Phil Brown’s harsh words to those with a cough at the theatre

Have a cough and want to head out to the theatre? Don’t. Because there will be no sympathy for those who have coughing fits mid-show, Phil Brown says.

At a concert at QPAC recently I was amazed at how much coughing there was.

At times it almost seemed like it was part of the performance ... a cough here, a cough there, a cacophony of coughing at one stage.

It’s terribly distracting and it’s awful to be trapped in your seat in the middle of an auditorium and to be racked with a coughing fit.

It has happened to me often enough. I think it might be the airconditioning or dry air in such places.

I usually have a few throat lozenges in my pocket for this very reason but I forgot them recently and my wife dug me in the ribs as I choked back the coughs. Luckily they subsided. It’s well-known that I prefer to sit on the end of a row near the door and that’s in case I get bored or have a coughing spasm.

Don’t cough near Phil Brown.

Once, at a Sunday afternoon music affair in the Concert Hall at QPAC, I had a coughing fit and had to leave the auditorium altogether.

I had some sort of mild bronchitis or something (this was pre Covid) and had dosed myself up on cough mixture before going in to no avail.

I held the coughs back until I turned red in the face but then just got up and burst out the door.

Then I went into the ‘crying room’ (that glassed in room at the back of the hall) where I could cough and watch in isolation.

When we went to the famous Wigmore Hall in London in 2017 we were intrigued to see that the program for the concert we were attending - a beautiful piano recital by the French-Cypriot pianist Cyprien Katsaris - contained instructions on coughing etiquette.

The Wigmore Hall sells lollies too as sucking a sweet moistens the throat but also provides some distraction from the tickliness that leads to coughing.

A packed QPAC. Picture: Tourism and Events Queensland

At Wigmore Hall they make an announcement before the concert politely requesting audience members “stifle coughing as far as possible”. Of course that sets everybody off but they settle down for the performance.

My best advice is that if you already have a cough do not attend or if you do try to hold your cough until the loud bits.

Take some throat lozenges or better still, stay home!

Because I don’t want to to hear Ralph Vaughan Williams’ ecstatic work The Lark Ascending punctuated by your coughing.

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