Why are press nights held before plays are ready to be reviewed?

A few weeks ago, I reviewed perhaps the hottest theatrical ticket of the autumn, an all-star revival of Noël Coward’s Hay Fever at the Wyndham’s Theatre. Unfortunately, despite a cast that included Christine Baranski, Richard E. Grant and Ophelia Lovibond, the results were largely flat and unfunny, despite scene-stealing work from Charles Edwards and Nancy Carroll in support. I filed my indifferent-to-bad review and shrugged it off as another theatrical disappointment. And then a curious thing happened. 

A friend was also present on the opening night, and shared my misgivings about the production in no uncertain terms, even more so because he had to attend the play again a couple of weeks later with another chum. Then, to my surprise and faint chagrin, I received a series of messages from him detailing how much it had improved. The actors, he reported, had found their feet and were now on sublime comic form, and the whole shebang had, in his estimation, gone from being a let down to what it always should have been. And all this purely because the cast had been given enough time to play around with the characters and the dialogue on stage and were now obviously far more comfortable than they had been on the first night. 

To an extent, this is inevitable. I have never trodden the boards myself, but I can only imagine what the combination of adrenaline and nerves on opening night must be like: a combination of excitement that the play that you have been working on for weeks, sometimes months, has finally (hopefully) come together, and terror at the thought of what professional colleagues and critics alike will make of it. While hacks tend not to be invited to the glamorous first night parties, word generally filters out whether the play is a hit or a flop while the cast and their famous friends sip champagne, partly through the swiftly filed reviews that guests surreptitiously check on their iPhones and partly through the atmosphere in the theatre. It once used to be an exceptional occurrence that a play would get a standing ovation, but now it is practically de rigueur. I have found myself practically the sole refusenik at some first nights, joined only by that legendary theatrical critic Michael Billington. Should Billington get to his feet, as he did for the sublime Cyrano de Bergerac, the producers should know that they have a proper success on their hands. 

Yet one existential problem with the first night, press night, opening night or whatever else you want to call it is that, inevitably, it comes far too early in the run. And the reasons for this are obvious. Producers want their investment to be a hit, and starry names and glossy posters can only do so much to get bums on seats. What they are after is a good mixture of four- and five-star reviews from the nationals and, of course, glowing and more considered pieces from such titles as The Critic that can be splashed all over social media and billboards. The longer the preview period for a play lasts, the harder it is to get these reviews before the run ends, and also, increasingly, the risk is that many people — including some battle-hardened critics — will simply throw their hands up in despair and review the play anyway. The notorious Broadway Spider-Man musical (songs by Bono and The Edge) kept delaying its first night for so long that the New York Times eventually broke protocol and reviewed it anyway; the subsequent notice was so damning that it essentially buried the show. 

What would work infinitely better, and which used to be a mainstay of British theatre, is the out-of-town try-out

Longer preview periods, therefore, probably aren’t the answer. But what would work infinitely better, and which used to be a mainstay of British theatre, is the out-of-town try-out. A play would often spend weeks, sometimes months, going round the major local theatres — to name a few, the Brighton Theatre Royal, the Yvonne Arnaud in Guildford and the Cambridge Arts Theatre — refining lines, performances and laughs until the director and cast were happy that they had as good a production on their hands as they could. Then, and only then, would it head into the far more rarefied (and, one imagines, discriminating) environment of the West End, there to charge top whack for ticket prices and, hopefully, offer the Rolls-Royce theatrical experience, rather than the more rough-and-ready Morris Minor chugging its way round the countryside. 

For decades, this was the norm, and even leading actors would happily sacrifice months of their time to make sure that the play was as good as it possibly could be. Yet there has been an unwelcome shift in recent times, especially in the subsidised theatres, for blink-and-you’ll-miss-it runs that allow big stars to slot in artistically satisfying work around their more lucrative filming commitments. This explains how the RSC, for instance, has lured in actors of the calibre of Kenneth Branagh, Mark Gatiss and Helen Hunt for their recent shows, but as the deeply flawed Cherry Orchard demonstrated, the production badly needed more time to bed in. Before it could reach anything like its full potential, it had vanished, with the prospect of a second life anywhere vanishingly slight due to its cast’s other engagements. 

There are two ways of dealing with this unsatisfactory situation. The first is to bite the bullet and postpone the press night until far later in the run, possibly even separating it from the opening night, which would at least give the actors and directors a chance to find their way into the play. Yet producers, fearful that the production would not sell without good reviews, are unlikely to adopt this step. 

So the second, I humbly suggest, is to move away from the star-driven casting that has currently taken over both London and New York — as James Martin Charlton warned recently — and instead to find outstanding actors — such as Luke Thallon, the greatest Hamlet I’ve seen in a decade and a half — who can become stars simply by dint of learning their craft in the bearpit of live theatre, rather than through appearing in Bridgerton or some such rubbish on streaming services. This would allow the industry to return to former glories as well as letting people who would like to see genuinely top-rank theatre do so without the expense and fuss of heading to the West End. It seems wholly logical, which of course means that it will never happen. But I would like it to, and so should anyone who cares about the future of theatre in this country. Otherwise I see an endless succession of musicals, including one featuring a certain marmalade-munching ursine, stamping out creativity and originality for the rest of time.