The politics of applause

A few weeks ago, I witnessed a most intriguing example of Anglo-American culture clash during the curtain call of a London play. The production was Complicite's brilliant and justly lauded Mnemonic, which played to packed houses at the Riverside Studios. I managed to find a single seat for the last matinee - and found myself amid a group of American theatre students. Like the rest of the audience, they remained rapt through two-and-a-quarter hours of an intervalless performance. But when the lights came up for the company bow, two of the students leapt to their feet and began cheering wildly.

Everyone else in the theatre was applauding enthusiastically - but only this pair of Americans spontaneously stood up. Noticing that the rest of the audience were still sitting, they exchanged a self-conscious look and sat down again. As the lights came up, one said to the other: "I guess they didn't like it as much as we did."

I felt a certain embarrassed sympathy for my compatriots. They had just discovered one of the truisms of London cultural life: standing ovations are rarely seen in the theatres, opera houses or concert halls. Across the Atlantic, however, leaping to your feet is almost the norm.

All Broadway shows end with a standing ovation. At Avery Fisher Hall, home to the New York Philharmonic, audiences rise to the most tepid performance. But in London, when Claudio Abbado conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in what has come to be regarded as a benchmark reading of Mahler's Third Symphony, the capacity audience at the Royal Festival Hall roared their "bravos", but no one stood.

Could it be that national character informs the way that we applaud? Or does our reception of a performance have a direct bearing on our attitude to culture? Consider, for example, the collectivist curtain call in the old Soviet Union: the performers accept applause for their labour, then applaud the audience in an assertion of the "communal" relationship between spectator and performer, and the fact that we're all comrades on-and-off stage.

In New York - a city where the plays you see and the concerts you hear give you a conversational cultural-currency - the relationship between performer and audience is akin to one between retailer and customer. Those on stage are selling something; you, the cultural consumer, have dropped big money - $100 (£63) for a Broadway stalls ticket is standard pricing these days.

And since you're seeing this show in New York, which, as any native will tell you, is the centre of the universe, naturally, it has to be " fabulous". And if it isn't, if it somewhat disappoints you, you still have to stand up and applaud to convince yourself that you have somehow got bang-for-your-buck. In short, the tendency towards standing ovations marries a certain American ebullience with a consumerist need to "buy the best".

In Paris, it's different again. Audiences are ruthlessly polite - something I witnessed recently at the Théâštre des Champs Elysées during Jonathan Miller's monumentally static staging of Handel's opera, Tamerlano. This was the theatre that witnessed the première riot during Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps in 1913. Paris audiences are tamer these days. In Tamerlano they showed themselves to be masters of the tepid handclap: showing just enough politeness towards the performers, while making it clear that this was a lessthansatisfying experience.

A subtle Parisian hauteur informs the way they applaud. This loftiness vanishes only when watching a genuine cultural icon: whether it be Rostropovich, or Brendel, or Baryshnikov or Charles Aznavour. Then they allow themselves to go berserk - because, after all, "un ma"tre est un ma"tre".

Londoners enjoy the most diverse and consequential cultural life of any city on earth. Though New York has a superior modern-dance scene and Paris an unrivalled collection of repertory cinemas, when it comes to sheer quality and volume, London remains untouchable. As such, to live here is to become just a little blase about the amount on offer on any given night, and to adopt a "curb your enthusiasm" attitude that reflects a certain scepticism. London theatre, opera and concert audiences are among the toughest in the world, because they are (by and large) so well informed.