Rachael Stirling makes her way from the back of the stage, joins her colleagues in the stalls and then promptly bursts into tears. "I'm tired," she explains. Stirling plays Sarah Siddons, the great 18th century actor, in The Divine Mrs S at the Hampstead Theater in London, and we're in the middle of the preview period chatting. It is a charged time.
"We still haven't figured it out," Stirling says sadly. "You have!" exclaims director Anna Mackmin. "You cracked it in no time." "I love what you do," says playwright April De Angelis. "I've been texting you all night," Mackmin continues. "Breathe. That's it, baby, you're worth the ticket price. 'There I go again,' says Stirling, crying and laughing at the same time. Mackmin turns to me and says, "These are previews."
In Siddons' day, plays lived or died by their first performance. The city's judgment could kill a production stone - as happens in De Angelis' play. This still applies to ballet and opera: no matter how technically complex, the first public performance is usually also a press evening.
West End and Broadway shows used to start outside the city, with tuning in Brighton or Boston. However, when the 1952 musical Wish You Were Here and its onstage pool proved too big to travel, it instead played on Broadway for nearly four weeks before opening night. In 1966, Cabaret was the first show to offer cheaper preview tickets. These days, shows typically have multiple previews where work continues, ostensibly out of the public eye (although social media means what happens in previews no longer stays in previews).
Infamously, the Broadway musical Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark had 182 previews before its official opening in 2011: the score was rewritten, actors were injured, and director Julie Taymor was abruptly fired. Big changes are still happening: this year, The Enfield Haunting reportedly lost more than 30 minutes during previews (but couldn't avoid a critical drubbing). Opening Night, starring Sheridan Smith, also shortened its running time - ironically, it's a musical about a turbulent preview period on Broadway.
Previews are usually welcome. "The two most important learning moments for a playwright," says writer David Eldridge, "are the moment you first hear actors read the script, and the moment the play meets an audience. In British theater we are incredibly strict about the rehearsal process. But somehow, when you put it in front of an audience, unnecessary overwriting is exposed. Even after all the rehearsals, the cuts only become fully clear in the preview."
At the start, his 2017 relationship drama had "a truly stunning first preview - but it was a classic example of working with pinpoint precision for five weeks and then suddenly discovering we could trim a page and a half by the end."
The audience is closely observed to see how a play lands. "You look at them with a beady eye," De Angelis agrees. "You get a big dose of objectivity because they have no skin in the game. You read the piece through the audience and it helps to make it more solid. We made some good cuts yesterday. I thought, 'Yes, it just kept happening.'
I saw the very first preview of The Divine Mrs S. The theater was busy and the atmosphere was almost raucous, surprising the actors with roars of laughter. "They were a lovely, very warm audience," says Mackmin. "It was wilder than I thought it would be. We are now trying to give it an energy that is a little less like a performance, and trying to work on the basics and the clear storyline. It was a slalom ride where I found the rock 'n' roll energy again, but still had a little more control over it."
She turns to Stirling. "In some places you have to do a small percentage less. It's the smallest adjustment, really. Please do not undo your achievement." Sharing a play with the audience is a test: previews tell you where to bend and where to steady your nerves. "There are never enough previews for a new play," says Mackmin. "The danger is that you no longer fall in love with it, so a large part of my work consists of knitting all the threads back into one beautiful thread. And never mind the press."
De Angelis remains stoic during this period of fever. "What can you do? You have to stick to the reason why you wrote it in the first place. Some people will like it, some people won't. You have to mature with it." However, Eldridge admits that he was "incredibly stressed at the first preview. I am often so shocked that there are finally real people watching the piece. Invariably there has been some alcoholic nerve stabilization." When Beginning launched at the National Theatre, his best friend took him out for a beer or three beforehand "It was absolutely brilliant not to be anywhere near the theatre."
While other creatives watch from the dark, actors still have to deliver. "You let in the main character, the audience," says Stirling. "I gagged in front of an audience - especially because it's a comedy. I was hungry for people to play with. Although you always wonder: who will come to the first preview?" The Hampstead audience indulged in the odd fluffy line or costume malfunction - as when Stirling's skirt went adrift. "I love it when something goes wrong," she says. "That's why you come to a live show."
It's rare for an actor to be in both the cast and the audience. Last year, Rilwan Abiola Owokoniran played the central role in Beautiful Thing, Jonathan Harvey's gay coming-of-age classic, just three days before previews after the original actor pulled out. While still absorbing the role, he watched his understudy in previews. "I had no choice but to treat the first few performances as a kind of open rehearsal. It was nice to see the form of the performance, where I had to put my energy."
Harvey's play is full of laughter and tears and invites powerful responses. "It was absolutely palpable," says Owokoniran. "I like that education of the audience. With Beautiful Thing, in my worry and fear of everything, I didn't realize it was a comedy. It's such a heavy story, I went into it with the solemnity it deserved - so it was so comforting to hear them laugh on the first line."
Eldridge says previews can upset actors. "The audience judges characters and their actions," he says. His 2012 play In Basildon, about an Essex family, featured a 'posh young playwright' - and actor Max Bennett 'was completely shocked at how much the audience disliked his character. During rehearsal, actors try to put themselves in their characters' shoes and empathize with them. So I think Max felt quite overwhelmed by how much the audience looked up to him."
Eldridge saw that reaction coming - but was surprised when the first audience for 2022's Middle judged a woman "a little more harshly than we intended" when she decided to leave her struggling marriage. "I got thrown, so I made some cuts for the next previews."
Critical judgment is another matter - the Hampstead team admit they are feeling the looming pressure. Sometimes previews don't reflect the critics' reaction. "The most surprising thing was Private Lives which I just did," says Stirling. This was at the Donmar in London. "The reception at the previews was brilliant. We had made it sexier, naughtier and dirtier, which is what Noël Coward would have wanted. And then, on press night, it was like we were going to shit on a national treasure."
Eldridge recalls awkward previews for the large-scale Market Boy ("two entire scenes were cut") and Under the Blue Sky, swamped by tabloid reporters hoping to photograph Catherine Tate naked. But most of his memories are warm, just like Festen, his successful adaptation of the Danish film. "During rehearsal we had lost all sense of what we had, so it was really exciting. I remember this woman coming up to me, hugging me and kissing me on the lips, and saying, 'That might be the best night in a theater I've ever had.'" People responded with the same candor to the theme of The Knot of the Heart, addiction. , who share their own stories. "As soon as there is an audience, they tell us what is 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 hope from these previews? "I would like to find the beats of comedy. Ferdinand makes the first speech, so it can be helpful to sense the audience's reception. Things can go wrong in previews, but if you believe in that, there is a freedom - I can almost be braver in a preview. Oh, and applause at the end would be nice.
There is plenty of applause when I return to The Divine Mrs S after the opening. The critical consensus is that Stirling in particular has cracked it: her skirt stays on, everything feels tight and purposeful. Is it rude to miss the noisy energy of that first preview, with the thrill of being the very first to see this brand new piece? "That's the privilege," Stirling admits. "When you go out and tell the story for the first time. When you really laugh for the first time, you want to laugh with them. It's wonderful - and it will never happen again."
* The Divine Mrs S is at the Hampstead Theater in London until April 27. Love's Labour's Lost is at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until May 18.
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.
