It’s an opening night convention that performances begin at 7pm. That’s historically been to accommodate the overnight critics - the handful who have to rush for the exits as the curtain falls to file their reviews for the next morning’s papers - so they can get an extra half an hour headstart on doing so. And for the management, their guests and the company, it also gives them a headstart, too, on beginning their post-performance party.
Of course, the supposedly early start also marks the night out as different from the others, to give the evening a heightened sense of occasion; but all too often, that merely means it is turned into a social occasion rather than a theatrical one, and the apparent advantages of the early curtain are lost as the evening turns into an unholy scrum of people who are more engaged in air-kissing than getting to their seats.
That was accentuated last night at the Leicester Square Theatre (formerly the Venue), where its bizarre unreserved seating policy that began with its opening production of Joan Rivers in September has now been continued and has the further impact of making people have to scramble for those seats. A further interval scrum takes place for drinks, too, since the bars on either side of the auditorium won’t take advance orders - which leads to a prolonged interval, too; though one colleague who waited for the queue to abate before claiming his free interval drink was turned away when the bar duly closed on him.
The play that opened last night there was Blowing Whistles, a play that blows the whistle on contemporary gay relationships, and when it hadn’t started by 7.20pm, I simply figured that the production was on “gay time”. That’s the idea that nothing gay starts at the advertised time, and you can usually add half an hour to that to find out when it will actually begin.
In one of the more bizarre coincidences of my life, I was once standing on the sidewalk where Christopher Street meets the Hudson River in New York waiting for the annual Gay Pride fireworks to begin about ten years ago, and a group of three people - two guys and a woman - standing nearby asked me what time they would begin. I replied that it was due to begin at 10.30pm, but it was probably on gay time - and I was right. They didn’t start till 11pm. But when they asked me what gay time was, I also assumed they were a straight group - so told them that gay theatre performances often start a half an hour later than advertised. “So do you go to the theatre a lot?”, asked the cuter of the two men. “Yes, I do”, I replied - I’m from London and I write about the theatre. “Are you Mark Shenton?”, he rejoined. It turned out that he and I had met online a few months earlier - and he wasn’t straight, after all! Suffice to say, the night did not end there. But what are the chances - out of all of gay New York, especially on gay Pride Sunday, to meet a total stranger in this way was bizarre; and it was all in the timing, literally. (So was the success of last night’s performance, with its brilliantly witty one-liners zapping their way across the footlights).
Straight people are not quite so forgiving, of course. One critical colleague sat behind me last night with his wife tapped me on the shoulder and said that, as the newly-appointed chairman of the Critics’ Circle, it was now my job to get the performance started. I have actually seen a senior member of the Critics’ Circle (and former President) before now begin a slow handclap at the opening of a West End musical whose curtain was being held; but I resisted, and the performance finally began soon afterwards.
It turned out to be worth waiting for, especially for those keen to see naked young flesh (another basic tenet of gay theatre, of course), but which makes a nice change from seeing bare critical flesh in the stalls. I was a little concerned that the mild heat in the theatre last night might cause a disrobing further along my row; and in my new role on the Critics’ Circle, I recently received a message from a prominent theatrical practitioner urging me to impose a new rule on my colleagues: “Can you set up a no sleep/clothes on policy for some critics? Small children could be paid a few dollars to sit beside them and kick them every time they fall asleep and also prevent them removing too much clothing (unless its Dominic Cavendish and he’s allowed to undress totally)”. I don’t, of course, have that kind of power; but it’s a nice thought, so I’m passing it on here!
I guess that congratulations are in order Mr Shenton - newly appointed chairman! Good on you!