IT IS not a good idea to interrupt the actor Richard Griffiths in the middle of a play. During the past year he has halted performances at the National Theatre when mobile phones have gone off, and he threw one member of the audience out of a West End play for failing to switch off his phone.

So when a mobile rang out for the third time during his performance as Hector, a teacher, in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys at the Broadhurst Theatre in New York, he rounded on the theatregoer and thundered: “I am not going to compete with these electronic devices.

“You were told to turn them off by the stage manager; you were told it was against the law. If we hear one more phone go off, we’ll quit this performance. You have been warned.”

Griffiths was invoking a city council ban on mobiles in theatres, passed in 2003. Violators are fined $50 (£26.50) if they are caught talking on, listening to or dialling a mobile phone during a performance or while in a museum, theatre, gallery or library.

Griffiths’s actions sparked a debate in the UK theatre world over whether phones should be banned by law from British auditoriums, too. Actors are already lobbying the Government to legalise the use of electronic screening devices to block mobile phone signals from theatres.

Technology companies market “blocking” devices that emit a high-powered signal on the same frequency as a mobile phone, occupying all the available spectrums within their range.

But these are banned in many countries because they might prevent emergency calls from being made.

The European Union also says that “blocking” signals could breach directives on the free movement of services by interfering with radio waves allocated to mobile phone services.

Rosemary Squire, president of the Society of West End Theatre and co-founder of the Ambassador Theatre Group, which operates 12 West End venues, said: “Phone pests are one of the biggest operational nightmares theatres face. We should look at equipment that could block phones or a London-wide theatre ban.”

She added: “It (a ringing phone) is highly antisocial and breaks the spell of live performance.”

Nick Allott, the managing director of Sir Cameron Mackintosh’s theatre group, said: “We would all welcome some way of preventing ringing phones but doctors and emergency workers need to be paged in a theatre and we musn’t prevent that.”

A New York company claims to have developed signalblocking technology that permits emergency signals to pass unhindered. NaturalNano infuses paint with copper molecules. When it is sprayed on walls it becomes a shield that blocks radio waves.

A two-part antenna acts as a powerful radio filtering device to allow signals to penetrate the shield at designated times.

The system allows one phone user access while blocking another so that emergency radio communications can get through. The paint is being marketed to US schools to limit mobile phone use in class.

PHONE ETIQUETTE

Many restaurants in the US have introduced phone booths for mobile users

There have been unconfirmed reports of commuters in Scotland using jammers, which can disable all mobile phones within a 30ft (10m) radius. Using them is a criminal offence

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