The Standing Ovation Theory of Everything

Why Our Choices Are Never Ours Alone

Photo: Christian Bertrand/Shutterstock/The Stage

British audiences used to be renowned for their froideur. When Dustin Hoffman made his West End debut in the The Merchant of Venice, in 1989, he was warned not to expect any standing ovations. Indeed, the only time his audience rose to applaud was when he announced the death of Laurence Olivier. “You have to fucking die to get a standing ovation here,” Hoffman said afterwards. These days, standing ovations in our theatres are much more common. Audiences raised on X-Factor-type shows are positively eager to get to their feet. But some of us are refuseniks.

Last week I went to see a superb new West End production of Henry IV, Parts One and Two, featuring Sir Ian McKellen as Falstaff. McKellen gave the most compelling Shakespearean performance I’ve ever seen, and he did so twice over. The sheer physical and mental energy required to do this would be remarkable at any age, let alone in a man who will turn 85 next month. That’s before we get to the mastery of his art - the way McKellen made his acting seem effortless, or rather, made us forget he was acting at all. I felt I was witnessing pure life up on the stage. It was a magical experience.

So I didn’t begrudge McKellen or his fellow players the standing ovation they received at the end of the evening. I didn’t join in, however. Neither did the friend who saw it with me, even though he loved it too. Why not? I can’t speak for my friend, a notorious curmudgeon, but personally, I hate the feeling that I’m being softly coerced by the group into doing something I haven’t chosen to do. Even though, if it was just me, I probably would choose to do it. I’m not saying it makes sense. But I felt that somebody had to stand up, sorry, sit down, for emotional miserliness in public.

As I sat stolidly in my seat, it struck me that I was living through a two-minute microcosm of social change. The theatre represented a whole society collectively deciding on something - that gay people that should be allowed to marry, for instance, or that smoking is a bad idea - through a process of social negotiation; one which was happening, for the most part, beneath conscious awareness. It also struck me that I wasn’t fully in control of my own choices. One minute I was just sitting, the next I was making a decision to sit. It was quite odd.

Let’s take a closer look at that standing ovation. I would divide it into four stages.