[Exit stage right for gin and tonic]

Theatre dir­ector Dominic Drom­goole writ­ing about the need for inter­vals dur­ing plays:

“There is also a limit to what the mind can take. The human brain can only take so much music, thought, emo­tion, insight, humour, col­our in one gulp. After that, you need a cigar­ette. If you don’t get one, your con­cen­tra­tion slips, and an even­ing starts to get long quickly. Chek­hov wrote for his inter­vals. He knew that after 40 minutes of The Three Sis­ters, you need a break. If you string two acts together, you imme­di­ately get slow, bor­ing Chek­hov, because it’s not what he inten­ded. While you’re grind­ing your way through the second act, Chek­hov inten­ded you to be down­ing a vodka or star­ing at somebody’s cleavage.”

That para­graph some­how defeats its own point, because Chek­hov is slow and bor­ing, and no amount of inter­vals is going to rem­edy that. (As you may have guessed, I’m not a Chek­hov fan — his plays bored me to tears dur­ing my degree).

I’m not sure that I agree with Dromgoole’s whole argu­ment any­way. He sug­gests that dir­ect­ors have gradu­ally got rid of the inter­val in theatre, believ­ing that it des­troys “the unbroken spell”, as he calls it. Maybe that’s a fair cri­ti­cism. But then I hap­pen to think that theatre should be an unbroken spell, just like cinema. When I was a kid going to the local two-screen cinema in Taunton in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, I seem to remem­ber that the movies still had inter­vals. Now that we’ve become a nation of ded­ic­ated cine­astes, this seems to be a thing of the past. No more cheesy organ music her­ald­ing the arrival of some­body car­ry­ing a tray of Lyon’s Maid ice cream tubs and Kia Ora car­tons. Thank heav­ens for that. Today, we can com­fort­ably sit through films of three hours in length, trans­fixed by what we see on screen. So why should we need a break dur­ing a play?

If what’s hap­pen­ing on stage isn’t keep­ing our atten­tion, that’s not the fault of the dra­matic medium itself — it’s the fault of the play and the per­formers. Because it’s live, I hon­estly believe that theatre should be even more cap­tiv­at­ing than cinema. Dram­at­ists and per­formers rely upon the audience’s “sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief.” Yet, dur­ing a per­form­ance, the audi­ence can­not help but remain slightly aware that the action is tak­ing place here and now, which the­or­et­ic­ally means that any­thing could hap­pen. It’s this know­ledge, added to our will­ing­ness to believe that what we’re see­ing is real, which should make theatre a com­pletely enga­ging exper­i­ence — an unbroken spell.

Drom­goole also seems to have a uto­pian idea that, dur­ing theatre inter­vals, the audi­ence dis­cusses the per­form­ances and the issues being raised in the play. If only. Maybe it’s more of a Lon­don / West End thing, but when I endure inter­vals at the theatre (and I really do mean endure), all I ever seem to exper­i­ence is a crowd of people packed into a foyer that’s far too small for the seat­ing capa­city of the aud­it­or­ium, and a scrum at the bar to buy over-priced drinks. Rather than talk­ing about what has just been seen on stage, the con­ver­sa­tion instead seems to revolve around house prices (oh, the tedium) and what good res­taur­ants are loc­ated nearby for a meal after the show. Maybe the theatre­go­ers shouldn’t really be blamed for this, though — how can a play be sens­ibly be dis­cussed in such sur­round­ings, par­tic­u­larly when it’s only halfway through?

There is a solu­tion, at least in part. Make theatres a little more like the best mod­ern cinemas — places in which you can relax, take a drink into the aud­it­or­ium, and become totally wrapped up in the pro­ceed­ings tak­ing place on stage. Here, once again, I appear to dis­agree with Dominic Dromgoole:

“Com­pare a pic­ture of a cinema audi­ence with a theatre audi­ence and the dif­fer­ence is remark­able. In the cinema, people slouch, relax, lounge and reflect; in the theatre, they are alert, tense, feb­rile. That ten­sion is right and proper — it makes an even­ing crackle — but there is only so much that spec­tat­ors can take at a time before it becomes wearing.”

Since I’ve slated the rest of his art­icle, I have no shame in say­ing that I think he’s picked an unfor­tu­nate choice of words. It’s entirely pos­sible to feel relaxed in one’s sur­round­ings, yet still be “alert, tense, feb­rile.” This is how huge cine­matic dra­mas work, for heaven’s sake. Without going into dull aca­demic details, some of the theatre prac­ti­tion­ers I’ve stud­ied in the past did believe that theatre should have more of a relaxed atmo­sphere, rather than main­tain­ing an aura of stuffy, uncom­fort­able form­al­ity. Some might argue that the sound of people slurp­ing drinks might dis­turb the per­formers on stage, but don’t think this would be too much of an issue — not if the drama is truly enga­ging. Rather than force people to take a pan­icky fifteen-minute break to rush for a gin and tonic, they can take a drink into the aud­it­or­ium, relax into their seats and com­pletely immerse them­selves in the play.

What dis­turbs me most about this art­icle is the sense that the cul­ture of snob­bery sur­round­ing Brit­ish theatre is car­ry­ing on into the 21st cen­tury — audi­ences aren’t intel­li­gent or focused enough to sit through a two-hour per­form­ance, and theatres shouldn’t learn from cinema. It’s time to sit up and take notice of the reas­ons why cinemas con­tinue to thrive, while theatres are in decline.