Now previewing (and previewing)…. but not reviewing….

That’s partly no doubt pragmatic – there are only so many nights in the week, as I’ve often commented here, and this week is already rammed with press nights, up to and including tomorrow. But next week isn’t quite as pressured: Monday is wide open, and the clash on Wednesday would only be with a short G&S season at the Gielgud which is unlikely to bring out the serried ranks of theatre critics.

But having made their choice to open next Thursday, they’re sticking with it; and a request to be allowed in early, since I am off to New York next Tuesday, was turned down by the producers through the show’s PR. The earliest critics are being allowed in is next Wednesday, the night before the opening. That will knock the Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph off the reviewing radar, since both of those go to print on Wednesday now; and the Independent on Sunday and Mail on Sunday have Thursday deadlines.

Curiously, too, an interview request with Penelope Keith – the production’s main selling point (if not only one, from a casting point of view at least) – was also turned down. She’s simply not doing any. This is a production clearly determined to avoid getting into the papers. Perhaps it doesn’t need it. Or perhaps it only wants to be in the papers when it actually pays for the space to be there.

By contrast, the double-bill of Pinter short plays The Lover and The Collection started previewing a week ago (with a £5 reduction on the top two prices, reduced a further £2.50 on the top price if booked online), before opening next Tuesday. It will have therefore performed one day shy of two weeks (but had no regional tour beforehand). I was interviewing Timothy West yesterday for a profile, so was allowed to watch the performance beforehand. But though not officially therefore reviewing it, I was struck by the fact that it felt ready, already: audiences weren’t being short-changed.

So do previews go on too long? The Lord of the Rings last summer previewed for nearly seven weeks, but that was a hugely complex show, technologically speaking. And Trevor Nunn, of course, kept critics away from his RSC productions of King Lear and The Seagull for two and a half months last year after the first of them had begun performances at Stratford-upon-Avon, only finally letting us in when the productions had less than three weeks to run there. The Menier Chocolate Factory’s La Cage Aux Folles, too, recently previewed – mostly with the understudy when Douglas Hodge succumbed to pneumonia – for some six weeks, too.

But these are exceptions, not the rule. It is, of course, now standard practice to allow creators to find their feet in front of paying punters before the braying ones in the form of the critical pack arrive. However, we are constantly in danger now of being pre-empted by other sources: there’s no embargo on the opinions of those who have actually bought their tickets to be there, so the West End Whingers, for instance, make it their business to go in as early as possible and pass their inimitable form of judgement. That means, in the case of La Cage Aux Folles, that they ended up seeing the first-ever performance, after the first three previews were cancelled; and they did duly qualify their comments, “This is the first preview of a production in dire health, plagued by illness with an understudy taking on one of the lead roles. On the other hand, we didn’t book for a first preview and we paid up our money just like the people who will see it next week and the week after and the week after that (should it run that long).”

They decided generously that “it would be unfair to be too unkind.” But then add: “Let’s just say that it isn’t ready to go before an audience. We won’t use the words ‘chaotic’ or ‘car crash’ or ‘pig’s ear’ or anything like that. Because.” Fast forward to six weeks later, and the production opens to (mostly) rave reviews. Clearly a lot of work was done (and it certainly helped, no doubt, that star Douglas Hodge returned to the show); that’s what previews are for. Whether audiences should pay full price to subsidise that process is another question. The Whingers early response records the earlier chaos for posterity. But it’s also self-fulfilling: going to previews means there’s usually more to whinge about. I, for one, am grateful that they do. And so should the creators of the shows that they see in those conditions. They frequently lower my expectations so much that I’m pleasantly surprised by the time I get there (though of course the show may have improved, too, since they actually saw it)!