The standing ovation has become a form of tyranny

Surely I can applaud Sir Kenneth Branagh and Dame Judi Dench from a seated position

Audience etiquette can be more of a talking point than what happens on the stage.

Last week my colleague John Walsh wrote on how he felt guilty, almost shamed, at involuntarily singing along at a West End musical. Meanwhile, The Stage’s critic Mark Shenton, writes about how he complained to a lady at a theatre he attended for taking pictures with her mobile phone camera. She retorted: “That’s my kid bother up there, and when you’ve wiped his arse as often as I have, you can take pictures too.”

I consider that a fine retort, worthy of our greatest contemporary playwrights and screen writers. It trumps any possible objection, and must surely entitle its author to carry on taking photos to her heart’s content.

My own concern this week is different. It is the convention of the standing ovation, no make that the tyranny of the standing convention. I was at a performance of The Winter’s Tale starring Sir Kenneth Branagh and Dame Judi Dench. Production and performances were simply wonderful, and towards the end almost unbearably moving. So, yes I liked it, and was eager to applaud at the curtain call, and applaud heartily – but from a seated position. Yet, all around me people felt compelled to rise to their feet.

I’m of the opinion that standing ovations should, like five star reviews, be rare, so rare that they belong to an unforgettable occasion. They should also be spontaneous and almost involuntary. One should find oneself on one’s feet, barely knowing how one got there. Certainly, it strikes me as nigh impossible that several hundred people can have all have had that spontaneous urge and involuntarily leapt to their feet together.

No, I’m sure that many, like me, would have been just as happy applauding from their seat, where at least one can see the actors properly, which one can’t when rows of people in front of you are standing. But everyone rose, because those around them rose. Indeed, I quickly found myself to be pretty well the only person in the theatre sitting. What to do? If I remained sitting, would it be seen as a signal that I hadn’t enjoyed myself? That I was a curmudgeon? That I was lazy? That I was one of those monstrous corporate freebie guests? That I didn’t care for this Shakespeare lark? That I had had too many ice creams at the interval? All sorts of reasons to be ostracised go through your head.

And so, eventually, slowly, reluctantly, I got to my feet. I’ve always hated those rock musicians who command audiences at gigs to stand up, feeling they should earn it rather than order it. But I begin to wonder if the tyranny of the standing ovation in theatres isn’t worse. It’s not even audience etiquette, it’s passive aggression.

It’s only rock’n’roll but I like it to be accurate

BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight the other evening announced that “the original line-up of Fleetwood Mac contained two women, which is more than the whole of Formula 1 motor racing has.” Wrong. The original line-up of Fleetwood Mac had no women. The night before I had been to a brilliant show by Ballet Rambert, which included a ballet set to numbers by The Rolling Stones. Its choreographer, Christopher Bruce, wrote in the programme that the numbers he had chosen from the 1960s and 1970s had informed his youth. Clearly, as with the sixties, if you remember the seventies you weren’t there. There were no seventies Stones’ numbers in the show. We all make mistakes, and does any of this matter? I think it does. I think that vintage rock has a global collection of anoraks, and they/we take it too seriously to permit any rewriting of music history.

Danny Boyle couldn’t ch-ch-ch-change David Bowie’s mind

On the subject of vintage rock, the film director Danny Boyle said this week that he was “in grief” that David Bowie had refused him permission to use his music for one of Boyle’s film projects, and the project had to be abandoned. He added that he wanted his film about Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to “fill the space in my heart left by the abandoned Bowie script”, “In grief”! “The space in my heart”! See what I mean about taking it seriously. That’s another thing about vintage rock heroes, Danny. They were and are control freaks. A bit like film directors.

d.lister@independent.co.uk

twitter: @davidlister1