THE USE OF electronic devices in theatres has been called out by Irish actor Adrian Dunbar, saying it “breaks the magic” of the show.

Dunbar joins fellow Irish star Andrew Scott who this month told the Happy Sad Confused podcast that he stopped a ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy, during a showing of Hamlet in London, after someone in the crowd was using their a laptop.

Both actors spoke of how distracting mobile phone – and laptop – usage can be for actors on the stage and have reminded audiences to switch off their devices when at the theatre.

Scott told the programme: “When I was playing Hamlet, a guy took out his laptop.

“Not his phone, his laptop, while I was in the middle of to be or not to f**king be.”

Scott said he stopped his soliloquy and waited for the man to finish using his computer, despite the stage team telling him to carry on, until another person in the audience told the man to put the laptop away.

Dunbar let the show go on, however he did highlight, to The Times newspaper in the United Kingdom, about how “distracting” it is to see “one or two people whose faces are lit up” while on stage.

Dunbar described the use of phones and devices in the theatre as a “strange modern phenomenon” and said that sometimes people who use their phones haven’t been to the theatre before and “just don’t get it”.

“They don’t know about the fourth wall. They might think they’re watching TV and that they can step away from what’s happening,” he told the paper.

“Whereas actually the theatre is very much an engaged and a collective experience.”

Dunbar said: “We have a saying in Ireland, which is that it’s not the singer, it’s the audience that sings. In other words, the collective concentration of the audience is sometimes what makes things on stage great.

If a couple of people decide to bow out of that concentration, it breaks the magic.”

He said that people need to be reminded to switch their phones off and that the issue is on the “radar” of a number of actors in the upcoming production of Kiss Me, Kate – where he will play character Fred Graham – are aware of it.