Stephen Mangan has questioned whether all audience members understand that “they’re in the same room” at the theatre, as he recalled one particularly shocking instance of poor etiquette.
The British actor is returning to the West End for The Truth, Florian Zeller’s comedy about two unfaithful couples, in which he stars opposite Janie Dee, Sarah Hadland and Ardal O’Hanlon.
Speaking not long after Rosamund Pike called out an audience member during her own West End play, Inter Alia, for texting, Mangan was asked whether behaviour in theatres had grown worse.
“You sometimes feel as if the audience don’t appreciate that they’re in the same room,” he told The Times. “If they pull out a phone and start texting, we’re right there. We can see it. If they lean over and whisper something to their friend, we can hear it.” “
He recalled doing a play on Broadway – the Norman Conquests in 2009 – in the round, when someone in the front row put their two feet on the stage.
“You wouldn’t walk into your accountant’s office and stick your feet on his desk,” he said. “Anyway, I kicked the feet off the stage. That was the end of that.”
Debate has returned in recent months over badly behaved audience members and the best way to address them.
Earlier this month, Pike used the curtain call at the end of the production of Inter Alia – in which she plays a court judge – at Wyndham’s Theatre in London to give a lecture on theatre etiquette.
“I just wanted to say for anyone going to the theatre, it’s a huge thing that we’re trying to give you,” she told the audience. “I am trying to tell you a story, and I’m feeling you, and I hope you’re feeling me too.”
She then pointed out that someone had been texting during one of the most emotional and pivotal scenes in the play: “You know who you are and I’m not going to single you out.
“Maybe it was very important, and maybe you’re a doctor, and you’re saving someone’s life, and I hope you are, but we do see these, we do feel them.”
Pike’s performance as Jessica Parks, a London Crown Court judge, won her the 2026 Olivier Award for Best Actress.
Just weeks after her speech, she managed to keep her cool after a phone alarm in the front row disrupted another performance.
Despite refraining from any comment once the show had ended, it was reported that Pike glared at the woman when the phone was eventually retrieved from her handbag and switched off.
Earlier this month, the Royal Shakespeare Company asked a woman to leave a performance on The Tempest after her baby repeatedly interrupted the production. Theatregoers at the play, which starred Sir Kenneth Branagh, complained about the disruption after hearing “gurgling and cooing and chirping very loudly throughout”.
