Nice stucco. Shame about the play

MANCHAN MANGANhas spent thousands of euro going to the theatre, but often he ends up whiling away the evening looking at the plasterwork or the lighting. Why does he stay in his seat? Because it's worth it for those rare moments of theatrical glory

AS A THEATRE LOVER I face disappointment so regularly that I’ve developed coping strategies. At the Abbey I count the intervals between Luas trams. At the Project I examine the lighting rig. At the Gate I stare at the stucco work.

Regular theatregoers will be all too familiar with the suffocating, belly-twisting tyranny of being trapped in bad productions, that desperate sense of helplessness and the ensuing relief that accompanies the first frantic glug of wine at the interval or the deep inhalation of freedom on the pavement outside.

Last year I spent €1,023 going to 59 plays. Of these about 20 per cent were enjoyable, a further 60 per cent were reasonably diverting and the remainder had me silently begging for release.

A cost-benefit analysis of enjoyment versus investment would make for grim reading, especially if I compared theatre with cinema. I see a play about once a week and a film about once a fortnight, but I leave the cinema satisfied far more often. (In 2011, I spent €246 on 35 movies, and in 2010 I spent €175 on 22 movies, compared with €892 on 53 plays.)

That said, I would gladly spend six times as much on theatre for the emotional and cerebral adrenaline rush that accompanies the greatest moments. Nothing will ever match the visceral intensity of experiencing Marie Jones's Somewhere Over the Balconyin 1987, or Frank McGuinness's Peer Gyntin 1990, or Gerry Stembridge's Love Childin 1992, or Sebastian Barry's The Steward of Christendom, or Enda Walsh's The Walworth Farce, or Fabulous Beast's Giselleor Selina Cartmell's Titus Andronicus.

Comparing cinema with theatre is pointless. Their premise and function are entirely different: one developed over thousands of years from sacred ritual; the other was created as puerile entertainment. Films take years to make and cost millions, whereas plays rarely involve more than three months’ preparation and a comparatively tiny budget. And, of course, the films I get to see are a minuscule selection of the world’s output, whereas in theatre I see everything. Were I to sit through the 99 per cent of films that go straight to DVD, my perspective would be entirely different.

And, of course, that is one of the most significant differences: the fact that I could in theory sit through every film ever made but will never get to re-experience the altered perspective of Dublin's Jewish culture that I got from Gavin Kostick's The Ash Fireat the Project in 1992. Theatre is a unique, ephemeral performance and as such is priceless. When I missed Enda Walsh's Mistermanin Galway last summer I felt I had no option but to spend €862 on travelling to New York to see it there.

Yet none of this addresses those frequent hellish nights at the theatre. Must we simply endure the slow suffocation of bad productions? Sometimes it gets so bad that I resort to running an internal auction to take my mind off things, calculating how much I would be willing to spend to leave at any given point. Bidding starts at the cost of the ticket and rises from there. During a one-woman show last year I had reached €223 before the end finally came.

Can anything be done to lessen the frequency of these occasions? Not so much for me as for more fickle theatregoers, who, having endured even one such experience, are unlikely to risk buying a ticket to another show. Bad plays are the jellyfish ruining the fine beaches of Irish theatre.

The Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards judges alluded to the problem at the announcement last month of this year’s nominations. Jack Gilligan commented on the “fairly large body of mediocrity”, saying that plays needed to “be audience-friendly – or friendlier, at least”, and that he “would be a great advocate of mentoring: it’s needed more and more”.

Seona Mac Réamoinn commented on the practice of staging plays before they were ready, pointing out the “tendency to overexpose things that could have done with a bit more work. The potential was there, but they weren’t quite good enough.”

IT'S HARD NOT to agree, even though Mac Réamoinn could well have been referring to my own play Bás Tongue, which debuted at Project Arts Centre during the Absolut Fringe festival in September. I spent 18 months writing it, and we had five weeks of rehearsals, but it still may not have been fully ready to put before an audience. Working with tiny budgets and the challenges of securing a venue means one ends up having to make do, taking short cuts and hoping the audience will be indulgent. I acted in Bás Tongue, too, so had the disconcerting experience of seeing audience members resorting to the coping strategies I use myself: staring at the lighting rig; sneaking glances at their watches. I may have added to the swarm of jellyfish.

Perhaps we as audiences need to be more proactive. Simply praying for an early interval helps no one. Should I as writer and performer be held accountable to my audience for staging a play that was more worthy of three stars than five? No one walked out of Bás Tongue, but perhaps they should have. I frequently leave movies but have never walked out of a theatre, except to slink shamefully away at the break.

The longer one goes to the theatre the more people one gets to know, and the harder it is to pluck up the courage to publicly walk out on them. Perhaps that’s why one sees so few of our A-list actors, designers, directors and writers at the theatre any more (apart from at first-night parties at the Abbey or the Gate). They realise they are unlikely to want to stay but feel they can’t be seen to leave.

Their lower-status colleagues still make up a significant proportion of audiences: they go to support their friends and to be seen by directors and producers who might employ them in the future. They invariably applaud loudly and engage in hearty postshow backslapping, which they believe is being supportive but is just encouraging mediocrity.

I have no easy answers, but I do know that, no matter what, I’ll continue to go to the theatre. I’ve set aside 3 per cent of my annual income, €1,300, for tickets this year, and although, come December, I may once again have to admit to having enjoyed more movies than plays, it won’t lessen the enormous pride I feel at helping to support theatre in Ireland. Every euro I spend on a play helps to sustain the theatrical community, whereas my cinema expenditure only further enriches multimillionaire moguls in the US.

The few great plays that emerge each year and that get nominated for Irish Theatre Awards are possible only because of regular support from us theatre obsessives. Some of these plays then go on to tour the world, representing Ireland internationally.

I’m going to try to concentrate on this fact the next time I’m clenching the armrests in fury.