A Truro pensioner stormed out of a bingo club in protest against the explicit scenes of sex and violence in the controversial Marat/Sade play.
‘Why go to the bother of travelling all the way to Stratford to be outraged,’ explained Mrs Mary O’Donnell, ‘when there is a perfectly good community centre just across the road that I can walk out of, muttering under my breath? This way I can express my disgust, without having to shell out any ticket money to that rabble at the Royal Shakespeare Company. In any case, I was doing rubbish with the numbers that night.
‘And before you ask – no, I don’t think you necessarily have to see a play in order to be shocked and traumatised by the degrading filth depicted in it.’
This is not the first time Mrs O’Donnell has staged a so-called ‘lateral protest’.
‘During the Iraq War, I showed my disapproval by picketing a government building waving a placard – that’s to say, I stood in a queue at the Post Office holding a letter in my hand. And this week, when Sami Brookes was voted off the X-Factor, I was so incensed, I staged a one-woman sit-in, peacefully occupying a bench in the local park for more than twenty minutes.’
