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It's not just the ultra-modern add-ons to JB Priestley's deeply traditional play Time and The Conways that are currently causing surprise at the National Theatre.
Audience members are providing an unusual spectacle, too, as they emerge, relaxed-looking, from the Lyttelton auditorium two-thirds of the way through the drama, in a manner that suggests nothing of the interval frenzy of loo queues or the post-play rush to catch a train.
They'll have done the former in the first break, and the latter must wait until the Conway family has finally unravelled.
These unexpected 15 minutes can therefore be given over to idle, expansive chat about matters dramatic or otherwise. The theatre, you see, is belatedly realising how pleasurable that rarity, an evening of two intervals, can be.
It used to be keenly aware of this fact, acknowledging that, from a night out, patrons expected a decent chance to flirt, plot and socialise, as well as be culturally improved.
Chekhov's four-act plays were originally presented with three lengthy intervals, and the “well-made” three-act dramas beloved of the Victorians and Edwardians were custom-made for two pauses and thus burgeoning marriage prospects among their younger clientele.
Yet we modern-day theatre-lovers have long realised that we're stuck in the austerity era when it comes to the break stakes. We've grown used to looking on in envy as opera-going chums crack open the champagne and slice the smoked salmon for one of their lengthy, elegant, Glyndebourne-style picnics.
We marvel at the efficiency of the Royal Opera House, which uses two decent stops per show to furnish its punters with a three-course meal, or at least the time both to queue at the Floral Hall bar and then drink the blessed drink before the next gong.
There are no stacks of wretchedly wasteful plastic cups for unfinished interval grog at Covent Garden.
Theatre, though, has got into no such soothingly predictable rhythm. In recent years, and against a howl of anguish from theatre owners worried about bar takings, there has been something of a trend for 90 minutes straight through, in the prototypical manner of ancient Greek drama.
This was the winning formula of Yasmina Reza's hit comedy Art, and I've always suspected that the long-running success of the play owed at least as much to the ample opportunity it offered for post-show dining as to any inherent qualities in the writing.
Yet other venues have pushed this idea too far: while our bladder, coccyx and attention span might hold out for an hour and a half, anything over two is hopeless. Running Julius Caesar straight through, just as the RSC did a few years ago, is positively disastrous.
Theatre's problem is that we never know when it might surprise us and depart from its standard two-and-a-quarter-hour, one-break, choice-between-toilet-and-overpriced-wine-in-the-interval pattern.
Film-goers at least expect to sit still from start to finish, and the running times of movies are easily available to anyone who might feel the need for a bit of sustenance before they go in.
On entering a West End foyer, however, we can never be sure if we're going to be facing a novella of Art-esque proportions or a doorstopper of a Victorian novel of the Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf ilk, which will leave us grabbing the last drooping sandwiches from Tesco Express just before it closes.
Yet for a few blissful months on the South Bank, we know exactly where we are, and have time to pace ourselves and enjoy it.
Reader views (1)
Oh, no!!!!! The two breaks are a blatant attempt by theatres to cash in with overpriced drinks at the bar. Two intervals ruin the tension and excitement of a play and make for too late a night - especially, if one has to catch the last train home. Stop it at once!
- Dj, London, 14/05/2009 11:23
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