Anticipation was high for Katie Holmes’ Broadway debut last night – it means that Maggie Gyllenhaal will soon take her role and everyone’ll like the play better.

However, Katie Holmes must have also been fairly excited ahead of her debut in All My Sons – not only would it teach her critics once and for all that she was an actress to contend with, but it’d also give her plenty of chances to blink out ‘HELP ME HELP ME HE KEEPS ME LOCKED IN A CAGE HELP ME’ in Morse code to a room of understanding strangers every night.

But, of course, Katie Holmes’ Broadway debut was also exciting for the members of anti-Scientology group Anonymous, who decided to bring down Scientology once and for all by getting about 20 people to stand outside the theatre holding some signs in a sort of semi-apologetic way. Yeah, take that, Scientology.

It’s hard to think of Katie Holmes as an actress these days, much less the actress who was once in Dawson’s Creek. Maybe that’s because she’s single-handedly been the worst thing in the – already mostly pretty terrible – films that she’s starred in lately, or maybe it’s because she seems to have given up acting for a life of glumly trudging three paces behind Tom Cruise with a weird boy’s haircut and her boobs taped down.

But either way, Katie Holmes recently realised that she needed to reassert her acting credentials and – having formally submitted the appropriate forms in triplicate to Tom Cruise’s Fresh Air Allowance clerk beforehand – was granted the temporary right to leave her hermetic dungeon on a regular basis to go and act in an Arthur Miller play.

It seemed so perfect at the time – nothing shows the public that an actor is serious about their craft like starring in an Arthur Miller play, the superb cast could take the strain if Katie Holmes ended up blowing, and Katie would get a few hours away from Tom Cruise marching up and down in his little Nazi eyepatch every night.

However, Katie Holmes hadn’t accounted for one thing – the thousands and thousands of anti-Scientologist protesters who’d blight her every move. Anonymous had long threatened to protest outside the opening night of All My Sons last night and, boy oh boy, did they ever come out in force to pour scorn on the Scientologists.

No, really, did they? Hardly any protesters turned up, you see, and we’re not sure if that was enough to pour scorn on anything, really. Especially if they keep excusing themselves as feebly as E! Online reports that they did:

More than two dozen protesters from the anti-Scientology group Anonymous joined the throng Thursday outside New York’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. “We are not boycotting Katie, we are not boycotting the play, we are protesting Scientology,” a member of the group shouted. “It is evil. Scientology kills people. It follows you home at night. It is perverted.”

That’s it? A couple of people dressed up like Agent Smith in V For Vendetta comparing Scientology to Buffalo Bill from The Silence Of The Lambs? Why not go the whole hog and say that Scientology dances around to Goodbye Horses with its pecker tucked between its legs to make it look more like a lady? Huh? Huh, Anonymous? Why don’t you do that next time, yeah?

We’re just a little bitter because it seems like such a wasted opportunity for a protest. Diversify or die, that’s the way to go. Stand around with a couple of placards forever and you’ll end up like the bloke who stands outside the Houses Of Parliament with the display about the Iraq war that everyone pretends they can’t see. And what’s the point of that?

We just thought that the protest against Katie Holmes and Scientology was a bit artless. Why stand around outside shouting when you could gather everyone together, make them buy tickets for a performance of All My Sons and then silently sit in the theatre so that Katie Holmes has to perform to nothing but an unresponsive wall of V For Vendetta masks?

We’re just saying…