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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is the FT’s theatre critic
When Yasmina Reza’s Art opened in London in 1996, one critic waggishly remarked that it was the perfect West End play. At 90 minutes straight through, it offered enough time to get dinner afterwards — and plenty to talk about over the starters. Not all theatre excursions fit so comfortably with post-show debriefs though: the average 10pm to 10.30pm finish often leaves many audience members bolting for their last train home.
The National Theatre in London has decided to face that dilemma head-on: from February next year they will be piloting a 6.30pm start for a few midweek performances. It’s a response to a survey of more than 8,000 people aimed at understanding the shifting work patterns and lifestyles of audiences in the wake of the pandemic. Flexibility in start times appealed to a “significant proportion” of respondents.
It was that opportunity to chew over the show that made an earlier start attractive to many. That’s heartening to hear: theatre is a communal, sociable art form, but the twin party-poopers of “late train” and “early morning meeting” can damp the enthusiasm for that convivial post-show chat — not to mention an irate babysitter.
And as someone who spends more time than feels wise sitting gloomily on cold station platforms awaiting a delayed late train, I’d love the option of an occasional earlier start. The theatre critic’s life is notoriously unhealthy — dinner is often a sad sandwich and a packet of crisps snatched on the run — and I’ve spent many hours sitting on a stationary train outside a terminus with my nice warm bed a distant and receding dream.
Theatre-going and sleep are not great bedfellows. The company Duckie once even created a show, Lullaby, embracing that fact: they transformed a theatre into a dormitory for the night, invited their audiences to turn up at bedtime and then tucked them in before performing to them. Not a solution you would advocate wholesale: being woken up by a roomful of snoring strangers at 2am slightly took the shine off. But it did eradicate that sometimes grim trudge home — and mischievously embraced the temptation for tired theatregoers to doze off in the stalls.
The National’s approach is rather more modest and practical. And it’s not alone: the family show Matilda begins its West End midweek performances at 7pm; many Broadway shows do likewise on weekdays, with some offering a range of start times. It’s a move likely to be popular with older audience members, those young enough to have to get up for school the next day and others who have a long commute. It’s also kinder to the actors, musicians and technicians who themselves have families and beds to get home to.
There’s good precedent too: Shakespeare’s plays would have been performed earlier in the day — though admittedly that was because the artists were working within the constraints of natural light, rather than late-night signalling issues outside Watford. And at the Edinburgh Fringe, you can start your theatre-going before breakfast, should you choose to.
Of course, it wouldn’t work for everyone. One person’s nice early start is another’s panicked Tube journey as the late office phone-call leaves them scrabbling to make curtain-up. For some, working hours or childcare commitments would make a 6.30pm start impossible; for others it would leave no time for the pre-show drink, the time to catch up with your companion or to decompress from the day before heading into the world of the drama.
But the National’s pilot is only for occasional Tuesday or Thursday performances. That still leaves room for those who prefer a later start. It builds on previous moves to accommodate audience needs, such as “relaxed”, captioned, BSL-signed, audio-described and even baby-friendly performances. And, as the saying (almost) goes, time and the last train wait for no man.
