by Rachael Stirling makes her way backstage, joins her colleagues in the stalls, and then promptly bursts into tears. “I’m tired,” she explains. Stirling is playing Sarah Siddons, the great 18th-century actress, in The Divine Mrs S at London’s Hampstead theatre, and we’re chatting right in the middle of previews. It’s a fraught time.
“We haven’t cracked it yet,” says Stirling sadly. “You have _!” exclaims director Anna Mackmin. “You are so crazy.” “I love what you do,” says April De Angelis, the playwright. “I’ve been sending you messages all night,” Mackmin continues. “Breath. That’s it, baby, you’re worth the price of the ticket.” “Here I am again,” Stirling says, crying and laughing at once. Mackmin looks over at me and says: “Here’s a preview.”
In Siddons Day, plays lived or died by their first performance. The town’s judgment could kill a production stone dead – as happens in De Angelis’s play. It is still true in ballet and opera: however technically complex, the first public show is usually also a press night.
West End and Broadway shows used to open out of town, setting in Brighton or Boston. However, when the 1952 musical Wish You Were Here and the pool stage was too big to travel, it played instead for nearly four weeks on Broadway before opening night. In 1966, Cabaret was the first show to offer discounted advance tickets. Today, shows tend to have several previews where the work continues, ostensibly out of the public eye (although social media means that what happens in the previews no longer stays).
Infamously, the Broadway musical Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark had 182 previews before it officially opened in 2011: the score was rewritten, actors were injured and director Julie Taymor suddenly broke. Big changes still happen: this year, The Enfield Haunting apparently lost more than 30 minutes during previews (but a critical close could not be avoided). Opening Night, starring Sheridan Smith, also reduced its running time – ironically, it’s a musical about a turbulent preview period on Broadway.
In general, previews are welcome. “The two main learning moments for a playwright,” says writer David Eldridge, “are when you first hear actors read the script, and when the play meets an audience. In British theatre, we are very strict in the rehearsal process. But somehow, when you put it in front of an audience, it reveals unnecessary overwriting. Even after all the rehearsals, cuts aren’t entirely clear except in preview.”
Inception, his 2017 relationship drama, had “a really great first preview – but it was a classic example of working hard for five weeks and then suddenly finding out we could cut a page and a half towards the end. “
How a play lands is watched carefully by the audience. “You look at them with a keen eye,” agrees De Angelis. “You get a lot of objectivity, because they have no skin in the game. You are reading the play through the audience and it helps anchor it. We made some good cuts yesterday – I thought, ‘Yeah, it was just blathering on.'”
I saw the first preview of The Divine Mrs S. The theater was busy and the mood was almost regretful, which surprised the actors as they laughed. “They were a delightful, warm audience,” says Mackmin. “It was wilder than I thought it would be. We’re now trying to give it an energy that’s a little less gig-like, trying to work on the nuts and bolts and the clean story. It was a slalom ride – getting that rock’n’roll energy back but leading it a bit more.”
She turns to Stirling. “You have to make a tiny percentage less in some places. It’s the smallest adjustment, really. Please don’t take away from your performance.” Sharing a play with its community is a test – previews tell you where to bend and where to keep your anxieties. “There are never enough previews for a new play,” says Mackmin. “You run the risk of falling out of love with it, so a big part of my job is to weave all the threads back into one gorgeous thread. And don’t mind the press.”
De Angelis remains stoical throughout this febrile period. “What can you do? You have to keep the reason you wrote it in the first place. Some people will like it, others won’t. You have to grow up about it.” Eldridge admits, however, that “the first preview is very stressful. I usually feel so freaked out that the drama is finally looking at some real people. Usually, some alcoholics have gone.” forward.” When Beginning was launched at the National Theatre, his best friend brought him a beer or three beforehand. “It was great not to be near the theatre.”
While other creative people watch from the dark, actors still need to deliver a performance. “You’re letting in the main character, the audience,” says Stirling. “I’ve had a blast with audiences – especially because it’s a comedy. I was hungry for people to play with. Although you always think: who’s coming to the first preview?” The Hampstead crowd reacted to the odd flush line or clothing malfunction – as happened when Stirling’s skirt went astray. “I love it when things go wasted,” she says. “That’s why you come to a live show.”
It is rare that an actor is both in the cast and in the audience. Last year, Rilwan Abiola Owokoniran took a lead role in Beautiful Thing, Jonathan Harvey’s coming-of-age gay classic, just three days before previews, after the original actor pulled out. While still accepting the role, he looked at his understudy in previews. “I had no choice but to watch the first few performances as an open rehearsal. It was nice to see the shape of the performance, where I needed to put my energy.”
Lots of laughs and tears, Harvey’s play calls for a strong response. “It was completely visible,” says Owokoniran. “I love that education from the audience. With Beautiful Thing, in my anxiety and fear of everything, I didn’t realize it was a comedy. It’s such a serious story, I went into it with the solemnity it deserved – so it was so positive to hear them laughing on the first line.”
Eldridge says that previews can disconcert actors. “Audiences judge characters and their actions,” he says. His 2012 play, In Basildon, about an Essex family, includes a “posh young playwright” – and actor Max Bennett was “absolutely surprised at how much the audience didn’t like his character. During rehearsal, actors try to inhabit and empathize with their character. So I think Max felt overwhelmed by what the audience took against him.”
Eldridge saw that answer coming — but she was surprised when Middle’s first viewer, from 2022, judged a wife “a little tougher than we intended” when she decided to leave her struggling marriage. “I was cast, so I made some cuts for the next previews.”
Critical judgment is another matter – Hampstead’s staff admit they feel the pressure to come. Sometimes, previews don’t reflect the reaction of the critics. “The one that surprised me the most was Private Lives,” says Stirling. This was at the Donmar in London. “The reception was great in the previews. We’d make it sexier and bolder and dirtier, something Noël Coward would have wanted. And then on the press night, it was as if we were a national treasure.”
Eldridge recalls complicated previews for the large-scale Market Boy (“two whole scenes were cut”) and Under the Blue Sky, an invasion by tabloid reporters hoping to capture Catherine Tate in the nude. But most of his memories are warm, as with Festen, his hit adaptation of the Danish film. “During practice, we lost all sense of what we had, so it was really exciting. I remember this woman coming over, hugging me and kissing me on the lips, saying, ‘That was, maybe, the best night I’ve ever had in a theater.'” People responded with similar amazement. with the addiction theme of The Knot of the Heart , sharing their own stories. “Once you have an audience, they tell you what’s important to them.”
After his baptism of fire in Beautiful Thing, Owokoniran now plays Ferdinand in Love’s Labour’s Lost at the RSC. What does he expect from these previews? “I want to get the beats of the comedy. Ferdinand gives the first speech, so it helps to gauge the reception of the audience. Things can go wrong in previews, but if you buy into that, there’s freedom – I can almost be braver in previews. Oh, and applause at the end would be nice.”
There is a lot of applause when I return to The Divine Mrs S after opening. The critical consensus is that Stirling, in particular, pulled her off – her skirt stays on, everything feels sleek and purposeful. Is it too bad to miss the frenetic energy of that initial preview, trying to be the first to see this brand new drama? “That’s the privilege,” admits Stirling. “When you go out and tell the story for the first time. When you get the first right laugh, you want to laugh with them. It’s delicious – and it will never happen again.”
• The Divine Mrs S is on at the Hampstead theatre, London, until 27 April. Love’s Labour’s Lost is at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 18 May.
David Eldridge’s adaptation of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is at the Minerva theatre, Chichester, from 23 August to 21 September.
