Fringe Etiquette

This past Thursday, I swept across London, be-scarfed and be-gloved, to Greenwich Playhouse, an above-a-pub space right next to Greenwich train station (which is handy as I don’t know Greenwich at all and suspect the chances of me getting lost en route if it were otherwise, would be high). Anyway, they are staging Hedda Gabler at the moment, in what is a solid if unremarkable production.

I shan’t pick holes in it here, however there’s one incident I can’t let pass uncommented on. In the audience there were several girls who were clearly studying the play for a course and had come along because they felt they should. And the production, while well done in places, did have the odd awkward moment, a fair scattering of stiffly delivered line, at which these girls laughed openly and in an increasingly less discrete fashion. The Playhouse is an intimate space and these girls were sat on the front row so that every wave of their giggling and sneering must have been audible to the actors. It was just so deeply inconsiderate; they even joked about intentionally trying to break the actors' concentration. Thinking back on it, I should have gently said something to them, rather than just impotently sitting there and frowning at the backs of their heads.