What made me love theatre even more? Leaving a bad show at the interval
We were about 15 minutes in when my companion turned to me and whispered: “It’s not very good.” We were watching a dance-theatre show that initially sounded promising – who doesn’t like the sound of a play that has installed its own onstage pub? But after the first overly earnest monologue was succeeded by the second equally earnest monologue, I began to get the sinking feeling she was right. But I was committed, wasn’t I? I’d paid for my ticket, I’d put my coat on and left the house in the freezing rain, I was in the second row – I was ostensibly all in. Then the interval was announced and my friend whipped around with a grin on her face: “I’m going. Want to come?”
I’ve always been a people-pleaser. The fear of letting others down or causing a scene bleeds into every aspect of life. I’ve sat through bad meals and terrible dates, wishing I’d sent both plate and date to the kitchen, but finding myself terminally unable to call quits on either. I’ve never walked out of a play, which feels, bizarrely, just as personal to me as legging it from a Hinge rendezvous. You’re announcing to every audience member in the near vicinity that you’re done – it’s all so final and declarative. I’ve come back from intervals to find the stranger next to me has done a runner, leaving me wondering: do they know something that I don’t? What made them leave?
Well, now I know. It only takes one mischievous friend – an inveterate quitter who has departed no fewer than 10 plays – to encourage that spark of delinquency. Because it does feel delinquent to walk out of a play. Society tells you that you simply have to grit your teeth and get through things you find boring – school assemblies, double maths, company-wide all-hands meetings – and that being able to endure monotony is a hallmark of becoming a mature adult. Walking out is for the uncivilised plebs who don’t get the searing satire of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls; it’s for the lily-livered who can’t hack the gory bits in Titus Andronicus. Letting boredom rule your approach to theatregoing is the preserve of a child whose prefrontal cortex is still the size of a pea – you may as well block-book tickets to Matilda for the rest of your life.
Only boring people get bored, as the saying goes. The playwright Dan Rebellato once argued in the Guardian that it is weak to leave a show early. Part of the reasoning is that a show might right itself in the second half – though rare is the play that shakes off a dud first act and becomes a work of genius. And there’s a difference between being challenged as an audience member and simply being bored, isn’t there? You can’t overintellectualise shoddy sound levels, bad staging and plodding delivery.
We’ve all known the agony of needing to stick around on a Zoom call long beyond its allotted hour, wondering what would happen if we simply smashed the escape button (“Oops, sorry, wifi cut out!”). Start talking about walking out of the theatre and you’ll find more unrepentant quitters than you think. People I know recently confessed to liberating themselves from a terrible celeb stage debut and a Fiennes brother doing Richard II. One of them once dramatically exited Harry Potter and the Cursed Child 20 minutes into the show. (In his defence, it was a free ticket and he was sitting at the back.)
So how did it feel to walk out for the first time? I have to admit: it felt incredible. It made me wonder why I hadn’t done it before, and feel resentful about all the excruciating plays I’ve sat through that most definitely did not improve after the interval. When my friend and I went for a drink afterwards, I spotted three people who had been at the same show. I would have given our partners in crime a nod of acknowledgement, but – true to form – they left before I could do it.
• Zing Tsjeng is an author and freelance journalist
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