I paid £120 to see Sarah Jessica Parker on stage – but the audience ruined it
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Without wishing to name-drop – CLUNK! – I went to see Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick this week in Plaza Suite.
Get me. Actually, get me a drink. Preferably not one of the tiny-but-perfectly-formed bottles of prosecco for sale in the interval, because having forked out £120 for the ticket I fear another £14 will reduce my credit rating to rubble.
I need a stiff one because I was… disappointed. Sharp intake of breath. I’ll let that sit for a little.
What? No! NO! Not with SJP. As if. Sure, the Neil Simon play was remorselessly mannered, overly kooky and really showing its age (don’t you dare say it) but the Sex and the City star was divine. A consummate performance.
It was the audience that didn’t know how to act. Not a clue.
At the risk of sounding like Dame Maggie as Dowager Countess of Grantham enquiring “what is a weekend?”, I found myself affronted by the manners – or lack of them – displayed in the auditorium.
Not just the ubiquitous phones and the gauche selfies, the furtive rustling of chocolate wrappers and the crinkle of plastic water bottles being loudly guzzled to the very last drop, lest global warming might strike the stalls before the third act.
It was the way Parker was given a shrieking, hollering round of applause the moment she click-clacked on stage, as though it were a live filming of the Late Show with David Letterman. Owlish Broderick earned the same, before he’d so much as spoken a word.
Where did these people think they were? A Ryanair flight? (I’ve only ever clapped once onboard an Airbus A320 and that was on easyJet after three traumatic abortive landings in Inverness, when shifting cloud banks tried to kill us. When we eventually touched down in Glasgow, a mere 170 miles away, we were mostly relieved to be alive, hence the applause.)
But I digress. What’s with the clapping? On quizzes and panel shows, guests applaud themselves. Whether they win or lose – more clapping. There’s something weird and childish about this need to join in.
Then there are the sing-a-long musicals that aren’t supposed to be; police were even called after a mini-riot broke out at The Bodyguard musical in Manchester last year when punters refused to stop belting out I Will Always Love You over the performers.
Back in London, Parker told The Stage that the producers of Plaza Suite had prepared her for a “civilised engagement”, where audiences were unlikely to applaud her entrance in the production like they do on Broadway. Some chance.
Incidentally, my husband went to the opera last month – I was desperate to discover if there were similar audience infractions? Gauche applause from the Royal Opera House newbies followed by withering disdain from the cognoscenti? Nope.
But then, as he pointed out, it was Elektra, so “everyone was pinioned to their seats in dread and horror”. Sounds good to me. If you want civilised engagement, SJP, come back next season; you’ll be a shoo-in for Medea.
