Not much is wrong with the Globe theatre on London’s South Bank. It has a well-deserved reputation for staging innovative productions of works by the Bard and his peers and as a platform for ambitious new writing. In addition to the architectural marvel that is the wooden Elizabethan theatre, the Globe site boasts a state of the art learning centre and an atmospheric bar / restaurant. It all makes for wonderful summer evenings under the stars. You get the impression that Shakespeare’s spirit is twinkling indulgently down from heaven, unfazed by the electric lighting, neon emergency exit signs and the dull roar of planes passing over his Wooden ‘O’.
There is just one serious oversight for which Sam Wanamaker, the patron and driving force behind the new Globe, and Mark Rylance, its first artistic director, deserve much censure. They totally failed to resurrect the fine 16th century tradition of hurling rotten fruit at bad actors. At least I hope it was an oversight rather than hubris: for even if they were intending to only stage excellent productions, they should still have reintroduced the custom of throwing things onto the stage.
Elizabethan audiences would reward good acting by tossing coins up to the performers at the end of a play: bending their knees to collect the money caused the actors to ‘break’ the line of their legs and the rest is history!
Surely the time is ripe – over ripe – for reintroducing the practise of throwing fruit. So many theatre productions, even of controversial and challenging plays, are solely attended by row upon row of demure, middle-class white people in their best clothes muffling their coughs and sipping their £8 G & Ts. The closest to unruly anarchic audience behaviour you will come across is the frantic panicky scramble to silence a ringing phone in the second half. Why do people feel the need to switch them back on in the interval? If you’re that busy and important then don’t come in the first place! Imagine if the penalty for your phone going off was a face full of fetid figs? The actors might join in the interactive pelting of offenders from the stage.
Throwing fruit would not have to be confined to punishing bad acting, it could be incorporated into productions: the boring bits in the middle of Chekhov and Shakespeare plays could be livened up with a spirited food fight! The dreaded school trip to a matinee of Macbeth would become a longed for treat only open to the best and brightest students.
At this difficult time, when Arts Council funding is melting away, corporate sponsorship may be the answer. 1/3 of all food bought in Britain’s supermarkets gets thrown away and 1 in 4 adults is now obese. This would seem to suggest that it’s not the choccy and pizzas in the landfill. What better way for the much maligned supermarket giants to put something back into society than by collecting people’s unloved fruit and veg and supplying it to the theatres? “Toss a Tangerine from Tesco!”, “Sling Sainsburys’ Strawberries!” and for the higher end of the market: “Whang a Waitrose (organic of course)Watermelon!”
Politicians would not be slow to jump on the bandwagon. I can almost hear Cameron/Clegg/Brown:
“We are the party of the environment. When we win the next election Britons of every age, gender, ethnicity, race and religion will unite to lead the world in proactive recycling of decaying organic matter in our world class theatres. We will also establish special theatrical scholarships to improve our cricket and rugby teams: promising young throwers will hone their skills and intelligence in the stalls. Fruit chucking could be a demonstration sport in the 2012 Olympics and our medal hopes are high!”
In fact, politicians themselves might become secondary targets for fruit throwing in a bid to re-engage people with politics. Kent, the garden of England, could pioneer a US style caucus in which voters indicate their ratings of candidates in the quantities of sustainably sourced local produce with which they pelt them. There is a precedent for this form of democracy: the first ever recorded incidence of food throwing took place in AD63 when the Roman Emperor Vespasian was covered in rotten turnips during a riot in Hadrumetum (modern day Tunisia so Vespasian was lucky it was turnips and not the colony’s trademark tuna…)
It is depressing to think that, in our topsy-turvy twenty-first century, having fruit thrown at you would swiftly become as much of a status symbol as an ASBO. I have a disturbing vision of deranged reality TV contestants rushing the Globe stage screeching:
“I really am a Celebrity: Please throw fruit at me!!!”
Shakespeare would turn in his grave.
