On snatching a phone

Theatre etiquette is dying, and iPhones are killing it. Smothered under a suffocating layer of Snapchat stories, Instagram reels, and TikToks, I saw this for myself during a recent West End performance of The Lion King. But I railed against the dying of the light; in the heat of the moment, I sought vigilante justice. 

The opening of The Lion King is designed to captivate you: lights turned way down low, “nants ingonyama!” echoing powerfully through the stalls. It reels you in.

Not for me. As soon as the lights dimmed and the theatre staff had finished waving their signs asking for phones to be put away, the group of teenagers I had found myself sitting next to proceeded to point wildly at the performers that were appearing in and around the stage — shouting profanities at them. 

I shuffled uncomfortably next to them, realising that my trip to Pride Rock could go one of two ways. I hoped and prayed that it would involve nothing but watching the adventures of Simba, as I sat there mouthing along to some Elton John. I was wrong. 

Before the sun had even risen fully for “The Circle of Life” to reach its crescendo, they had got their phones out. Of the two screens I could see, one had started scrolling on Instagram and the other had chosen to let the world know, via Snapchat, that they were watching the Lion King. 

I decided at this first juncture to be quite British about it. An “accidental” cough, shortly followed by a polite lean forward and a strained smile. They smiled back mischievously. They knew exactly what I was trying to communicate through the theatre’s darkness. 

As their talking continued, I decided to be a bit more proactive. I asked them to please be quiet. They said “of course”. And then swiftly ignored me. The phones were back out as they chatted merrily away. 

By this point, I had given up on the performance entirely. But then I remembered what I had seen on X so many times before: you can just do things. 

Yet at times like this, what is to be done? We were well into “Hakuna Matata” when it dawned on me. Inspired by Timon and Pumbaa, I realised that while it may only mean no worries for the rest of the performance, rather than the rest of my days, there was something that I could do, right then and there, to nip this problem in the bud. 

So, in one graceful swoop, I reached over and snatched the phone clean out of the hand of the teenager next to me. Eight years of living in Sadiq Khan’s London, battling phone snatchers as I go from A to B, has taught me all the skills I needed to know to go from gamekeeper to poacher.

It is worth saying that this is both very out of character for me and that I am not proud of what I did. Well, maybe I am a little. I have never seen shock quite like it. He stared at me like I’d just torn a limb off. His friends’ mouths fell open. They didn’t know how to respond. They were unaware that people can just do things. 

The friends I was with looked on in both horror and amusement. They had already been to see the theatre manager to complain about the disruptors, along with a gaggle of other theatregoers who had tried and failed to get someone to do something. Much like the police outside the theatre dealing with phone snatchers, wanting to simply get on with your life, or merely a theatre trip, seems too much to ask in London today. 

After a few desperate, relatively polite, and ultimately fruitless attempts to ask me to return the phone (“you can have it back at the intermission, if you behave”), the teen got up from his seat and went to find the very person so many others had complained to about him. 

The seat next to me was soon occupied by the theatre manager. He said that while he appreciated there had been clear disruptions to tonight’s performance, I could not simply take other people’s phones. Handing over the phone, I told him I agreed but only because I believed that it was his job to do so, not mine. Graciously, he said that, with only a few minutes remaining of the first act, to come and see him in the intermission so my group could be relocated away in time for the second act. 

And so, when the lights went up for the intermission, that is exactly what my group and several others nearby did. We walked past the teens sitting in the bar. They assumed we were being kicked out due to my antics. “Naughty, naughty” they tutted at me as I went by. I whispered in the ear of one who had his phone open in his hand to “be careful with that won’t you, you never know who might grab it”. It was my hope that this experience might teach them a lesson, though more likely it has just given them a funny story to tell their friends.

Perhaps I only have myself to blame. The Lion King is, after all, a tourist attraction as much as it is a performance. It’s less high culture, more overpriced safari. But, aside from the ambient sound of popcorn being chomped on, the theatre was full of young children, and they were all able to remain basically well-behaved throughout the performance. 

They understood what the teenagers did not. That theatre is not about them. It is about collective immersion, about being present together in something greater than the sum of its parts. This joy is fragile. It depends on silence, attention, and the discipline of strangers.

It felt less like theft and more like an act of cultural conservation

This once unspoken contract has been broken by the smartphone. The urge to unlock, to broadcast, to posture for a digital audience now outweighs the obligation to the live one sitting only a seat away. If anything, the teenagers I encountered were only the most brazen expression of a cultural rot that is everywhere. Phones have not merely distracted us but led us to behave like wild animals, ignoring the social bonds that make shared spaces possible.

Yes, it was, perhaps, wrong to steal a teen’s iPhone in the dark of a West End theatre. But it felt less like theft and more like an act of cultural conservation. For all the sign waving, if management won’t enforce theatre etiquette, theatregoers should. Because if we can’t keep off our phones even as a man in a giant giraffe costume lumbers past us, then theatre etiquette isn’t merely dying, but already dead.