In the musical 42nd Street, director Julian Marsh famously declares: “musical comedy: the most glorious words in the English language”. I often agree - but there are also four more that are also guaranteed to put a spring in your step when you go to the theatre: “90 minutes - no interval”.
On Monday night, the Bush opened a new play Tinderbox that was prefaced by the PR issuing the dreaded words, “two-and-a-half hours”, but at least he added, “we’re doing drinks in the interval”. It’s a long time to spend in a theatre if the play doesn’t deliver, and as Michael Billington wrote in his Guardian review yesterday, “While it is refreshing to find a young writer delivering a two-act play rather than opting for the comfort zone of 90 minutes, I can’t help feeling that she stretches her basic joke a bit too far.”
So it was a pleasure to go to the Royal Court last night and indeed be told that the opening of Martin Crimp’s The City would run for just 90 minutes without an interval.
My companion ruefully remarked that even better would be the promise of 90 minutes, no interval but with naked boys - I think he may have said this because of a particular passion he has for Benedict Cumberbatch.
Whatever gets you through the night. Crimp’s play gives one few enough anchors to hold onto; the character page of the published script specifies “Time - Blank; Place - Blank”. An eerie sense of strange dislocation is quickly established in Katie Mitchell’s production as a couple discuss their day; but last night, the atmosphere was soon cut by the constant bleeping of a mobile phone. As it went on - and on - I wondered whether it was a Mitchell-esque sound effect to underline the characters’ alienation from each other as the world outside tries to intrude upon their world.
But no, it was that very modern theatrical intrusion, the thoughtless mobile - and the perpetrator tried to brazen it out, presumably in the hope that it would eventually stop, so he didn’t have to draw attention to himself as he fumbled to switch it off. Except that it didn’t stop. It must have been an alarm on the phone rather than an incoming call, and sabotaged the entire scene that Hattie Morahan and Benedict Cumberbatch bravely soldiered on through.
Finally, after what seemed like literally several minutes, the person - sitting in the circle, auditorium right, according to witnesses sitting up there - finally did something about it, but not of course without an increase in volume as he finally took the phone out to switch it off. Only in yesterday’s Guardian, Cumberbatch was noting in an interview that the rule of watching plays in silence no longer applies amongst younger audiences: “Texting and talking have become a real problem. But you have to understand that you can’t demand their attention, you have to command it. You have to make them behave by your acting, not by shouting: ‘Behave!’ There’s a famous story about the actor playing Dracula at a matinee and getting sick of the noise from the kids. So he jumped into the audience and seized one by the throat and roared: ‘Don’t you know who I am? I’m Count fucking Dracula!’ But you can’t do that.”
No, but the rhythm that the play and production sought so meticulously to create last night was immediately unravelled last night in one of the worst instances of mobile phone intrusion I’ve ever experienced in the theatre. And I speak as one whose own mobile has once gone off; it’s mortifying when it happens to you, but in my experience until now you do your utmost to stop it ringing as quickly as you can. Not last night.
One can't help but wonder if Ms Mitchell reads this blog if she will now add in the underpinning of alienation to the play. Stranger things have happened in Katie Mitchell shows.
I thought similarly after a while, that it had gone on so long that it surely had to be an alarm in another part of the theatre.
My own mobile has gone off twice during performances; luckily, the ring tone I used at the time didn't carry that far... especially as, on the second occasion, David Warner's King Lear was just beginning to get serious grief from Goneril & Regan and would NOT have welcomed the sound of Helium from the magnificent online Strindberg & Helium animations chirping, "Miseryyyyyyyyyyyyyy!"
i've seen ninety minute plays that seemed to drag on for ever, and three hour plays that were over way too fast. it's only a question of whether the play's good or not. but you can't know that in advance. the taste for shorter plays doesn't indicate that they're better, just that people want to reduce the risk. and it's a sad indictment of most new plays that they should need to.