Nodding off…

In today’s Guardian reprint of Charlotte Higgins’ “back-row blogger” column, she raises the interesting subject of owning up to nodding off during a show. “Nobody ever admits to dropping off during a performance, do they? Well, I am about to. I have managed to stay wide awake for marathons (nine and a half hours of Henry VI the other weekend, and I didn’t fall asleep when I listened to 16 hours of Wagner in one day), but I have been guilty, on occasion, of ‘resting the eyes’….” She admits, “I have slept through almost entire acts at the theatre and woken up just as the last corpse is being hauled off, the lovers reunited and the triple wedding under way without the foggiest notion how we got there. It seems strangely unpredictable: sometimes it’s your inner critic reacting to a bad show; sometimes it’s just a tired head in a warm dark room. What’s horrific is the fear you might have been snoring, dribbling - or worse.”

Charlotte is an arts correspondent, not a critic, so going to the theatre is a pleasurable extension of her job, but not the job itself. When it comes to critics, however, different rules apply. We’re there to review the entire performance, not just part of it, and so there are at least three essential requirements to doing so: arriving on time, staying awake, and staying to the end. Not much to ask, surely, given that we’re being paid to offer a commentary on the entire show, and we’re only committed to being there for somewhere between an hour and three hours, after what might be anywhere from two to eight weeks’ rehearsal on part of the people actually onstage (and many more months, possibly, from the creative team and producers who have put it together).

Yet we’re also only human, and as such, fallible creatures: I can’t honestly say that involuntary desire to surrender to sleep hasn’t overcome me, too, occasionally. As they say on motorways, “tiredness can kill – take a break”. You’re in a warm, dark place already, and rather than die of boredom, your body does just that. But either you need to be honest and say so in the review that results – a good critical shorthand for this is when a review notes that the production is “soporific”, which translates that it made the critic concerned drowsy — or not review it at all.

But though most critics do indeed stay alert and diligent – and I know of more than one that admits to taking an afternoon nap before they go to the theatre so they can ensure they are fresh – one or two of my more senior colleagues have been notorious for sleeping regularly. One, now retired, would sleep at virtually every single show he saw – I remember one of his reviews saying how the production had held him “riveted from beginning to end”, whereas sitting across the aisle from me, I knew that he had, in fact, slept through most of it. Another, still working, has perfected a style of slumping forward in his seat that makes him seem alert whereas he is soundly asleep (the tell tale sign usually being the fallen programme and other paraphernalia at his feet that are left unretrieved), yet still turns in impeccable prose afterwards. Perhaps a critical judgement of the performance seeps in through osmosis.

It’s not just the “old-timers”, though. Last week I was at the tiny Trafalgar Studios 2 seeing the one-man show Notes from Underground, and one of our youngest critics was just along the row from me – sound asleep every time I looked. It hasn’t stopped him declaring that the play “has good points, but isn’t as disturbing as it should be”. He neglects to mention that it failed to keep him awake, either. But perhaps he was right: I should have been looking at the stage, not him, but once you notice someone sleeping, it’s difficult not to. I remember one press night at the Cottesloe, for a production staged on three sides, and at the end of each row on the side block to the one I was in were three critics, each asleep. What must the actors have thought?

Of course, when you’ve paid for your ticket, you can choose how to spend the time you’ve paid to occupy the seat however you wish, as long as it doesn’t cause distraction to anyone else, of course, though it can leave you feeling a little befuddled yourself. As one punter replies on the Guardian’s back-row blogger, “I managed to catch some sleep during the ballet of Edward Scissorhands, which was a near miracle, given the discomfort of my seat. This does give rise to the terrible awakening, mid-auditorium, jolting upright, wide-eyed, wondering what on earth is going on. Reminds me of being at uni.”

And just last night, looking around the stalls of the opening night for Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke, I noticed plenty of serial sleepers. They were, perhaps, the lucky ones.