‘It’s ludicrous’: Ian McKellen sparks debate over trigger warnings in theatre

When a London theatre decided to warn potential audiences about strong language, sexual references, grief and death in its latest production, the play’s celebrated star didn’t hold back.

“I think it’s ludicrous,” Ian McKellen told Sky News. “I quite like to be surprised by loud noises and outrageous behaviour on stage.”

Frank and Percy, a play about two retired men who meet on Hampstead Heath, opened last week with McKellan, 84, co-starring alongside Roger Allam.

The warning issued by the theatre, the Other Palace, was in line with a growing trend to alert the public about potentially upsetting themes in plays new and old. And not just the theatre: universities applied trigger warnings to more than 1,000 texts, including many classics, an investigation found last year.

The alerts have become ammunition in the ongoing culture wars about “wokery”, “snowflake” mentality and historical narratives.

But there is also a valid and more nuanced debate about the merit of such warnings. Some argue that they are little different to warnings about strobe lighting, which can trigger seizures, and allow people to make informed choices about what they see or read.

Others say the power of art and literature to shock or discomfort people is integral to its value, and that the unknown and unexpected is part of the experience. Warnings diminish or remove this.

Earlier this summer, Chichester Festival theatre issued a warning about the content of its production of The Sound of Music.

The story, loved for its songs about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, has a dark undercurrent about Nazism. On its website, Chichester Festival theatre said its production included themes of “music; family; romance; the threat of Nazi Germany and the annexation of Austria”. Some people might find the latter distressing, it warned.

This, said actor Simon Callow, demonstrated “a fundamental failure to grasp what the theatre is: not a model for behaviour but a crucible in which we look at what it is to be human”.

Theatre is “not a pulpit but a gymnasium of the imagination”, he said in a letter to the Times. “It is perfectly clear that what happens on the stage is performed by actors, on a set, very visibly lit by artificial light, and that the whole thing is an act of the imagination.”

The theatre told the Guardian the feedback it had on content warnings in general was that many people found it helpful to have information about strong language, nudity, violence or “particular themes they may encounter”.

A spokesperson said: “Of course theatre can and should be challenging, but for a family musical we were giving honest and factual guidance for those who required it, that the show contained serious themes as well as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s glorious songs and uplifting story.”

Content guidance was not a new phenomenon, the spokesperson said. But “in these fractious times there appears to be an increasing number of news stories about such guidance, particularly around what are perceived to be well-known classics”.

In May, the Sun reported that “woke theatre bosses” had “slapped a trigger warning” on a production of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion at the Old Vic in London. The show contained “portrayals of abuse, abusive language and coercive control”, according to the report.

The Old Vic has since revised its “content guidance” – the theatre’s preferred term – for the production after it became clear that the original wording was inaccurate. Now it refers only to flashing lights and a real fire, and the warning is not prominent on the Old Vic’s website.

The Globe theatre has warned audiences about themes contained in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (suicide and drug use), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (violence, sexual references, misogyny and racism) and The Merchant of Venice (antisemitism).

The latter prompted a response from Tracy-Ann Oberman, a Jewish actor and director, who re-envisaged Shakespeare’s play with its central character Shylock as a matriarch confronting fascists in London’s east end in 1936.

“Didn’t the Globe’s last version of the Merchant have trigger warnings about antisemitism?” she said in an interview with the Times. “I’ve got a real, real thing about trigger warnings … If something’s upset you in a play, go look it up, go and find out when and why it was written – why it’s there.”

“You’re meant to feel emotions that feel uncomfortable, but in the safe environment of the theatre. You’re meant to feel fear, pity, anger, upset, horror, outrage … it’s meant to be able to change you.”

Nancy Medina, artistic director of the Bristol Old Vic, said the “emotive language of warnings and triggers” should give way to “constructive and universally helpful information about the themes and specifics of a show”.

This would “help people make informed choices about the suitability of the work” before buying tickets, she said.

Jude Kelly, an acclaimed theatre director and founder of the Women of the World festival, said alerts about flashing lights or explosions had “been around for ages and [have] never been a problem”.

“To warn some people that they might find certain things stressful or shocking is not really any different from saying something might cause heart palpitations.”

She drew an analogy with health warnings on cigarette packets. “It’s not infantilising people, it’s enabling informed choice. But people got very worked up about fag packets too.

“People have always made a judgement about whether to see something – ‘that sounds a bit miserable, I think I’ll give it a miss’.

“Content warnings are aimed at a minority of people, but they’re entitled to be taken into account. They’re not going to change the course of British drama.”

A survey of UK students last year found that 86% agreed content warnings should sometimes or always be used on set texts, with just 14% opposing them.

But an analysis carried out by Australian academics concluded that warnings had no meaningful impact on an individual’s emotional response to the material in question, or whether they avoided the material. Trigger warnings are “fruitless”, the academics said.