Is there any hope that cinemas and theatres will get rid of that ringing in the

MANY a hapless Hong Kong theatre- and cinema-goer must have felt like cheering and dancing in the aisles recently when Al Pacino struck a blow against the marauding mobile phone-toting boors.

Pacino was immersed in a crucial scene while reprising in Los Angeles his lead role in the Broadway hit Hughie, when he was cut off in mid-sentence by the piercing ring of a cellular phone. Peering into the audience, he spotted the culprit in the front row, trying to stifle the noise by stuffing the handset into her handbag. It rang and rang until Pacino snapped: 'Answer the damn thing!' She did, and promptly dissolved in a blushing, babbling mass. Pacino leaned down and motioned to the woman to hand him the phone. Unleashing the full fury of his gravel-larynxed phalanx of verbal pyrotechnics, he screamed: 'This is Al Pacino. I'm trying to do a show here. Call back later.' He tossed back the phone and took a modest bow as the theatre erupted in thunderous applause.

Alas, such victories are few and far between. More often, and especially in Hong Kong, the best efforts of thespians are smothered beneath a discordant symphony of parps, chirps and beeps. Angst-filled soliloquies and nail-gnawing denouements become mere backdrops for electronic renderings of Greensleeves, Waltzing Matilda, Jingle Bells or worse.

In a city striving to wiggle from its chrysalis and stretch its wings as a sophisticated centre of culture, it hardly helps when audiences behave like grubs.

Arts and film administrators say the problems are manifold, and some stem as much from well-intentioned ignorance as from self-centred boorishness - such as the tendency at concerts to burst into applause at any pause longer than a demi-semiquaver, or to rush for the exits before performers have even taken a bow.

But the overriding, inexcusable irritation continues to be the beetle-browed neanderthals who insist on regaling audiences with booming banalities via their mobile phones.