When Kismet first opened on Broadway in December 1953, fate (which in fact is the translation of its title) was famously on its side: New York was in the middle of a newspaper strike, so the reviews didn’t appear. Watching the ENO’s lumbering but luxurious revival last night, I wondered if the only thing that could save it would be another strike today, too – but then there’d have to be an electronic media meltdown, too. If, however, you’re reading this, kismet is not on their side this time.
There’s a critical convention that critics don’t talk to each other about what they are seeing, either during the interval or after the show, at least within the confines of the theatre – the walls have ears, and there are sensibilities to be hurt. One West End producer, overhearing a negative comment made by a critic on her way out, lodged a complaint with her paper afterwards.
A friend of mine in New York has devised the “five block rule” – that you shouldn’t talk about a show until you’re at least five city blocks away from the theatre. On the tube back from the Lyric Hammersmith on Tuesday evening after seeing Angels in America, I got into animated conversation with a colleague – and he reported to me yesterday that after I got off the tube, the man who had been sitting next us who had been earwigging all the way leapt across the carriage to gleefully tell a friend what he’d heard. So perhaps the five block rule should be extended to five tube stops, too.
But sometimes you don’t need to actually speak to a colleague to know precisely what they are thinking… and feeling. Body language can be just as articulate. At Attempts on Her Life, the critic in front of me was slumped down in his seat so far I thought he would fall off the edge of it. And last night, the looks of silent – and not so-silent – suffering on the faces of colleagues at the London Coliseum said it all. Across the aisle from me, a senior opera critic – seated directly in front of ENO’s chief executive Loretta Tomasi – repeatedly slumped over and buried his face in the bag on his lap. I swear he was even hitting his forehead in frustration.
The look of wide-eyed horror on another’s face in the interval was equally articulate. One colleague came across the foyer and simply exclaimed to me, “F….ing hell!” I couldn’t have put it better myself. Last week, choreographer Javier de Frutos suddenly withdrew from the production before it opened. Audiences may wish they were able to do the same. And with a scheduled run of 19 performances (though the first was lost owing to de Frutos’s departure) — at up to £83 a ticket — it could turn into the toughest ticket to shift of the year.
