Times of London critic Benedict Nightingale (great name!) has come up with his 15 Golden Rules of proper theater etiquette.

Rule 1: Don’t just switch off your mobile (phone) in response to what’s very likely a cute invitation from some fake-friendly voice. Make sure it’s off before you enter the theatre, thus making sure that you’re not publicly humiliated by Richard Griffiths or A.N. Other.

Rule 3: Don’t bring picnics. In fact, don’t eat anything, not even your fingernails, even if the play is, well, nail-biting. If you must buy an ice cream in the interval, make sure you finish it and dispose of the carton before the restart. The scraping at remnants sounds like scratching on a wall.

[Ice-cream selling during intermish is a practice we highly encourage American theaters to adopt, by the way. A sugar rush helps keep one awake during second and third acts.]

Rule 7: Have nothing to do with standing ovations unless a performance is close to a once-in-a-lifetime experience. In America such ovations have become meaningless and, if they don’t occur, they indicate disapproval. We don’t want them to become regular here.

Oh, if only we Yanks could stop popping up like jack-in-the-boxes every time an actor takes a bow.

Mr. Nightingale also disapproves of clapping actors on and off the stage during scenes, says “try not to be tall” (to obstruct views of those sitting directly behind) and he takes critics to task for looking slovenly on opening nights. To wit: Try to be a little better dressed than the critics, who often look as they’ve been grabbed from a washing machine that hasn’t yet been turned on.

He has several critic-related no-no’s, including Rule 11: Never wake a sleeping critic.

Got that right. A few winks during a slow stretch usually make for a better review later on.

Rule 13: If the child you’re bringing is chatty, gag it. If it’s fidgety, handcuff and shackle it. And if you’re altruistic enough to bring a school party to a Shakespeare matinée, threaten potential wrongdoers with tickets to the next revival of Timon of Athens, to be followed by a ten-page essay on the ethics of Apemantus.

The rest of the rules are here.

Want to add to the list? Email your "rules for theater etiquette" or response to Nightingale's 15 rules and we'll post them here. editors@theaterjones.com

Whoever's phone went off during a preview performance of Keith Huff's A Steady Rain on Broadway should consider him or herself pretty lucky. What, considering that Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman were onstage and either one of them could have taken the offender's head off.

Instead, Jackman—in character, as a cop—waited and asked the phone's owner "you wanna get that?"

When it continued he said "You wanna get it, grab it. I don't care, grab it. Grab your phone. It doesn't matter." And it rang again and again and the actors waited before they soldiered on. Applause was achieved when the ringing finally ceased.

If you think Patti LuPone is vicious towards rude theater goers, what do you think 007 and Wolverine are gonna do?

Here's the video of the incident posted on YouTube by TMZ.com (if you're using IE you might not see the full-screen video above, so click on this link).

Shortly before I read Denver Post theater critic John Moore's rant this morning about the increasingly rude behavior of today's theatergoers, I was at opening night of Dallas Theater Center's "family musical," Sarah, Plain and Tall. I was in an aisle seat as a family of five made their way to their row. The youngest member of their brood held a cup of hot chocolate, sans lid, in his grubby little paw. His sister jostled him, causing the drink to spill down my right arm.

"Sheesh!" I said, loud enough for the parents to hear.

"What happened?" the dad asked the mom.

"I don't know. He did it," she said, pointing to the kid.

As I did triage on my arm to ascertain the degree of burn damage (minimal, though my silk blouse probably won't be the same), not one member of this clan offered an "I'm sorry" or even a "whoops."

So it was with great satisfaction that I read Mr. Moore's rundown of bad behavior he's witnessed in theaters in the Mile-High City recently. He also offers a helpful tips list of things you should never do while watching a play. Among them, answer a cell call and conduct a conversation.

Like, duh.

Anyway, read it all for yourself here and enjoy!

From the British paper The Guardian comes this Dead Ringer report:

Actor Patrick Stewart apparently lost his rag with an autograph hunter outside the stage door of the King's theatre in Edinburgh, after a performance of Waiting for Godot. "Are you the arsehole who was sitting in the front tonight?" was his introductory comment, before bellowing "You know, what I really want to know is how you can sleep at night? I really hope you're pleased with yourself."

The offender had been spied earlier trying to photograph Stewart and co-star Ian McKellen at the end of the performance of the Beckett play.

The flashing of cameras and waving of mobile phones at eye-level can just about be absorbed in Grease or We Will Rock You, but in straight plays, in intimate venues, these activities can be a nightmare - particularly as the shutters and flashes always seem to activate during the most dramatic pause or just before the punchline.

Read more of this gotcha in the Guardian online.

From the Moscow Times, this story by reporter John Freedman tells of the extremes Moscow's Studio of Theatrical Art is going to to silence cell phone interruptions during performances. Writes Freedman about his level of annoyance: 

...the sounds of ring tones bursting out like musical land mines during performances — everything from old-fashioned ring-a-dings to fancy orchestral versions of (God forbid!) “Smoke on the Water” — are enough to bring out the warrior in me. These are like people who finish drinking a beverage they bought in a kiosk and toss the empty cup or bottle in the gutter. What you’d really like to do is inflict physical punishment on them. In reality, however, there isn’t much you can do about people who refuse to use their brains. There’s a great Russian saying that goes more or less like this: An idiot’s an idiot for a very long time.

Read what they're doing to wrest those phones from their owners.

And to see the latest "dead ringers" TheaterJones is busting, just scroll down this page. 

Theater Jones has been planning this Dead Ringers column for months, excited about waging war on beastly theatergoers. So imagine our joy when a seriously major diva, Patti LuPone, made the news when she broke from Mama Rose to eject flashing photo takers at a recent performance of Gypsy revival on Broadway.

Here's an audio clip of the incident. It's enough to scare those Baby June-curls right off your head. Now, how can we enlist Ms. Lupone to take care of all audience evildoers for us?

Patti LuPone wasn't the only Mama Rose who stopped her performance to oust rude audience members. Her recent tirade reminded us of the story about the original Mama Rose—the great Ethel Merman—who escorted a heckler out of the theater (although it was during a performance of Call Me Madam). Here's what happened, as told by her understudy Elaine Stritch in the Tony-winning one-woman show Elaine Stritch at Liberty.