Mickey Jo Theatre (0:00)

Not that do youo Hear the People Sing? Has ever been anything other than a rhetorical question in the context of the musical Les Miserables. But it's hilarious to me that the answer in this instance was no, because the song has been interrupted by a literal protest movement. Oh my God. Hey, this is Mickey Jo here, AKA Mickey Jo Theatre, interrupting my two week visit to New York where I'm seeing and reviewing a bunch of different Broadway and Off Broadway shows to cover some breaking theatrical news. I'm hoping the very loud construction noise you can hear out of this window is just going to give this video a kind of rustic industrial feel, but I apologize in advance. So last night in the west end on the 4th of October, a performance of the musical Les Miserables, which I have a handy mouse mat visual guide for here, was interrupted at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, which matches the T shirt I'm wearing. Hello. By a protest from Just Stop Oil. This is a group of climate activists who have been dedicatedly pursuing disruptive activity in order to spread their message of climate awareness. And we've seen a decent amount of this in the UK in the context of traffic obstructions, but to my knowledge this is the first time this has really happened in a theatrical setting and as such it's a little bit unprecedented. So in today's video I'm going to talk you through what happened. We're going to read through some statements from the relevant parties and then we're going to talk about the key question that everyone has been subsequently debating. Was this the right thing for them to do? I'm sure everyone is going to have an opinion on this. It is a super contentious and challenging topic with strong opinions on all sides. Feel free to weigh in in the comment section down below. Let us know what you think about this. I would encourage you what I have to say about it first and also remember to engage with everyone else in the comments section respectfully. That being said, let's get started on today's breaking news video. If you enjoy this one. If you want to stay up to date with more theatrical news as well as seeing the reviews that I share of shows that I go to see in the West End and on Broadway, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Hit the buttons down below and I'm sure I will have more news for you very soon. For now, let's talk about this one. So I'm reading from the BBC News article, but it's been covered all across the Internet. In fact, it's had a lot More coverage than a lot of theatrical news sometimes gets. Like a cast change at Les Mis won't get picked up by this many outlets, but Just Stop Oil has definitely put them back in the headlines. I wonder if this will sell tickets. Not the point. It says here 5 just stop oil protesters have been arrested after a performance of Les Miserables in London's West End was halted. And they remain in custody as police appeal for anyone with footage to get in touch. A video shared by the activist group Just Stop Oil showed its members storming each end of the Sondheim Theatre's stage and asking the audience to join the rebellion. I mean, it's topical. It's definitely topical. They chose an interesting show for it. I don't think there would have been as much metaphorical power and symmetry if they'd gone to, like, I don't know. 6. Tina. Audience members can be heard booing and telling the activists to get off. And I'm not surpr. Thank you very much, everybody. If you'd like to take the advice of the theatre staff to evacuate the auditorium and then follow their advice, and we'll bring you back in when it is safe to do so. The performance on Wednesday night did not resume. We'll discuss why that was in a little bit. The Metropolitan Police later confirmed five people aged 28, 23, 22, 19 and 18 were arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass. I mean, it's funny that, like, that's the official wording of it. It's not a lot of suspicion about it. They stormed the stage. Audience members will be offered refunds or tickets for another performance. So there we go right there. We already know those audience members get to come back to another performance. Admittedly, if anyone is traveling from afar, if anyone is visiting the country and doesn't have any more free evenings to go and see the show, that's potentially disappointing to them, so worth remembering that as well. Catherine Francoise, great name from Buckinghamshire, was in the audience with a group of more than 30 people who she organizes theater trips for. She said she'd been sitting in the center of the front row. Great seat. And the protesters from Just Stop Oil were seated at either end of the second row. They paid a decent amount of money for those tickets is what that means. Like, not to get sidetracked, but can we look up how much those tickets would be? Hold on. Just doing a brief little journalistic detour here. Do not mind me. So this was a Wednesday night. If I look in the middle of November. Okay, so at the end of row b, those are 103 pound tickets and there was five of them. So they've spent at least 500 pounds on this entire enterprise before you factor in travel. And maybe they had a pre show meal, I don't know, maybe they bought merch. Who's to say? Ms. Francoise said, I could see out the corner of my eye something happening on the left. I noticed first and I knew it wasn't part of the production. Sure. Les Mis is not immersive, though many other shows in the West End are. The cast was still going good for them. The orchestra was still playing and after about 15 seconds somebody came on stage and moved the cast off. Meanwhile, security were on it, trying to get the girls off that were on the left hand side. Great job. Security at Les Mis doing their job. I thought they had stuck themselves to the floor, but it turns out they'd actually cable tied themselves together and then padlocked themselves together and then padlocked that to part of the scenery. I mean, were they spending like the first few scenes of the show studying parts of the scenery they could padlock themselves to, or did they come and see the show on a previous night to work out what might be feasible? Because a lot of shows you go to, the scenery doesn't exist for you to padlock yourselves to it. Again, if they went to see six, I don't know that there is a set piece you can padlock yourself to. I don't know how many shows would have anything you can padlock yourself to. That's challenging. Again, I'm taking all the wrong things away from this, but you know, my mind, it wanders. She said that the cast members were removed from the stage, shortly followed by the orchestra, with the audience being asked to leave about 15 minutes later. Interestingly, she notes here, the audience were definitely making far, far