ern's: To sleep, perchance to dream ...

A theatre critic has caused controversy by snoring through Terence Rattigan's Cause C�l�bre. But surely there are worse things than a mid-show snooze. Aren't there?

Poor Paul Taylor. There the Independent's theatre critic was, settling into his nice comfortable seat at London's Old Vic for the opening night of Terence Rattigan's Cause C�l�bre, getting out his notebook and pen; feeling the lights dim, hearing the soft hush of anticipation, and then ?.

Zzzzzz. He's out for the count. And afterwards, to make matters worse, he suffers the indignity of a confrontation in the foyer with James McAvoy ? who has, by a nasty quirk of fate, been sitting in the same row and taken exception to Taylor's, er, lack of focus on the performance of his wife, Anne-Marie Duff.

Or so, at least, we understand from a diary item in the Daily Telegraph today, in which an unnamed theatregoer also at the show's first night claims that Taylor's snoring was distinctly audible. "The noise was deafening," says the mole (who should try listening to my dad). "He was clearly in a very deep sleep indeed and, to be fair to the play, he had nodded off before it had even begun." Of Taylor's encounter with McAvoy, he or she adds: "There was a right rumpus. McAvoy was absolutely furious."

McAvoy's alleged fury is understandable ? falling asleep during his partner's big moment is surely on roughly the same level of rudeness as dropping off over dinner while your mate's boyfriend is showing you their fascinating snaps. But the key fact here, of course, is that Taylor is a critic, and was meant to be sitting in judgment on Duff and the rest of the cast ? to pay due attention to the play is surely the minimum expected.

According to a spokesman for the Independent, Taylor will not now be reviewing the production. But he offered a good excuse: "Mr Taylor," he says, "who has a medical condition, is under the care of a doctor and is currently on medication, was ill during the performance." If this is the case, Taylor surely deserves understanding rather than opprobrium.

So what about the rest of us ? the non-critics? Is falling asleep in the theatre really as rude as all that? I've never actually fallen asleep during a show, though I've sometimes felt like it (especially during The Pitmen Painters at the National, which I found interminable, and the excruciating opera Le Grand Macabre at the Coliseum: in both cases, it was more the noise and lights that kept me awake than any interest in the onstage action).

I can imagine that, for actors, looking down on a sea of sleeping faces could be more than a little disconcerting ? but I'd argue that the very act of falling asleep could be a useful critical barometer. Theatre should entertain, and ideally keep audiences on the edge of their seats. The playwright Alan Ayckbourn knows more about this than most, and summed up this point brilliantly an interview last year. "You're asking people quite often to sit in the same seat for two hours plus, with just a brief interval for drinks," he told me. "You've got to give them a feeling that if they leave the auditorium at any second they're not going to be happy, because they want to know what happens next." If a show is regularly inducing snores in a significant section of the audience, the director should surely take the hint.

There are, anyway, much worse things you could do to show your lack of appreciation. You could throw rotten vegetables at the stage (luckily for actors this tradition is almost nonexistent these days; in Shakespeare's time it was de rigueur). You could laugh loudly at moments that aren't meant to be funny: the appearance of two actors dressed as a polar bear during Greenland at the National was apparently quite often greeted with giggles, though it was meant to be a poignant moment. You could talk all the way through, or take a call on your mobile, though you risk angering the actors: Kevin Spacey, Richard Griffiths, Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig have all harangued audience members for precisely this crime.

Or, of course, you could just get up and leave. Doing this in the middle of a performance is the height of rudeness ? other members of the audience might be enjoying it, after all, and however much you hate the show its yawn-inducing dullness may well not be the actors' fault. The alternative is to leave during the interval ? something I have, I admit, done twice. On both occasions I felt bad about it, but the shows were really so awful that I decided my time was better spent elsewhere.

So let's get this into context. I suspect that falling asleep during a show is rather less rude than getting up and leaving. But surely it's less dispiriting for a cast to perform to an auditorium full of people, asleep or otherwise, than to come back after the interval to find that half the seats have mysteriously been vacated?

Laura Barnett

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds