As the critics disappeared into the night after the premiere of Jez Butterworth’s brilliant new play Parlour Song at the Almeida last night, and sponsors and guests mingled in the foyer with drinks and canapes, artistic director Michael Attenborough was coming across the road to join in at his own party.

“It’s all over, ” I cried cheerily, “you’ve missed it.” But as he sped towards the milling throng, he explained that it was a superstition of his never to attend his own first nights, and he hadn’t done so in twenty-five years.

I find this faintly astonishing. Obviously he’s been involved with the play since its earliest rehearsals — the director is Ian Rickson — and he’s seen previews. But he’ll never know how it went on the big night with that strange convocation of semi-interested parties including his own peers, his sponsors, the critics and many Almeida supporters and regulars.

The audience included comedian Alan Davies, playwright Nick Dear and his actress partner Penny Downie, top agent Judy Daish and her partner (who mislaid his blinking blackberry in the foyer before the show), film director Charles Sturridge and his wife Phoebe Nicholls, who is appearing in the next Almeida production (alongside Jonathan Cullen, also in the audience) and actress Kate Fahy.

Kate, of course, is usually at Almeida first nights with her husband Jonathan Pryce, but he’s opened this week in Athold Fugard’s Dimetos at the Donmar. Which is all very confusing. I set off for Dimetos the night before thinking I was going to the Almeida.

Anyway, back to Attenborough’s superstition. There’s nothing he can do about it now, I suppose. And if it works for him, then it obviously works for the theatre, as Parlour Song is likely to figure large in the next set of awards when they come round.  

Some directors never miss a single performance of their own productions — Deborah Warner, for instance — while some never watch a single one — Jonathan Miller’s interest in his own work evaporates completely in the rehearsal room.  
 
It’s noticeable at the National how Nicholas Hytner is always visible on his own and others’ first nights (Richard Eyre was the same) but you never, ever, see Trevor Nunn at his own premieres, and not often at other peoples’.

I always imagine the invisible first night director is either in the pub across the road getting drunk or hiding in the lighting box with the electricians. Or perhaps he goes and watches a movie. Anything, I suppose, to get away from the hothouse environment you’ve inhabited for too many tense and fractious weeks in the preparatory build-up.

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