My favourite scene in Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet (2025) is when audiences at the Globe theatre witness Shakespeare’s Hamlet for the first time. Lingering on the faces in the crowd, the camera shows their expressions of horror, fear, dread or joy, hanging onto every word as vivid as Greek masks. Shakespeare’s wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley) believes her dead son returned to life, seeing him on stage whilst those around her are as equally absorbed. It's not that audiences just observe the drama but they live it as emotional experience.

Theatre works when both mind and body participates with what's on stage. Just as a driver requires peripheral vision to see ahead, behind and all around them, critics not only absorb and analyse the production but pick up verbal and non-verbal messages from the audience.

And it's not always available to us. If reviewing new companies or a fresh performer straight from drama school, we might find ourselves in empty rooms that do not reflect poor talent but poor ticket sales.

Press nights can be stuffed with supporters, friends and family who whoop, holler and give standing ovations which riotous as they may be, do not guarantee quality work. All critics have experienced ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ moments; the sense of a parallel universe where you wonder if you’ve seen the same show as the audience around you. If a production has a decent budget, reviewers should think about how and why the crowd has gathered – sometimes the audience can have been as directed as the actors.

Clapping is the traditional way an audience shows its gratitude and appreciation of a play. How insistent this is, how tepid or effusive can be revealing. Sometimes, there’s polite, almost embarrassed clapping, equivalent to damning with faint praise. Men might whistle through their fingers - I think it’s mainly men who do this. While the days of jeering or hurling rotten fruit are over, you can normally tell by the post-show atmosphere if something has resonated or if the captives are relieved to escape.

Perhaps, more than the conscious, performative messages being emitted, it’s the non-verbal, subconscious responses, impossible to stage-manage, that reveal the most. Sometimes, a play is so well-written, structured or directed that you feel collective ripples at particular beats. Numerous people laugh at the same time, or sniff, or gasp or hold their breath. It can be even more subtle: an audience member leaning forward, then at a certain point, slumping back in their chair. It might be a chorus of sighs or coughs that slip out when a scene drags on too long. There might be gentle snoring as someone slips away entirely, perhaps, lulled by the darkness - or simply bored. 

Long gone are days of poor performers being pelted with rotten fruit. Audiences might show dissatisfaction by walking out or not returning after the interval. But that’s not to say if some audience members leave, the work is automatically poor. Perhaps, they had an emergency text. Or perhaps a raw nerve was struck. Theatre can be powerful, offensive, visceral. Ten years ago, the revival of Sarah Kane’s Cleansed at the National Theatre saw dozens leave, some requiring medical attention following scenes depicting violence and torture. When Hair first hit the stage in 1968, many couldn't handle the onstage nudity - although today’s trigger warnings make such shocks or surprises less likely. 

When theatre is well targeted and draws in a specific demographic or interest group, you sometimes get something like a conversation between the play and audience, closer to the Hamnet scene than more general interest productions. When watching Levi Holloway’s Paranormal Experience, a contemporary ghost story, the young horror-loving young audience were on the edges of their seats throughout and during one black out someone shouted in a state of delirium: “I love this s**t!” 

At Jah Makin’ It Happen by Sadé Nicole, a Windrush musical at Hackney Empire with a 90% black audience of all ages, there was a great audience-led smashing of the fourth wall. As the protagonist teetered on the edge of an extra-marital affair, the audience implored him not to do the dirty on his wife. It was a joyous thing to witness. One thing’s for sure: an audience-reading antenna is valuable for any critic and can transmit more about a production than any hyped-up social media campaign or well-penned press release.

 Nilgun Yusuf is an experienced journalist (EX-Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph and ELLE).  She graduated from Birkbeck's Creative Writing degree in 2022 and has since had plays performed in venues across London.