Are standing ovations becoming overused by theater audiences?

Yes

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by Kenneth Andrews

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The lights come up at the end of an evening live theatre. The cast returns to the stage to enjoy a well-deserved and lengthy round of applause. There are probably a couple of curtain calls, the cast usually directs the applause to any musicians lurking in the orchestra pit or visible in the wings. All jolly good fun.

Except, someone's standing up, a few rows ahead of you, and clapping like a sealion. The person behind does the same - probably just so they can see the stage - and a gaggle of giggling children leap out of their seats off to the right. Within a couple of minutes, over half the audience has risen, and the standing ovation has passed the critical mass threshold whereby anyone still seated just looks like a miserable old curmudgeon.

You are trapped now. You must stand, you must clap, those lucky blighters who left the auditorium as soon as the lights came up will be in the car park by now, but your respectful applause has condemned you to an indefinite period of clapping until your hands feel like chunks of raw meat. When will it end? Will it end? Will you die here, constrained to clap out your days through peer pressure and being unable to get past the obese mother of twelve at the end of the row? No, wait. It's ended. Already. Because the evening's performance was not Pavarotti's final concert or Sir John Gielgud's King Lear - it was a local amateur production of The Importance of Being Earnest and you've just given it a lot more praise than it deserves.

You can tell that standing ovations are becoming overused simply because of the places where they occur. I've never seen an amateur production leading to a standing ovation - and when you consider that the chances are the audience will consist ENTIRELY of the cast's friends and family, that's a bit of a surprise. On the other end of the scale, in Stratford upon Avon, I've seen Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, Sir Iain McKellen's King Lear and Patrick Stewart's Prospero - and no one saw fit to go leaping out of their chair at those legends (apart from maybe a few Star Trek fans, of which more later).

Every musical I've ever seen, though, half the audience is on their feet before the final chorus is finished. You could make the argument that musicals have a deeper emotional impact or something, but if you're seriously suggesting that the Rum Tum Tugger is more affecting than Patrick Stewart's Prospero breaking his staff at the end of The Tempest, or Ralph Fiennes facing his God at the end of Brand then... just read more. Seriously.

The musicals I've seen include: Joseph (and his amazing technicolour dreamcoat), Cats, Blood Brothers, Wicked and Les Miserables. All incredibly different, but with one thing in common. They're West End productions and people who go to see them are often going for the experience of seeing a West End production, rather than an evening at the theatre as such. Somehow, giving third rate dancers and failed pop stars a standing ovation and ten curtain calls has become part of the 'experience'.

The other factor is, of course, that of celebrity. Theatre is increasingly marketed on the basis that it's an opportunity to see whichever credibility-seeking film star of the moment in the flesh. Which brings us back to Patrick Stewart, a man who has spent upwards of 40 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company. At the stage door these days, there are inevitably a crowd of Star Trek fans, and he's usually terribly happy that his Star Trek link has enticed them into experiencing the wonders of live theatre. It goes without saying that these are the boys leaping from their seats at the end of the show. Which in some ways is really brilliant, it shows real enthusiasm and excitement and I'm all for it. But Stewart could come on stage roaring drunk and vomit over the orchestra pit, and they'd still stand and shout his name when he came on for the curtain call. It gets to a point where our obsession with celebrity becomes potentially insulting to the rest of the cast. And if you've really forked over 50 quid to see Orlando Bloom on stage, I can almost guarantee that many of the rest of the cast will be better actors. If not most of them. Maybe even all of them.

Does this overuse really do any harm, though? Probably not, really. But it does devalue the special impact associated with a truly earth-shattering tour de force performance. Let's not forget that the musicals I mentioned are all on insanely long runs. Motivation must be tough at the best of times to belt your lungs out six nights a week and twice on Saturday. If I was getting a standing ovation every night regardless of how many notes I missed, I wouldn't stay at the top of my game for long.

If you've seen a tremendously moving piece of theatre, musical or otherwise, and you feel the need to participate in a standing ovation, then all power to you. But don't just do it because you hope you'll catch the eye of the hot nurse from Scrubs, or because you think it's not a proper trip to the theatre without an upright crescendo. A standing ovation should be a spontaneous explosion of audience appreciation, not a grudging ritual to be endured.

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