more noise than the protesters. So the stage invasion happened during a performance of do youo Hear the People Sing. I saw pictures and I wondered if it was One Day More, but it wasn't. It was do youo Hear the People Sing? So they definitely chose Les Mis for a reason and they chose this particular song in this particular moment for a reason. It's a very powerful metaphor, honestly. The song is often described as being about a revolutionary call to action and has been used all over the world by protest movements, including during the 2019 Hong Kong demonstrations. So this is what happened. They went to go and see the show, they waited for their opportune moment, stormed the stage, locked themselves together, padlocked themselves to the stage and interrupted the performance. I will talk about their aims and intentions with this. I just want to keep telling you what has actually happened. So just Stopoil acknowledged this on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, saying that four people had locked themselves to the stage at the Sondheim Theatre and they posted Valjean steals bread to feed a starving child. They know what the show's about. That's good. Not everyone does. How long before we are all forced to steal? The post continued. The fossil fuel show can't go on. That's a nifty little metaphor there, isn't it? That's a fun little turn of phrase. Meanwhile, we have a statement from William Village, chief executive of Delfont Mackintosh Theatres, and he said safety protocols had to be followed and the audience were asked to leave the auditorium and the Met police attended. Regrettably, there was insufficient time to enable us to complete the rest of the performance. I don't know what the curfew laws are London, whether there's a specific time the show has to come down by. I do know they have child actors in the cast who wouldn't be able to perform after a certain time, as far as I know. That being said, they do have adult swings that can cover the child roles, so I don't imagine that was the straw that broke the camel's back. But I'm curious about what in particular motivated the decision that they wouldn't be able to go on. It sounds like the show was delayed for at least 15 minutes, probably longer. I don't know if they just held the audience outside, at which point they then I guess made the decision that there wasn't enough time to finish the show. It would have still been quite early in the evening because this is a scene in the first act that got interrupted and Les Mis is a what, 2 hour 30 plus show? Probably closer to 2 hours 45. But in any case, the discretion to make that decision fully lies with the theatre. They also said, quite diplomatically, I will say, whilst we recognize the importance of free expression, we must also respect our audience's right to enjoy the event for which they have pa. We'll discuss more on the moral implications of all of this later. In another video just up Oil member Hanan explained why she and the group had chosen to target the production. This is interesting. Les Mis is about the June rebellion where ordinary people stood up and organized themselves against a government that consistently showed no interest in their well being, the 22 year old student said. She went on to condemn Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for approving hundreds of gas and oil licenses, knowing the full consequences this will have on our climate and our society. On its website, Just Stop Oil says its ultimate aim is to demand that the UK government stop licensing all new oil, gas and coal projects. So let's talk a little bit more about the basic aims and intentions of Just Stop Oil. It wants the UK government to stop the production of fossil fuels in the uk. And the group, which is linked to Extinction, Rebellion and Insulate Britain, came to attention in 2022 with protests, including pitch invasions at Premier League matches. As always, sport comes before theatre. Even in climate activism, the art's consistently an afterthought. It has since blocked major roads and targeted various events, including test cricket at Lords, the BBC Proms and the Chelsea Flower Show. Many of its protests involve orange paint, paper or powder. And much of its money comes from a US network called the Climate Emergency Fund. So that is basically an overview of what has happened here. Let's talk about the implications of this, whether I think it was a good idea and my take on the whole situation. So first and foremost my thoughts are with the audience members in the theatre to an extent, but also with the performers. Because I think a stage invasion of any kind of scale or magnitude is a hugely unsettling thing. And at least in that instant moment, deeply frightening. They would have had no idea what was going on or why this was happening. They could have jumped to some really frightening conclusions. The UK is not the US and we don't really have public shootings. I spoke with a friend about this yesterday when this news broke. I was at dinner with friends in New York and they said their first assumption would have been that they were about to get shot. Like that literally would have been where their mind had gone. And so I do feel for the performers on stage in those moments before it became clear what was happening, because I'm sure that that was a really terrifying thing and those performers did not deserve to be put in that position. Similarly, I imagine the audience members experienced a lot of anxiety in those early moments of uncertainty in the theater. That can be quite a stressful experience, I would imagine. But very shortly thereafter, it would have been clear what was going on. And at that point of clarification, when they're brandishing their logo and just chaining themselves to the stage and just standing there and being like, other than the one 28 year old, basically kids in their early 20s, late teenagers, at that point, you've got to imagine the whole thing starts to feel a lot less intimidating. And then just becomes an inconvenience to the theatre goers. Now, we spoke before about tickets and refunds. I think it's great that the theatre are doing refunds and exchanges. I mean, they kind of have to. In these circumstances. It would be really awful to not offer that. Yay. That Les Mis are doing that. Delfont Macintosh care about their audiences. Like I said before, this may not be beneficial to people who have traveled from a long way to go and see the show. We are in a cost of living crisis. Travel is expensive. Accommodation in London is expensive even at this time of year. And tickets for the show are expensive. There may be families, groups who have invested a lot of money in going to have this experience that sadly was ruined for them on this particular evening. So I do feel for those individuals. However, and this