Every time you go to a West End theatre, you see people texting, talking on their phones and eating. Age has nothing to do with it any more.” | |
| Biggs did not believe that theatres had to put up with this behaviour to keep audiences. He said: “The West End is doing better than ever. There’s no shortage of audiences, so theatres should not shy away from being strict about enforcing standards. | |
| “If you want to stop young people using their phones, you have to be draconian,” he added. “The best way to do that is to say you’ll physically remove offenders from the theatre, but that’s not realistic: it’s more draconian to get someone out of the auditorium during a performance than it is to ignore what’s going on.” | |
| Instead, Biggs said, theatres should install phone blocks that prevent devices from working in auditoriums, stop selling noisy food and embarrass anyone who continues to offend by training a spotlight on them during performances. “There’s nothing more effective than public embarrassment,” he added. | |
| But bad behaviour is not inevitable among audiences, even those that have never been to a theatre before, said Wendy Spon, casting director for the National Theatre. “The young people who came to see Daniel Radcliffe in Man and Superman at the National recently behaved perfectly well,” she said. “I would think there were lots there who were at the theatre for the first time and there were no problems at all.” | |
| Related: Kit Harington in Doctor Faustus: lewd, crude and essential for the West End | |
| Gary Sullivan, a theatre producer and director, agreed that bad behaviour was not limited to younger audiences. He said, however, that theatres were to blame for falling standards, not the public. | |
| “It’s not just young people: people in general can’t concentrate nowadays for two hours without checking their phones or eating something,” Sullivan said. “But theatres don’t help themselves by selling the nosiest of foods and theatregoers aren’t to blame for eating it: plays are on at lunchtime and dinnertimes, when people are hungry. | |
| “If a play attracts younger audiences, then you have to accept that they’re probably just starting to learn about the theatre experience. Why are theatres so shy about helping them learn? Cinemas don’t have scruples about showing two or three short films about not using phones and that even the light of the screen is disturbing to others. Theatres should be equally robust.” | |
| Richard Gresham, a frequent theatregoer, was moved to draw up the Theatre Charter in 2014, detailing expected audience behaviour: no rustling sweet wrappers, no mobile phones, definitely no eating McDonald’s. Attracting the signatures of more than 1,000 theatregoers, the charter has drawn support from numerous celebrities, including Stephen Fry. | |
| “If Kit Harington defended his audience’s behaviour, then Kit has never sat in an audience and experienced it himself, because behaviour nowadays is atrocious. You can’t miss it,” said Gresham, who started his campaign because of the increasing use of phones in the theatre. More recently, he said, the consumption of food had become just as much of an issue. | |
| “Theatres sell food and that encourages people to eat it and even go out in the interval and bring takeaways back in with them. Anything goes: Spud-U-Like, McDonald’s, sushi. I’ve seen it all,” he said. “I don’t want to discourage young people from going to the theatre, but they have to be taught how to behave. I don’t understand why people can’t sit still for two hours without eating, using their phones or chatting.” |