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Why is it curtains?

Published Monday 2 November 2009 at 15:40

Is there any particular reason why the theatre house curtain has become an endangered species? It is an almost certainty that on arriving in the auditorium the stage set will be in full view of the audience. If the idea is to get the spectators in tune with the performance beforehand then I submit this does not happen. A vast majority take one look and revert to chatting, reading the programme and opening their sweets and chocolates. The goods have been exposed and there is no build up of expectation before the start. It is rather like receiving an unwrapped Christmas present.

I am reminded of Moliere’s The Imaginary Invalid which was staged at the Cheltenham Everyman in the seventies. The tabs went out revealing a stunning set, such was the impact that it got a round of applause before one word was spoken. This broke the ice and the play sailed along six feet above the ground. This would not have happened had the set been on show beforehand. Later I saw the English Shakespeare Company put on Macbeth at the Nottingham Theatre Royal. The stage was bare with a variety of properties that might have been borrowed from Steptoe’s yard stacked upstage, and to while away the time I counted the number of counterweight lines in the wings. Ten minutes before curtain, the cast came on and chatted with one another, some took photographs and there seemed to be a party atmosphere. At 7.30pm, the lights went out and the performance struggled to get off the ground.

House tabs have several important functions. They provide a neater ending to dramatic points at the end of an act and provide a tidier end to a performance, rather than see the cast shuffling into the wings trying to look inconspicuous. They also enable scenery to be changed discretely. Shakespearean practises do not always lend themselves to a theatre which has greatly changed from that period.

People have told me that in a previous age scenery was changed in full view of the audience. This is true but at that time sets only consisted of rows of flats which slid in top and bottom grooves and a series of borders extending to the back cloth or rear shutters. All the flats and borders were moved simultaneously to reveal a new set behind. A video taken at the Drottningholm Theatre [in Sweden] of this arrangement takes all of three seconds to change one scene into another. To see stage hands wandering about for several minutes carting furniture and props on and off the set is disconcerting, distracting and removes any magic from being in a theatre. While appreciating that every institution needs to evolve in order to keep itself alive, this does not mean that the baby has to be thrown out with the proverbial bath water.

Ted Bottle

Meadow Lane

Coalville

Leicestershire

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