Introducing press previews ahead of the opening night….

One of the things that AA Gill used to point an admonishing finger at theatre critics for In his recent Sunday Times feature on us was the fast retreat some make up the aisles on a first night: “When it’s over and the audience applaud and cheer and, more than likely these days, rise to their feet for a standing ovation, you may notice a little gang of hunted characters sidle out of the stalls and scuttle up the aisle. They seem to be escaping, running away. Many will be dressed in old macs, shiny-buttocked suits and cheap, comfy shoes, and be carrying sagging briefcases and Tesco bags. They keep their heads down and don’t look back, and they don’t do applause. You might imagine they were rude, disrespectful philistines. But you couldn’t be more wrong. These creeping things are the critics, keepers of the flame of theatre, the referees of the muse, and they’re running out not because they want to get to the bar first, but because they write their reviews overnight for the morning’s first editions. Well, they used to. Not all papers now do ‘overnights’, but even those with nothing to write on the spot will probably be rushing for the exits.”

As someone who doesn’t have to file “on the night”, I typically wait for the final curtain call before bolting for it, but unless you make a well-timed exit, its true that you can become embroiled in the slow crush of humanity trying to leave, which on a first night can be especially trying as air-kissing minor celebrities – which sometimes include AA Gill – hog the foyers. And going through this ritual night after night, we can be excused for wanting to make our excuses and want to get home ahead of the crowd.

But the genuine “overnight” critics really do have to get out: by the time a supposed 7pm press night curtain actually goes up, it can be closer to 7.15pm or even 7.20pm by the time the same air-kissing celebs have finally made it to their seats, so we’ll be lucky to get out much ahead of 10pm (or later, if it’s a Trevor Nunn production). And the overnight critics have to typically file their finished reviews by 11pm. So there isn’t much time for consideration, let alone writing; but the discipline often creates a sense of urgency that communicates itself on the page, too, and gives overnight reviews the real quality of making news on the spot, too.

In New York, by contrast, critics are invited to critics’ previews – a choice of several performances, ahead of the “opening night”, when they can come and see a show and then write at more leisure as reviews are embargoed until after the opening itself. (Now that all papers has a web presence, too, it means that the reviews are ready to go live there the same night as the opening, though some papers have been known to run their reviews a few hours early and thus effectively steal a march on others).

In London, for reasons of deadline or sometimes press night clashes (that regularly happen, despite a first night list being maintained by the Society of London Theatre to supposedly avoid them), critics will sometimes get special dispensation to attend a final preview – this is particularly the case with some of the Sunday papers like the Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph, both of which absurdly require final copy from their critics for that Sunday’s edition by Wednesday morning – so anything that opens, or is reviewed, after Tuesday night would have to wait otherwise till the Sunday after. Or there may be occasions of personal circumstance or preference that compels one to attend early, too – in the last couple of months, I’ve been travelling a bit, as regular readers of this blog know, so I’ve had to juggle my schedule sometimes to get everything in.

Last month, for instance, there was a press day for the two-part Angels in America at the Lyric Hammersmith on a Tuesday that clashed for me with an invitation to Cameron Mackintosh’s party to mark his 40th anniversary as a producer, so I asked to go to the first part the night before. Even though the production had been touring for two months already — and been already been reviewed on the road by some national media — the director initially turned down the request, even though 15 hours or so separated the curtain down on Monday night’s last preview and the curtain up on the Tuesday matinee, so there would hardly be any more time to make adjustments to the “finished product”. When I pointed out that in that case I wouldn’t be able to go at all, since I was heading to the US a day later, I was finally allowed in.

But this week, as I returned from that trip to the US in time for the press night of St Joan on Wednesday night, I discovered looking around the Olivier stalls that many of my senior colleagues were AWOL. Kate Bassett of the Independent on Sunday was in front of me and Paul Taylor of the Indie across the aisle, and Ian Shuttleworth of the FT a few rows back, but otherwise the rest of the first night pack were nowhere to be seen. But yesterday, The Guardian, Times, Telegraph, Mail and Standard all published reviews. And, I subsequently discovered, The Observer’s Susannah Clapp and Mail on Sunday’s Georgina Brown had also snuck in early, as (no doubt) had the Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times. Somehow, unannounced, Tuesday had become an unofficial “critics’ preview”.

This was partly, no doubt, caused by an opening night clash at Shakespeare’s Globe on Wednesday evening – we couldn’t be in both places at once, so something had to go early. (And interestingly, that’s what Paul Taylor did – his overnight review yesterday was for Love’s Labours’ Lost at the Globe, which he’d obviously seen the night before the night before). But it was also a practical necessity: Shaw can run long, and even with cuts, Marianne Elliott’s production had a running time of 3 hours 10 minutes. So overnight critics would have had their work cut out for them trying to review it on the opening night.

But could the critics’ preview become a formal institution, rather than this informal one? Producer Sonia Friedman has been amongst those trying to introduce something like it – as did Spamalot when it opened here – by holding a press night separate to the opening night. But the problem with that was that the reviews were not embargoed till after opening night, but duly appeared after the press one – with the opening night therefore taking place with the reviews literally already in the bag.

Friedman’s contention was that first nights themselves are an artificial construct, and critics don’t see the show with a “typical” audience; but while first nights can be an unsightly scrum, they also position critics as part of the “news” of the event, rather than only being there to provide a critical afterthought.