Ben Elton gives Chris Evans his reaction to heated debate over theatre audiences singing during shows

Virgin Radio

13 Apr 2023, 13:00

We Will Rock You writer and director Ben Elton has weighed in on the current discussion around audiences singing along while watching theatre productions. 

The debate began after This Morning’s Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary found themselves in hot water during a discussion about whether or not audiences should sing along to theatre shows, which can often be considered a disruption by the cast.

The heated topic was then turned up a notch when a recent showing of The Bodyguard in Manchester was halted due to a rowdy interruption which eventually involved the police. 

Speaking about the incident on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with cinch, Ben, who is brains behind the longrunning Queen musical, said they implemented an announcement to ask audiences not to sing along over the music, and called the level of potential disruption to the show “bad audience behaviour.”

He continued: “It is a problem because it's a lack of respect. It’s not respecting the performance, and it’s also not respecting the audience. People make a huge sacrifice to come to the theatre, it's expensive. With our show, you’ve got to sell 90 percent of the tickets to break-even, we put a lot of value on stage. People have to pay a lot to get a ticket.

“I'm a comedian who has done a lot of comedy over the years. I've got a really carefully thought-out routine. I've spent years writing my material. Of course, if a genius happens to come up one day and manages to entertain the audience better than I can, then I suppose possibly you could argue he or she's got the right to interrupt the show that people have paid to see but that's never happened.”

Ben was on-air with Chris Evans to chat all about his stage debut, which will take place when We Will Rock You returns to the London Coliseum this summer. 

The hugely successful show, featuring the greatest hits of Queen, was written by Ben and first made its way on stage in 2002, and now, over 20 years later, the author is treading the boards as The Rebel Leader for the very first time when the production lands at the London Coliseum. 

Speaking about how his time as The Rebel Leader came about, Ben shared: “Brian and Roger were really enthusiastic. Because they've seen me do auditions where I'm taking people through it and saying ‘do it like this, do it like that’. They said, ‘well, why don't you do it?’

“Do I want to spend three months doing the same thing, eight shows a week? I do that on stand up tours anyway. I'm so excited. At first I was nervous, but I'm still nervous about the singing. My wife's a musician and she’s said, ‘you can sing it. Don't overthink it. Don't try too hard.’ But it's a huge responsibility. Roger promised to work with me on it, so I couldn’t work better than that!”

We Will Rock You returns to the London Coliseum for 12 weeks from 2nd June to 27th August. Ticket information can be found on wewillrockyoulondon.co.uk.

For more great interviews listen to  The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with cinch weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or  catch up on-demand here.