Critical Mobile & Naked Flesh Alert???

The modern bane of nights at the theatre is of course the mobile phone that goes off at the most inopportune moments – which is especially inopportune, and potentially damaging, on a press night. At Wednesday night's opening of Mary Stuart, actress Janet McTeer was in a particularly key scene in the title role when a mobile phone suddenly rang in the tiny confines of the Donmar Warehouse. And the culprit was none other than the Evening Standard's notoriously tetchy theatre critic, Nicholas de Jongh, who is liable to erupt at the slightest external disturbance (often, in the process, causing an even bigger one of his own). At one tiny fringe theatre in Southwark, he was once seen to leave his seat to chastise an entire party who, in his view, were getting a little over-boisterous in their consumption of crisps during a performance of Cabaret. On another, he famously exploded at the fact that his seat allocation was on a side aisle, not centre aisle, for Don Carlos when it transferred to the West End’s Gielgud Theatre, and sought out the press rep in the interval to tear a strip off her as well. An even bigger distraction to first night audiences on these warm summer nights is de Jongh’s penchant for stripping his chest and torso bare. On some occasions, he’s even gone so far as to remove his shirt entirely and place it underneath his seat. When he did so recently at the Royal Court, his review the next day for Talking to Terrorists advised the theatre management to get its air-conditioning fixed. This week, when passing judgement on Mary Stuart, he noted: "It would work still better...if Harriet Walter's Elizabeth and Janet McTeer's Mary carried full conviction as the troubled queens." Actually, it works even better if patrons, including critics, remember to switch their mobile phones off. And don't expose their chests to public view.

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