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Patricia Nicol

THERE is an alchemy to how audiences interact with a live performer that can be hinted at, but cannot be fully replicated, on screen.

For me, it is that all-too-rare moment in a theatre when an entire auditorium is hushed, intent, their attention held rapt by a great actor.

I have watched some theatre on screen in lockdown — Hamilton and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, both done brilliantly.

But, after years of growing increasingly despairing about disruptive audience behaviour, it turns out I miss their restless energy and the intimacy of that shared experience. It will be a special day when I can again safely sit cheek by jowl alongside a stranger being swept along by a play.

Meanwhile, I am delighted and relieved that the Government’s £1.57billion arts bailout recognises the importance of our live creative sector, and the challenges posed to it by social distancing. These difficulties face amateur as well as professional performers: it is a sadness in my household that my elder son leaves primary school this week without a customary much-anticipated ‘Oscars’ show. As a child, I was desperately stage-struck, and a keen performer at school and university. As a newbie journalist, my first paid work was as an Edinburgh Fringe reviewer.

There are novels that conjure theatre’s magic. Shadowplay by Joseph O’Connor is a richly detailed work, set in Victorian London. It imagines Dracula author Bram Stoker’s years as theatre manager to the legendary actor and impresario Henry Irving and leading lady Ellen Terry at London’s Lyceum theatre (where The Lion King usually roars).

In Anne Enright’s most recent novel Actress, novelist Norah researches her mother, the luminous star of stage and screen Katherine O’Dell, whose gilded career came to an abrupt, ignominious end.

For most, acting is a precarious profession. A publishing phenomenon in its day, J.B. Priestley’s The Good Companions, written in 1929, is a picaresque comedy vividly recalling life on the road for a variety troupe touring England. Fans include Judi Dench, who provides a foreword to the most recent edition. Go on, treat yourself to a matinee read.