Martin Shaw goes 'nuclear' at coughing, phone-scrolling theatregoers

He spent 10 years tacking violent crime as the hard-nosed detective Inspector George Gently and handed down judgments as the austere Judge John Deed.

But actor Martin Shaw has now turned his attention to wrongdoing of a very different kind - audience members who cough too loudly and look at their phones during theatre performances.

Shaw has said that the behaviour of theatregoers has got worse in recent years, with people having coughing fits and checking Twitter during the show, rather than watching his acting.

“There were always people who coughed,” he said in an interview with the Mail on Sunday. “Now they seem to cough louder in the theatre than in their own living room.

"Even if people aren’t answering their phone, they are scrolling through their tweets, you can see the light. It’s the most distracting thing and changes the dynamic of the auditorium.”

Martin Shaw

But while it is difficult for actors to do anything about distracting behaviour during the show, Shaw thinks he has found a solution in telling off audience members for their phones ringing, while still in character.

"The last time it happened, I was playing Henry Hobson in Hobson’s Choice,” he said.

“I pointed at the owner and said in character, ‘Turn that off or get out.’ It got a huge round of applause because most people feel the same.”

Shaw admitted he gets “way beyond stressed” by ringtones interrupting the show. If someone else is speaking and he has to keep quiet, a “nuclear explosion” goes off in his head, he said.

He is not the first actor to speak out about the bad behaviour of audiences.

Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey, famously reprimanded an audience member for coughing too frequently at a performance of The Royal Court’s Posh.

In 2015, Hamlet star Benedict Cumberbatch told theatregoers off after the show for filming his performance on their camera phones.

“It’s mortifying and there’s nothing less supportive,” he said.

The Barbican later said that it would evict audience members who used their devices during performances.

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