But even with the pending legislative action, there remains an enlarged sense of the theatrical around the question, as if some participants on each side are enjoying the quirky rhetoric of both the revolt and its suppression.
Ed Miliband's move was far more theatrical: answer the audience question for a few minutes, pause for dramatic effect, then turn to camera and deliver a heart-felt plea to "the people at home".
Dramatic and theatrical effectiveness aside, the question that has fascinated literary critics and psychoanalysts for six decades is this: Were the apparitions of the dead ex-governess, Miss Jessel, and of the violently dead ex-valet, Peter Quint, actual visitations from beyond the grave, or were they figments of the inflamed psyche of the new governess?
But the festival's famous pinstripe-jacketed announcer and blaring pop music continued right on despite the inclement weather, proving the fortitude of a Cannes red carpet, and that one doesn't question Luhrmann theatrical touches.
But the rise of theatrical broadcasts raises complex questions about how theatre is distributed and its repertoire.
Many reformers have also questioned the theatrical process used to select the new pope, who was born Wageh Sobhi Baqi Soliman and marked his 60th birthday on the day he was chosen.
Never more so than at prime minister's questions, the theatrical centrepiece of the Commons week in which the prime minister is meant to be held to account for the government's actions, yet seldom is.
Some sharp points are also made through comedy, as when Carol voices the stigma attaching to drugs by querulously asking: "How many celebrities are in rehab because they've taken bloody ecstasy?" But the show raises more questions about theatrical form than about the curative power of chemical substances.
Sightlessness is a quality that actors are often called upon to play, but rarely to play with, so even beyond the question of its theatrical art, the Theater by the Blind is of inherent interest for its theatrical problem solving.
