Saddle-sore, jaded, blasé playgoers they are; honest, usually. Broadway-wise, they can recognize a success. Because they are regulars and show-weary, they are quickest to rise to anything above mediocrity.
Having been critics, we know the way the fellows react and feel. They are not vicious deliberately, as many have charged; nor are they soft and sympathetic, as many would have them. They have a job to do and their obligation is to the reader, not to the subjects of their criticism.
The first-nighter, whose mass response in a measure prompts and primes the critics, is likewise a recidivist, an addict, and therefore a tough customer. He and she make all the openings—to see, usually to sneer, sometimes to cheer, often to be sadistically delighted at the spectacle of a misspent endeavor.
They do not go, like others, because they are especially drawn by a star or a playwright or the glamor of a title, or—which is most important—because they have heard or read that this is worth seeing. Those who do so are in the mood to be pleased. Those who go to show off sables and necklaces, to see how others dress, to brush against the wise crowd and gossip in the intermissions, are, at the very best, neutral.
And they grow impatient and belligerent because too many around them are synthetically enthusiastic.
Those would be the husbands, wives, sweeties, neighbors, creditors and kin of everyone affected by the life-and-death trial. They laugh on hair-triggers, applaud bit-players' entrances, loudly approve.
They are no corporal's guard. In a city like this, there are a half-million people directly concerned in the destinies of the theatre.
The average company includes 20 performers, 13 stagehands, a unit manager, a press agent, from one to three authors, a director and assistant director, often an orchestra, as often a chorus of 12 to 40, not to mention the house employees. Hundreds have worked on costumes, painting and constructing scenery, the properties (movable tangibles), advertising, wigmaking, lighting, photographing and the many other processes that go into something that someone "presents."
None of these persons must miss a première. Seldom is a single ticket bought, so multiply automatically by two. Then add collateral and congenital kin and romantic close ones.
These favorably prejudiced rooters, plus the asbestos-lined, never-miss first-nighters, plus the critics, the hawk-eyed scalpers, the hard-boiled New York scouts for Hollywood, the agents of the players or acquisitive agents looking for clients, nervous stockholders in the theatre and show and their staffs, comprise the hundreds "out front" on the monumental night when everything is riding on an uncharted path toward a gold mine or a morass.