It’s hard to time one’s arrival at a theatre. Problems with public transport, unpredicatable traffic and parking difficulties make delays likely and it is wise to plan to arrive in good time. So, if you do arrive quite early, what do you find ? Well, very often it is a small, crowded front of house area, a tiny bar with few seats and no admission to the auditorium until ten minutes before the show begins. Managers, you’ve got an empty auditorium. Let us in. We can sit and chat or read our programmes away from the foyer crush.
Sometimes it becomes obvious why entry is so late. There is some kind of pre-show presence onstage. I don’t mean a proper pre-show, such as a band playing or some jugglers or whatever. I mean an actor or two, performing some task ( knitting or reading a book, for example ) or just sitting there. Understandably, actors don’t want to be doing this for half an hour or so. There is a simple solution. Ditch this kind of pre-show. It adds nothing. I’d rather have my seat a little earlier.