When is it ok to leave it all behind?

SO THERE you are, in the middle of a performance, and actively hating it. Perhaps you took a chance on something about which you were only lightly informed. Maybe you were not expecting a puppet show about a serial killer to be quite so harrowing. It’s possible a sweary script or a display of naked flesh has just unleashed your inner prude and now you’d like to get to know this person better, somewhere else.

Whatever the case, you are now imagining a connect-the-dot line between your seat and the exit. Should you stay or should you go?

I was recently asked about the etiquette of walking out of a show, which is a bit like enquiring into the polite way to punch somebody. There’s no nice way to do it. Even slipping away quietly during an interval, if there is one, leaves a telltale absence in the second half where every empty seat looks like a disapproving glower.

Audience members don’t like to walk out during a show: it draws attention, disturbs others and distracts the performers. Actors hate it, not just because of the interruption, but because the gesture is a protest, one that can inspire doubt in the minds of people who had, until that point, been having a perfectly good time.

At a recent performance of the controversial show Jerk on the Absolut Fringe, a handful of people departed the small space of Project Cube.

One of them left within the space of a few minutes, others in a gradual pulse of different breaking points. It seemed entirely appropriate, though: Jerk asked its audience to become party to horrors with no release, enlightenment or catharsis. Leaving it behind was more than an effort to claw back time, it seemed like a noble stand.

As a critic, of course, sticking around until the end is more than a basic courtesy. Regardless of quality, there’s always a chance of things getting better or even worse. Likewise, we all decide that a show is either trash, adequate or a masterpiece, but there’s only one way to know for sure.