AND ANOTHER THING
Ten good reasons why a first night can sparkle
PAUL JOHNSON
Asomeone who, these days, goes to a first night only occasionally, I find the enjoyment much enhanced by its rarity. Indeed, there is nothing in the whole web of complexities which constitute our civili- sation to beat a London first night for sub- tle variety and number of its pleasures ten at least, by my count. First, there is the immediacy and uniqueness. In the last sec- onds before the curtain rises on a new play, you share the excitement of King James's court at Whitehall settling down to King Lear on Stephen's Day 1607, or, for that matter, the young bloods of the Inner Tem- ple watching Gorboduc begin it all in 1562. And for a Tom Stoppard first night, as at last week's Arcadia, the intellectual elec- tricity fizzles with incomparable urgency. The chattering classes know they are in for an evening of mental gymnastics and are tingling with anxiety about whether they can pass the test.
Second, there is the story. At a first night it is unexplored territory. Nobody has yet been able to spoil it for you. Stoppard delights in complex plotting, whizzing about in time, keeping you guessing and opening and shutting doors as often as in a Feydeau farce. Last week it was, as it were, Occupe-toi de Milord Byron. What had his Lordship been up to that dawn in 1809? Had he shot the minor poet? Would he, indeed, make a sensational appearance? Then, third, there are the things you learn, especially from Stoppard. The second law of thermodynamics I have known since it was drummed into my head by old C.P. Snow. But chaos theory is another matter. The fact that a 13-year-old, Lady Thomasi- na, could work it all out for herself before she even knew the meaning of the words `carnal embrace' is a fascinating reversal of Present-day standards. But not improbable: Byron's daughter was a teenage mathemati- cal genius and later helped Charles Bab- bage to invent the first computer. The play Is a testimony to early 19th-century educa- tion; not only John Patten but the fat man who runs the NUT should see it, and weep. Fourth, there are the actors, nerve- wracked but also uniquely creative on a first night because they are giving birth to the characters whom the playwright has fathered. Last week I delighted to see Har- riet Walter present Stoppard's frisky Whig grande dame as a cross between Lady Otto- line Morrell and the Lady Lucy Lambton. It was fascinating, too, to watch Felicity Kendal demonstrate how a sexy, witty but above all beady-eyed, non-academic histo- rian sets about demolishing a would-be fashionable don anxious to make a splash and appear on the Breakfast Show — and played here with enormous panache by Bill Nighy.
But, fifth, I am old-fashioned enough to go to the theatre hoping to be charmed by actresses' sensuous wiles. Last week I was rewarded by a bravura display from Emma Fielding as Thomasina, showing her as a glittering child skipping with excitement on the brink of intellectual and sexual aware- ness, then, as the 16-year-old, well over it and plunging ecstatically into the heady waters of adolescent romance. I could sense a number of gentlemen in the audi- ence yearning for the exquisite creature on stage, and who can wonder? Not since the young Audrey Hepburn first launched her- self have these alluring tricks been played with such assurance.
There are other physical pleasures too. A new play is, six, a visual experience, and one without a magnificent or at least strik- ing set is at a huge disadvantage from the start. In Arcadia, Mark Thompson supplies a light-filled, classical-revival framework which both cunningly captures the time and mood of the play and gives the cast an ample space to strut, fret and argue. Even the misty, sunny, cloudy backcloth made a telling visual point: not quite Derbyshire and Chatsworth, perhaps, but certainly Sus- sex and Petworth. Nor, seven, did Stoppard forget the evocative sounds which, often as not, make a play cling to the memory more `I'm here in support of adult education.' surely than the actors' voices. Here, towards the end, as events moved towards a climax, we had the unmistakable industrial music of Mr Newcomen's steam-engine softly supplying the horse-power to trans- form the landscape outside from classical order to romantic mystery.
An eighth pleasure, particularly keen on a first night, is the reassuring sense of a firm directional hand which makes all the other pleasures work smoothly, effortlessly, above all naturally. Trevor Nunn does this for Arcadia without a hint of intrusion, of director's ego. Of course he has a cast of great strength and quality. Even so, it was good to hear a text of such complexity (and length) delivered without a hint of fluffing or misapprehension. And Nunn had to con- trive not merely to differentiate the move- ments and voices of Regency England and today, but finally to weave both sets of characters together into a seamless gar- ment of stagecraft. When I first read the script last year I wondered how a director could possibly bring this off. Now I know.
Nine, the jokes. Few works of art are complete without some. That is why Shake- speare put excellent ones into Hamlet: he knew that nothing more surely binds an audience together into a receptive unity than shared laughter. Stoppard opens this play with a sparkling display of jokes which, like so many of his, spring from verbal con- fusion — in this case between flesh, as such, and what Catholic moral theologians disdainfully term its 'irregular motions' (i.e. sex). As the 13-year-old is the unwitting straightwoman in the dialogue, there is no doubt about the intrigued thoroughness with which the audience is ignited. That brings me to point number ten. The final pleasure of a first night is being part of a collection of people — rich and smart, some of them even successful and celebrat- ed, certainly more critical and easily jaded than most — and observing the process whereby playwright and cast win them over, or lose them. There is craft on the stage; a study of minds in the audience; an interac- tive contest between both. Last week at Arcadia the stage won clearly, a fact sig- nalled to me after the curtain came down by an exchange between a neighbour in the stalls and his wife. 'I understood it all, dar- ling, even if you didn't."Beast! I followed every word.' That's my clever girlie!' So, I repeat: when a first night works, it beats all for sheer entertainment.
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