News that the United Arts Club is celebrating its centenary, welcome as that is, reminds us indirectly of one of the things Ireland has lost in the past 100 years. I'm not saying it's a bad development, necessarily. But however you interpret it, it is a harsh truth that Irish theatre audiences just don't riot like they use to.
The reflection is provoked by a coincidental anniversary. In common with the UAC, the Playboy Riots also started 100 years ago - next Friday week, to be exact - when Christy Mahon famously suggested that his love for Pegeen Mike would survive temptation by "a drift of chosen females standing in their shifts".
That the actor fluffed his line on the opening night and had "a drift of Mayo girls" standing in their shifts instead may have made the image more vivid than Synge intended. Either way, the incident launched a week of disturbances, the climax of which featured pro-Synge Trinity students singing God Save the King from one part of the theatre while a group of anti-Synge protesters retaliated with God Save Ireland from another.
The trouble petered out soon afterwards. But disturbances recurred 19 years later during O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars, when W.B. Yeats delivered his "you have disgraced yourselves again" speech, despite being hit by a flying shoe. That was it for rioting in Irish theatres, however. The subsequent cessation of hostilities laid the grounds for 80 years of peaceful conflict resolution.
Watching a Chinese version of The Playboy in Dublin's Project before Christmas, I found myself wondering what it would take to provoke a modern audience to protest like the ones in 1907 and 1926. I was still wondering when, shockingly, one of the actors - I think it was Zhang Wan Kun as Michael Flaherty - lit a cigarette and started smoking, in apparent contravention of the Public Health (Tobacco) Act (Amendment) 2004.
It seemed a deliberate provocation of everything we hold dear. But before the audience could riot, a herbal smell wafting from the stage indicated that the cigarette did not constitute a tobacco product under the Act. I slipped my shoe back on quietly and continued watching the play, which - incidentally - featured Chinese actresses in skirts a lot shorter than Mayo girls' shifts ever were.
It's tempting to think that passions ran particularly high in the Irish theatre during those years when the United Arts Club - with members including Yeats, Shaw, and Lady Gregory - was getting started. The counter-argument is that 1907 and 1926 were the last gasps of a tradition going back centuries. And that by the standards of earlier disturbances, when "bringing the house down" could be more than just a theatrical metaphor, they hardly qualified as rioting at all.
That was the view argued by Chris Morash of NUI Maynooth in a talk - "The Decline of the Irish Theatre Riot" - delivered to mark the Abbey centenary in 2004. Morash suggested wittily that one of the theatre's first achievements was to house-train its audience. A process, he said, that required theatre-goers to relinquish such traditional pleasures as "commenting on the play, applauding or hissing the characters, eating oranges, calling out witty responses and getting up for a drink when the action hit a dull spot".
This was once the norm. And from that already high base of audience participation, things would sometimes escalate dramatically. In 1712, a man called Dudley Moore started a riot in the Smock Alley Theatre when he defied a ban by singing the praises of William of Orange on stage. Swords were drawn in the audience and the fighting spread to the streets.
In 1754, a play touching on an even more controversial subject - money - provoked correspondingly worse trouble. Audience members slashed the curtains, attacked the background scenery, and used the stage candles to set fire to furniture. A warning gunshot restored calm, but the theatre was a ruin by then.
And so it went, well into the 19th century. Throwing oranges was a standard form of theatrical criticism, according to Morash, even on a good night. But Dublin actors got off lightly compared with their Northern counterparts, who faced showers of "Belfast Confetti" - rivets from the shipyards - by way of audience commentary.
The revolutionary idea that play-goers should sit quietly and listen to the lines was gaining ground, however, especially on the Continent. W.B. Yeats was an enthusiast, and audience-calming measures such as the abolition of half-price tickets after 9.15pm soon had an effect in Dublin.
The Playboy riots were partly due, says Morash, to the Abbey's decision to create cheap sixpenny seats, thereby attracting a rowdier element, normally confined to the music halls. Even so, there was very little damage to the theatre in 1907 or 1926, considering that its wealth of breakable things - from chandeliers to teacups - made it a "rioter's paradise".
In other words, what happened in Ireland from 1907 onwards is that the artists won. Art is respected now. Modern theatre audiences hang on playwrights' every word and nobody throws oranges at actors any more. We could argue whether or not this is a good thing, but that's for another day. It would be churlish at this time to deny the founders of the United Arts Club their historic triumph.
Centenary celebrations start with a ball at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham on January 25th, the eve of the Playboy riots centenary. Fancy dress is optional, with prizes for the best period costumes. But organisers are not taking any chances. According to the invitations, echoing the advertisements for the 1742 première of Handel's Messiah, "ladies are requested to refrain from wearing hoops and gentlemen to leave their swords at home".
Tickets are available from 01-6611411.