Racist heckle against Sheila Ferguson at Marlowe panto

Published Tuesday 13 December 2005 at 14:05 by Nuala Calvi

Kent police are investigating an incident at the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, involving an audience member shouting racist abuse at former Three Degrees star Sheila Ferguson.

Ferguson, who plays the fairy godmother in the theatre’s Christmas production of Cinderella, was heckled by someone in the front few rows of the auditorium who is thought to have left during the interval of the performance on December 2. Police believe there could be grounds for prosecution under public order legislation and are appealing for anyone who may be able to identify the person to come forward.

Detective Sergeant Michelle Whitehead told The Stage: “This wasn’t telling someone: ‘You’re not a good actor’, it was saying ‘we don’t want you here because of your colour’. We at Kent Police treat racial abuse as a serious offence and something that will not be tolerated.”

No official complaint has been made about the incident but police launched an investigation after reading about it in a local paper and have since interviewed Ferguson.

A theatre spokesman said: “It appears someone in the audience made a racist comment towards Sheila while she was on stage and it is being investigated. It is something we totally condemn and is totally unacceptable behaviour in the theatre.

“It’s astounding that someone would pay good money to go to a pantomime just to do this. The nature of panto is that there is a bit of shouting but I am not aware that heckling has ever been a problem here before.”

Showbusiness lawyer Sean Egan of Bates Wells and Braithwaite said troublemakers could be ejected by theatre management if they contravened the conditions on the back of their tickets but police would normally only get involved if an official complaint was made.

“The theatre would be able to eject someone, although they have got to be careful in terms of manhandling people,” he said. “Secondly there are public order issues. In practice what happens is that the police aren’t generally interested in pursuing it unless someone will substantiate what happened. It is interesting in this case no complaint has been made but they are still willing to investigate.”