Yahoo News The show must go on... and on: How to survive a theatre marathon
It's a common joke among theatre critics that the most heartening words in the English language are “90 minutes straight through”. Length matters. Even the most compelling production can grate if it drags on, especially when Londoners are used to short, sharp bursts of information and are constantly told that sitting down is bad for you.
Nevertheless, the capital has recently gone in for the long haul with epic plays dominating theatres.
There’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Palace Theatre, which is a two-parter, with each instalment coming in at more than two hours 30 minutes, the adaptation of My Brilliant Friend at the Rose Theatre in Kingston (two plays that are both two-and-a-half hours long), four hours of Hamlet at the Almeida, and a two-part Angels in America opening at the National Theatre next month.
Each part is three hours and 30 minutes. It’s certainly value for money.
The Standard’s critic, Henry Hitchings, enjoys a long show “but only once in a while”. He says: “My impression is that producers reckon anything much shorter than 90 minutes is hard to programme, but anything over three hours is at risk of being described as bloated and self-indulgent.”
These mega-plays are getting glowing reviews, so if you don’t want to miss out, it’s time to ready yourself for the long run. As the plays get longer, here’s how to pull off a theatre marathon.
The company
The uninitiated may assume that who you watch a play with is irrelevant — you’ll be immersed in the onstage drama and not allowed to talk anyway — but assume at your peril. As anyone who has been stuck next to the wrong passenger on a long-distance flight will know too well, if you are sitting next to someone for a prolonged period of time, every detail matters.
If you are taking a friend or loved one to a show, choose carefully. It’s best if you have similar temperaments and your appetites are in sync. The strongest relationships have floundered over one party wanting to leave at half-time, or being cajoled into staying on, only to ruin the experience for their pal by getting drunk and obnoxiously making snide remarks throughout and/or falling asleep, upstaging the actors with snoring.
Avoid taking friends who are too smart and will want to (over)analyse every plot twist — after five hours watching onstage angst you will crave simple silence. But do take an ally who will understand what’s going on in case you miss a beat and need a quick précis of who’s who in Ferrante’s Italian Mafia or guidance on whether it’s all right to sympathise with Albus in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child or fancy Harry.
If you’re seeing a two-parter on different days, it’s good manners to take the same friend to both (unless they really fall foul of the rules above).
The rules of stranger danger apply too. It’s worth doing a quick mental risk-assessment before committing to your seats — is the person in front of you prohibitively tall/fragrant/chatty? If you suspect any of the above, try to move. You’ll only be filled with regret after spending the whole play peering over their head so you can see the action.
Any seat becomes uncomfortable after two hours (especially the cheap ones) so make your environment friendly. Some pros take cushions and can be seen limbering up in the interval, stretching their legs.
Go hard
My Brilliant Friend and Harry Potter give you the option of seeing both parts in one day — as a matinee and an evening performance — or going back on different days. Monotasking your theatre — seeing two instalments in one long session — is in some ways kinder to our overloaded brains.
It’s easier to remember what happened in the first play if you haven’t waited a month before seeing the second.
A friend who saw Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on two separate nights a month apart explains: “By the time the second play came around it was tough to remember the plot, especially as I was swilling white wine from a Hogwarts goblet-sized glass.” Bone up on the rough plot before so you don’t feel lost, but edge it — you don’t want to have tired of the play before it even starts.
Absorbing yourself in another world for a whole day can be rewarding: you go through an arc of emotions, from anticipation, to dread when the doors close and you realise you are stuck. Then you enjoy it, then there’s an exasperating lull, then euphoria, and you might even wish it went on longer (if you’re at the first instalment of a two-parter, you are in luck, it will).
Hitchings says: “Once you’re at a show, you feel you’re part of a rarefied experience, albeit one that is hard to fit in your diary. By giving a big portion of your time to a show, you feel a commitment to it and seem to have more of a stake in it. In a society that’s obsessed with immediate gratification and quick fixes, it can be salutary to make a big investment in an experience. There’s also the thrill of doing something that feels ‘hardcore’.”
Many go back for more — there are people who have seen Harry Potter upwards of five times.
Hitchings points out that a day’s theatre is nothing compared to Neil Oram’s The Warp, which lasted 22 hours when it was staged in 1979, and the work of company Forced Entertainment, who have made a show called Quizoola! that, in one version, lasted 24 hours.
The networking
Hitchings identifies “a camaraderie” that develops when a trip occupies most of a day. Everyone is in it together, and you might even make friends.
After a recent performance of My Brilliant Friend, all trains from Kingston were cancelled and theatregoers recognised each other when stranded at the station (those who have subjected themselves to extreme culture all have a dazed expression in common) and shared Ubers back to north London.
There are, of course, those who use being in a confined space to pick fights, such as Thandie Newton’s teenage daughter, who went up to Boris Johnson at her fourth trip to Harry Potter and said she didn’t like him. Don’t do this at the beginning of the play if you have to sit next to your nemesis.
The provisions
Marathon theatre sessions bear similarities to other marathons. You need sustenance, but it must be carefully considered. A rustling bag of crisps or peanuts makes monsters of us all, not just the consumer. One critic says the first hour of Hamlet at the Almeida was ruined by the woman in front of him eating seeds.
Instead of weighing up the motives of the plotters at the Danish court, he was wrangling with a different moral quandary, whether reprimanding the offending snacker would make him a bad person or whether he was a coward for saying nothing. As Hamlet’s story unfolded, he was left wondering if he actually wanted a snack too.
The actors don’t like it either. This month, the Ambassador Theatre Group emailed ticketholders for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, “asking that no food be consumed during the performance” at the Harold Pinter Theatre. The play’s star Imelda Staunton, who plays Martha, must approve.
She said in a recent interview that she wouldn’t even have a snack in front of the television and it’s a real gripe of hers when audiences eat mid-show. There were calls for the no-eating policy to be rolled out across the West End.
Last summer, theatre producer Richard Jordan complained that during a performance of Doctor Faustus starring Kit Harington, “a couple saw nothing wrong in producing a box of McDonald’s chicken McNuggets and a large side of fries”. Perhaps the man wanted to distract his partner from Harington’s good looks. Elizabethan audiences turned theatre into a feast, swigging wine and chomping on legs of chicken mid-Shakespeare, but they also had infant mortality and sanitation problems, so don’t follow their lead.
Smart drinking
Hitchings has seen the consequences of “falling foul of one of the basic principles, which is to go easy on the coffee”. As gripping as Angels in America is, even Denise Gough and Andrew Garfield’s acting won’t be enough distraction from bodily functions.
Avoid caffeine and drink water tactically, an hour before a show begins, and then at the beginning of the interval should work. A few glasses of wine can help keep spirits up but don’t overdo it or you won’t remember the play.
Dress the part
If you were watching something this long at home, you would be in loungewear, taking breaks to make tea and rewinding if you’d missed a crucial twist while checking Instagram.
But you are in public, which many people feel means they have to dress up. It also means you have to wear shoes. Don’t choose anything you are tempted to kick off as fellow paying customers shouldn’t have to tolerate feet.
The right outfit makes a nod to the act of going out — a handbag with a statement strap, for example, or a good shirt — but is easy to wear, which means nothing too tight that you can’t sit down in. Don’t wear anything with trimmings that may make a noise and disturb the person next so you, and take layers — theatres are often in old buildings that can become drafty. Granted, Hedda Gabbler (Ruth Wilson at the National Theatre) might wear a skimpy slip on stage but she is being paid to freeze. You are there by choice so enjoy the show.
