Stoppard's marathon was not quite the real thing

Cultural marathons put the time out of joint. Theatre is not naturally a morning activity

I was in the gents at the National Theatre about halfway through Tom Stoppard's nine-hour trilogy. The trilogy is an exploration of political thought in 19th-century Russia; but by its very nature it is also an exploration for the audience of bladder control.

I found myself chatting with a critic from another newspaper about some of the flaws in the marathon, when in walked Tom Stoppard. These are always tricky moments. Sir Tom is a shrewd observer of life, and knows something's up when conversation at the washbasin suddenly ceases. But authors who watch their premieres with the audience have to accept such technical hazards.

I have pondered before on the strange and still rare phenomenon of theatre marathons. Would Sir Tom have been conscious of the potentially numb bums as he wrote the plays? Would he have felt it necessary to work a little harder for a laugh at the end of a long day, as charges for parking, babysitting, food and drink mounted?

I got my best laugh before curtain up. I was handed a bag on entry from the sponsor, Barclays. It contained an eye patch. In fact this was a leftover from a National Theatre open day for children and had mysteriously found its way into the trilogy bag. The message that we might need a sleeping aid at some stage over the next nine hours was unintentional; but, Stoppard, I hope, would have seen the funny side.

It may be bad for the bum, but it is good for the soul to be a part of a theatre marathon audience. Sitting for nine hours is the aesthete's version of mountaineering. And when the National Theatre's air-conditioning was on full pelt, there were similarities to the top of a mountain. My fellow spectators took to their seats clutching the bottles of water that were on sale, the occasional smuggled-in sandwich, flask of coffee or hip flask of something stronger, the odd vitamin pill. Only the smokers among us looked nervous. Was Stoppard going to be sufficiently on form to take their minds off the habit for a nine-hour stretch?

The early reviews seem to be agreed that this marathon was a mixed blessing. This paper's theatre critic wrote yesterday that the nine hours could have been told in four. Another daily's man was crueller, quoting a character, who said at the end of a scene: "No! no, oh, no, no, no... No! No more blather, please. Blather, blather, blather. Enough." The critic wrote: "You know exactly how he feels and want to give him a hearty round of applause."

But I can imagine another trilogy of Stoppard plays, three pieces of Stoppard juvenilia. The morning could start with Night and Day, a brilliantly funny and incisive look at journalism told via an African war straight out of Evelyn Waugh and the reporters caught up in it. For the afternoon, The Real Thing, a dissertation on romantic love through a snappily taut and touching comic drama about fidelity. In the evening, the incomparable Jumpers, Stoppard's exploration of moral philosophy encompassing an arrow-shooting university professor and his high-kicking wife, an inconvenient corpse and a troupe of stunningly lithe and supple philosopher acrobats, logical positivists mainly.

Those productions stay in my mind because they are among the most enjoyable evenings of my life. I am indebted to Stoppard for that. The young Stoppard imposed his presence on the British and world stage with theatrical pyrotechnics, ideas dressed up in the most dramatic and often most surreal of scenarios. He showed, as few other contemporary dramatists have, how ideas and action can marry so innovatively and give the audience a sense of shared intellectual excitement.

If this new trilogy was more inert and didactic, perhaps it didn't matter. What was happening on stage was not the whole story. This was the modern theatregoer's Blitz experience. We huddled together for a quick sandwich between plays; we shared an ice cream; some of us may have even arranged a date ("You've got nice eyes. See you at the next all-day Oresteia?").

A theatre marathon is a strange event. When it works, as with the RSC's Nicholas Nickleby or Wars of the Roses (made up of Shakespeare's Henry VI and Richard III), it is wonderful; but when it fails, nothing in theatre is more mind-numbing.

Cultural marathons put the time out of joint. Theatre is not naturally a morning activity. But I suppose that if we can watch World Cup football before breakfast, we can learn to take take Stoppard's Russian radicals straight after morning coffee. Nine hours of political discussion on stage minus the old-style Stoppard pyrotechnics demand a degree of concentration and stamina that it would be refreshing to see come back into fashion. Personally, I plead guilty to a shorter concentration span. I confess to bailing out after a mere five ninths of the course. But I had a train to catch to an all-night Marx Brothers fest.

d.lister@independent.co.uk