As a rookie reviewer, I spent my first Edinburgh Festival covering theatre on the Fringe. By the end of week three – 43 shows – I had grown used to backroom theatres, stifling as a sauna, and cavernously cold church halls. All of them had seats that might have been hewn from granite, but some of the productions were even harder to endure. To this day, I enter a theatre with a sense of trepidation. Based on that summer’s experience, nine out of ten plays are duds.

There was one, however, that stood out. It was a young company’s version of Romeo & Juliet. Performed with verve and imagination, the heart-breaking final act was so feelingly delivered it had half the house in tears. “Thy drugs are quick! Thus with a kiss I die,” cries Romeo, finding Juliet’s seemingly lifeless body. When she wakens to find him dead, she soon follows: “O happy dagger, This is thy sheath, there rust, and let me die.” I gave a five-star review, and the next morning the cast arrived at the magazine offices with a large box of chocolates.

Not all productions of Shakespeare’s youthful tragedy are so tender. The Globe Theatre’s latest interpretation comes plastered with trigger warnings: “This production contains depictions of suicide, moments of violence and references to drug use. It contains gunshot sound effects and the use of stage blood”. Contact details for the Samaritans and a mental health charity are also listed, for anyone disturbed by what they have seen.

Enter stage left a chorus of outrage from those who feel the theatre is no place for cotton-wool. “You don’t go to the see Romeo and Juliet if you want a light-hearted evening,” said Ann Widdecombe. But a Cambridge academic, Ian Burrows, whose Shakespeare for Snowflakes puts him firmly on the other side of the barricades, believes younger audiences need to be given advance notice of what lies ahead: “a warning like this one might allow a victim of trauma to prepare themselves”. That, or maybe just reading the play beforehand.

The Globe’s motives for its cautionary tone could, of course, be as much about protecting its reputation as its audiences. Only a few years ago its ghoulish production of Titus Andronicus had people passing out in the stalls, one of them a seasoned theatre critic. More fake blood was deployed in this slash-fest than in an episode of Game of Thrones, with the result that people in the auditorium were “dropping like flies”. Its latest caveat would suggest the suicide scenes in Romeo & Juliet are every bit as violently explicit and extreme.

Yet since trigger warnings are now ubiquitous, why cavil at the Globe’s approach? Almost every film on TV comes with advance notice of its contents: bad language, violence, images of self-harm, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, scenes of a sexual nature, and so on. “Oh good,” my husband says, “it’s got everything you like.” Soap opera credits often include the number for helplines for anyone affected by the plot’s themes, while BBC and Channel 4 footage of disturbing events often comes with the rider that it “contains scenes viewers might find distressing”.

One place that doesn’t need to splash “enter those who dare” on its covers are the shelves of tartan noir and psychopathic crime fiction from across the globe. Only Alexander McCall Smith’s spoof Detective Varg series, set in the Department of Sensitive Crimes in a Swedish police station, could be described as an Ovaltine read. Otherwise, carnage is assured. The first mention of a beloved pet is as good as its death sentence. An early morning wander along the riverside to pick up milk will inevitably end in the discovery of a decomposing corpse, or the wanderer’s gruesome slaying.

With books or TV you can turn the page or switch off. That’s not possible in a theatre, although I have on several occasions walked out. But there is a bigger issue here than not wishing to see images or scenes you find vile or upsetting. Those for whom trigger warnings are intended are victims of trauma, survivors of abuse or war, or suffering poor mental health. It seems callous to begrudge them a heads-up, the chance to steel themselves or decide to make an exit before the curtain goes up. And at what cost do these warnings come to the rest of us? Cheapskates who don’t bother to buy the programme won’t even see them.

The problem, though, is not each individual instance of forewarning, but the wider mood it reflects. Trigger notices make audiences feel they live in a nanny state. It is infantilising and belittling. Apart from a night at the opera, nothing makes a bigger statement of intellectual enquiry, open-mindedness and artistic taste than going to the theatre (with the possible exception of The Mousetrap).

Unless things have greatly changed since before Covid, when I was last at the theatre, audiences tend towards the middle-aged and beyond. When Shakespeare is on the bill, that’s even more the case. For theatre-goers to find themselves cautioned about the contents of one of the world’s best-known plays is patronising and insulting. Most of what we remember about these “star-crossed lovers”, apart from the scene where Juliet leans over a balcony, is that the ill-fated pair die at the end. If a director wishes to be considered original by turning stomachs with an excess of gore, we should question and challenge such shock tactics. One of the reasons Shakespeare is still as fresh today as in his own times is the brilliance and poetry of his dialogue, and the depth and resonance of his characters. They need no melodramatic embellishment.

As the nightly news schedules show, the world is a dangerous, often frightening place. Images of personal tragedies, natural disasters, conflicts, war and disease are beamed daily into our homes. While nobody would ever dismiss the pain of those who are traumatised or in mental anguish, it is impossible to put a protective cordon around them at all times. The misery that makes Romeo & Juliet unforgettable is no secret or surprise. Plays are often about powerful, life-changing events or moment. Why else call them drama? Perhaps that word should be warning enough.

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