The jackboot zealotry of ushers is ruining theatre

Southwark Playhouse has revived an American show, The Last Five Years, whose run was cancelled in March. In advance, I received an email outlining the theatre’s new rules, which appeared to exceed the minimum legal requirements. At the venue, I found that the main entrance had become the exit while the side door had become the main entrance. What for? Perhaps an unsubtle reminder that ‘everything’s changed now, pal, so get used to it’. The queue on the pavement moved at a turtle’s pace because the usher gave each playgoer a homily about the new regime before allowing them to pass through Checkpoint Charlie.

Inside it was like an army hospital. Sentries in the corridors regulated our access to the loos. The auditorium had been denuded of half its chairs, and each seat was now separated from its neighbour by a wobbly sheet of Perspex. The strip joints in Soho used to have similar partitions to give voyeurs privacy during girly shows. I sat in my plastic hutch, wheezing through the same rancid muzzle I’ve been using for months, and I glanced around at the masked spectators on either side of me. We looked like a set of terminal cases in a lung unit.

The show began. It’s a sung-through musical about New Yorkers, Jamie and Cathy, who meet and fall in love. She acts. He writes. He succeeds. She doesn’t. They marry. Things go awry when he lands a book deal but she refuses to attend the launch party. The story focuses entirely on the couple, who seem to lack any friends or family and who have no ambitions beyond sustaining their affair and chasing success in their chosen fields. There was no suspense, no jeopardy, no threat to their happiness.