may not be a popular opinion, I know for sure there's gonna be a lot of people in this comment section saying they shouldn't do this to the theater, they shouldn't do this to the arts. The theater, like, was squashed in the pandemic and still trying to resurge and need support. And we'll get to that. Because I do agree with all of those ideas. We will get to that. I do also think that this idea of these comfortable theater goers in the West End who have spent a lot of money and let's not characterize this audience, maybe some of them had to really save to buy those tickets. Maybe some of them can afford to buy lots of theater tickets. I don't know. But for them to be booing these climate activists in the middle of this musical about a protest with no sense of irony does tickle me just a little bit. Because increasingly, I think going to see Les Mis is all about the songs. And I dreamed a dream. And, oh, it's so stirring, it's so moving, it's so powerful. And you might cry when people die. That's barely a spoiler. It happens a lot. But if halfway through the show, its depiction of this growing rebellion spearheaded by young students is interrupted by a literal onstage rebellion, and you have no sympathy for that whatsoever. I'm not sure you're emotionally connected to the material. You're just there to hear the songs, right? I wish they'd done a poll of that audience to kind of get a feel for the mood of the room. I would be so intrigued about whether or not people felt connected to that, because there doesn't seem to be a lot of support in society for Just Stop Oil. The thing I keep hearing about it. The thing I keep hearing about their disruptions and their demonstrations is that people aren't happy with this inconvenience and they think by doing these disruptive activities they're not going to endear the common people to their cause, which, from what I can tell is not really their main focus at the moment, so much as getting attention for this thing we've all known about for a very long time that everyone is choosing to ignore in the face of middle class British complacency. I don't know what else they could do to try and gain attention. We've known about this for a long time. It's like those Children in Need programs in the UK every year where people tune in for the musical theatre performances in the entertainment sections and then go and make a cup of tea when they cut to the hard hitting, harrowing footage of poverty in third world countries. These are the same people who love to go to a musical about a protest and about oppression and about real issues being depicted centuries back and simultaneously have no affection for a problem that is going to go on to affect their descendants in a very profound way. And so I think there is a hypocrisy there and I think it's smart of just Stop Oil to have highlighted it using this particular show, using this particular moment in the show. What they're basically doing is saying, if you agree with this, you kind of have to acknowledge what we're saying right here, right now. It's a very bold and reckless, not particularly considerate way of sharing that message. But I don't think those are their principal concerns right now in the wake of the coming climate crisis. I say coming climate crisis, we're literally already experiencing it. That being said, I am going to circle back to what I was touching on before, which is the position that the arts have been in, because going to this theater, they're doing it to get on the national news and they've made the national news and I'm covering it here. And like I said, this has been covered by many outlets that do not cover theatre news whatsoever. But they're talking about this protest and that's what they've done to get attention here. I did see some comments saying, why have they gone to London to do this at the Sondheim Theatre when all of the people they need to be talking to, AKA the Conservative government, are all in Manchester right now at a disastrous Conservative Party conference, which is true, a Conservative Party conference, where I should note, they're not discussing climate change, they're not discussing measures to resolve this or mitigate the climate disaster. They are discussing the fact that they want to ban trans women from being able to access medical care. Those are the priorities of our sham of a conservative government. But I've become sidetracked briefly back to the arts, and while the climate has been completely neglected by this conservative government, so have the arts. So it's difficult where you would hope there could be kinship between these two movements for one of them to be doing something that is going to financially impact the other one. From that standpoint, it does kind of suck because people are right that the arts have been through a lot. They weren't supported during the pandemic by this same conservative government. I say the same conservative government. It was like four or five prime ministers ago. So it does feel a little bit like adding insult to injury for them to be the victim of this statement against that same same government who did them no favors whatsoever. But those I think might be the extent of my thoughts on this topic. I get why they made this decision for the metaphorical value of it all with the do you hear the people sing of it all? But I wouldn't go as far as to say that this was a good choice for them to make. I think there are nuances within this that have to be talked about. I don't think it's a black or white issue, and I am super intrigued and just a little bit nervous about what is going to be said in the comments section of this video. So. So feel free weigh in in the comment section down below. Let us know what you thought. If anyone was at this performance by any chance. Let us know more about what happened down below. If a representative from Just Stop Oil magically appears in this comment section, feel free to let us know more about the ideas that went into planning this and what it was hoping to achieve. I think if there was even the slightest expression of remorse of disrupting this performance, of disrupting an already battered theater industry, that myself and other people might be a little bit more amenable to this as an idea, but thus far I haven't seen anything akin to that. In any case, let me know what you thought in the comment section down below and I hope that this video has been a helpful recap of this theatrical breaking news. If you want to see more theatre news about upcoming shows about what's happening on Broadway and in the West End, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel and stay tuned for lots of New York and Broadway coverage coming very soon. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theater. Oh, my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.