With thanks to The Observer’s Susannah Clapp for the headline, last week saw not one but two consecutive openings for plays written by the offspring of poet Craig Raine – 21-year-old son Moses with Shrieks of Laughter at Soho Theatre was followed the next night by 30-year-old daughter Nina’s Rabbit at the Old Red Lion. But while one imagines that both are well connected enough through dad, the thank you’s in the published script for Rabbit is a veritable who’s who that seems more like boasting than gratitude – which is a pity, given how good the play actually is.
The list of those thanked stretches from Nicholas Hytner and Tom Stoppard to Michael Frayn, Claire Tomalin, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, David Hare and Parick Marber, and even Gillian Anderson, Kathy Burke and Anne Robinson.
It also never rains but it pours opening nights, too. I’ve commented before on the fact that somehow press nights are booked to clash with each other, despite the fact that SOLT maintains a diary specifically to help producers avoid this; but though it’s polite not to stamp on someone else’s already booked press night, there’s no rule that says you can’t. Tonight’s transfer of Sunday in the Park with George from the fringe Menier to Wyndham’s has done the ungentlemanly thing of stepping on another small producing house to open on the same night as Hampstead’s scheduled opening of Clever Dick.
But Cliona Roberts, the clever press rep for Hampstead’s show, simply did the unofficial thing and invited first night press to come a night early if they wished. Though Mondays are not a favoured night for press nights, since the received wisdom is that actors need a night to get back into the show after a Sunday break before they are put before the press, needs sometimes must; and our journalistic needs to be in two places at once tonight meant that, for the Guardian and Sunday Times, plus the Daily and Sunday versions of the Telegraph, Mail and Express, we were all in attendance at Hampstead last night. That means that there’s only The Times, Independent and Standard left amongst the main papers for tonight. It also means that Hampstead have inadvertently trialled the American system of inviting critics to a final preview, amongst real audiences, rather than to watch the show with an entirely invited house.
Sonia Friedman has tried to do the same thing in the West End, but it never caught on, because newspapers simply treated the invited critics’ performance as the opening and ran their reviews overnight anyway for the next day’s papers, rather than waiting to run them after the ‘official’ opening. But because we were at Hampstead by special dispensation last night, the embargo will be honoured with reviews running as if we were there tonight. That’s the model that needs to be introduced: inviting critics in early, but asking them to hold their reviews till after the opening. Those who still like the adrenalin rush of bolting for the exit and filing their copy immediately, while tripping over assorted soap and Big Brother stars, can still attend the opening if they wish; but those who want a more civilised theatregoing experience can go early.
