There is no second chance for a play; if its first night in New York is a failure it is dead forever. Luckily the first night audience, supposed to be so hard boiled and over critical, is the easiest audience in the world to sweep off its feet and the most generous in their real joy in the discovery of a good play. Tough they are at first, but the moment they get a feeling that something worth while is happening they go along with you with a whoop. I have fallen down plenty of times, but the kick that has come to me when I have put one over is worth a lot. Any way I figure it I am ahead of the game.
This first night audience is a very powerful factor in deciding the fate of a play, and the “thumbs down” of the old Romans was no more final than the harsh laugh that follows some shabby bit of sentimentality or some bit of hooey philosophy. Many authors and managers of late are trying to fill their houses on a first night with a more friendly crowd, thinking, like the well-known ostrich, that they are putting something over, but they forget that mass psychology is a very curious thing, and that if a man puts his doting mother out in front on a first night he is very likely to hear her voice leading the first cry of “Off with his head.”
The whole subject of dramatic criticism, either from a first night audience or from professional dramatic critics, is a very simple one, but for some reason it is very little understood. As a matter of fact neither this audience nor the critics’ notices of the following day have anything at all to do with the real success or failure of a play. In the morning you open your paper and on the dramatic page you read that your favorite critic saw a play the night before and made the remarkable discovery that it was worth seeing—so did a thousand others at the same time—the fact being simply that it was a good play. The critics’ praise did no more toward making it good than did the favorable response of the audience.
Of course many plays are in the balance; some persons like them and some don’t; but there is little doubt in the minds of trained observers about the really fine plays, and even less about the really bad ones. A play comes to life for the first time when it is played before a wise audience, and their verdict is as a rule both just and final. A good play can take care of itself, and any fool knows a really bad one—when he sees it. Any of us, when we go out and buy a dozen eggs, is likely enough to get a bad one, but we are quick enough to gag over it when we try to eat it. The critic is simply a man who knows a little more, and usually cares a little more, about the theater than the ordinary man of cultivated taste, and he has been trained in a proper manner of expressing himself.
What he tells his readers about a new play is first the truth. This in effect you or I could do as well as he does: it was a good play. The modern critic, however, goes beyond that in his influence upon the theater by insisting upon an increasingly higher standard both in writing and in acting, and by pointing out the virtues or the defects in the performance, instructing his public in what may fairly be expected of the modern drama. Naturally there are bad critics, just as there are bad writers and bad actors, and the bad ones do harm, just as the bad actors and bad writers do.
The first night audience in itself, although still picturesque, has changed greatly in the last few years. Twenty years ago opening nights of any importance at all were naturally far fewer in number than they are to-day, and an opening at Daly’s, Palmer’s, the Lyceum and later at the Empire, drew a brilliant audience made up of the real lovers of the theater and the cream of the “four hundred” that then represented New York society. To be on the first night list in those days meant something. The first night audience of to-day is very different. First nights now are rarely social affairs, and the audience is very much more of the profession, actors, managers, critics, writers and all the moving picture crowd. These, together with the dressmakers and play agents and scouts from the various studios on the lookout for screen material, make up a colorful gathering and they know a lot about theatrical values even if they lack a little of the distinction of the old first night crowd.
During the years I have been going to the theater I have seen some thrilling first nights, but I have never really been one of the regulars, as nowadays if one were to try to be present every time a new play opened there would be very little time for anything else. I recall distinctly some of the great nights when I have been present, such as the first performance of THE FORTUNE HUNTER, ON TRIAL, RAIN, WHAT PRICE GLORY, BROADWAY, BURLESQUE, COQUETTE and many more where a wave of enthusiastic cheering swept the play into instantaneous success. We of the theater, I think, when we watch these first nights with an anxious eye, are apt to forget that the reason a play goes over with a bang is because it is a good play, or a novel play, or the sort of play that at that moment is the play the public wants and the play makes the first night enthusiasm. The first night enthusiasm doesn’t make the play.
My years of almost frantic application to my work had by now resulted in a fixed habit and I found myself pounding along at top speed long after the necessity for such effort had disappeared. It is the literal truth to say that for more than thirty years there has been no time in which I have not had a play in some stage of its progress on my desk and in response to long training, my mind continually drops automatically into retrospective revery entirely without conscious direction on my part.
I was not satisfied with the work I was turning out and decided to make an effort to take life more easily than had been my habit. I remember getting quite a thrill out of this evidence of my sanity and prudence. I had not fully realized how fixed the habits of a lifetime may become and soon discovered how impossible it was for me to hope to reform.
Before I admitted defeat, however, I made really quite an honest effort and forced myself to take part in several of the semi-social and semi-political activities of the theater. I had always refused any demands upon my time not connected either with my own work or with the affairs of the Dramatists’ Guild or the Authors’ League, but I now turned deliberately to these rather remote outlets for my energy. For the first time in my life I tried to make myself believe that it is as important to talk about work as it is to do the work itself, an error of judgment on my part from which my sense of humor rescued me before I had gone very far.