The vexed issue of intervals, when and if to have them, is a long runner that nobody seems willing to address. Roy Williams’s terrific new play at the Soho Theatre, Joe Guy, could definitely use a break.

And two new revivals of classic three-act comedies — Noel Coward’s Private Lives at the National and Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take It With You at the Southwark Playhouse — are seriously spoilt by having intervals in the wrong place, ie straight down the middle, instead of in between each act.

I like intervals. I like to see who else in the audience, and I like to have a glass of wine and a friendly (or even an unfriendly) chat. The witty New Yorker critic Robert Benchley denied that he ever slept through a play. “I’m always awake for the intermission,” he boasted.

The serious point about intervals is that they also allow the audience to bond properly, so that the social contract of the performance, if you like, is completed.

Dashing in, sitting down and dashing out — which is what some critics prefer — is simply an abominable way of behaving at a performance which is as much defined by the people in the stalls as the actors on the stage.

Obviously one doesn’t want to have an interval in Oedipus Rex — apart from disrupting the single tragic arc of the play, it would only encourage tasteless conversation between the punters (”Mmm, I suppose she is a bit old for her own son, but she still doesn’t look her age, Fiona, does she, darling?”) — but a play like Dealer’s Choice at the Menier gains nothing by playing straight through for nearly two hours except a roomful of tight bladders and anxious clock-watchers.

Fringe theatre architecture is inimical, often, to intervals, as well. Getting 150 people up and down narrow stairways in the Theatre Upstairs or the Soho within fifteen minutes is obviously a challenge too far for the front of house staff.

And the bar area of the new Southwark Playhouse is so grimly uninviting that perhaps one visit is enough.

But classic comedies of the mid 20th century variety were written for two intervals. Each act has its own shape and momentum, and not to have two intervals is to ignore the musical style, the sonata form, almost, of the writing. And what theatre doesn’t want to double up on its bar takings, anyway?

Waiting For Godot is such a perfectly structured drama that many people think it’s all over at the end of the first act. I know at least two dozen people who have never seen the second act of Godot. When they are told it’s the play “where nothing happens twice” they feel pleased with themselves for guessing as much and missing the repeat.

But the subtle differences in each act constitute the poetic richness of the play, and some of them are pointed out by Michael Billington in his new book, State of the Nation.

I would suggest that a one-act play is less likely to be as structurally interesting as a good two-act one. Not only can I cite Joe Guy — Roy Williams has clearly written the play in two acts — but an even better example, Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine, which comes to the Almeida any day now.

And you just try imagining a West End musical without an interval. Life just wouldn’t be the same without all that pushing and shoving for an over-priced glass of warm white wine; and who’s gonna clock your new suit or your lady’s bling? 
 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Michael Coveney. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.