Theatre Moment

The other night we went to the National Theatre and I had a very scary moment. I realised that the majority of the audience not only had the same immaculately coiffed grey hair (male and female), the same grey clothing in luxurious fabrics with appropriate touches of jewel colours for ties and scarves, the same politely understated body language when edging past to get to their seats... and spookiest of all, the same laughs at exactly the same moments. It's hard to communicate the similarity of the laughs... not like the variety in canned laughter, but the exact same intonations rising and falling with the exact same... there's only one word for it... smugness. It's enough to make you want to burst out with a big donkey guffaw at a very serious moment, just to shatter that smugness! You'd probably be ordered out by one of the actors, though, as happened to a man whose mobile phone rang repeatedly in "The History Boys" the other night (he deserved it though!!!!!!).