The play’s the thing, even if it’s seven hours long

Lesley Manville
Dave Benett
Nick Curtis @nickcurtis19 February 2020
WEST END FINAL

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There was much alarm over the originally announced four-hour running time of the National Theatre’s production of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit, starring Lesley Manville. With a 7pm start this meant having supper as early as a Florida pensioner, missing last orders in the pub, and then dashing for a late train like Usain Bolt.

A quarter of an hour was shaved off in time for opening night, making it 15 minutes longer than Martin Scorsese’s film The Irishman. No such pruning will be visited on Robert Lepage’s The Seven Streams Of The River Ota, which the National is hosting in March. This lasts for seven hours, albeit with two intervals and a 45-minute break for supper (and a chance to use the loo).

Of course, there have always been long plays, starting with Greek trilogies that would last all day, with a “satyr” play at the end. The longer Shakespeares run for four hours or more when uncut.

Some older theatre hacks still wax lyrical about The Warp, Neil Oram’s 22-hour cycle of 10 plays, staged by Ken Campbell at the ICA in 1979. The cast included Jim Broadbent and Bill Nighy. Peter Brook’s 1985 staging of Indian epic The Mahabharata ran for nine hours. Lepage’s Seven Streams started at three hours in 1994: then, like Topsy, it grew.

Nick Curtis

But long shows stand out more now. Most of our entertainment arrives direct to our devices, to be binged, skimmed or parcelled out to different platforms. The contract between theatre-makers and their audience is different — you have to show up — and creators are adamant that stories should take as long as they need. This cuts both ways. Musik, at the Leicester Square Theatre, is a compact 60 minutes. Far Away at the Donmar lasts just 40 minutes.

The question is always whether a show earns its length. Tom Stoppard’s trilogy, The Coast Of Utopia — nine hours and 10 minutes — did. So did Tony Kushner’s two-part, seven-hour Angels In America, and Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance, which followed in its thematic slipstream at a similar length. Seven Streams, a visually ravishing epic which stretches out from the Hiroshima bombing across decades and continents, definitely does.

There is another reason why sprawling plays still prosper. Hardcore theatregoers love them the way hardcore runners love marathons. You only saw part one of Harry Potter And The Cursed Child? Lightweight. You saw the two parts of My Brilliant Friend at the National on two nights instead of all in one go? Wuss.

While film fans delight in being able to watch The Irishman incrementally, on a phone and iPad, over several days, theatregoers relish being right there, right then — however long it takes.

As long as it’s good, that is. Critical opinion was divided about The Visit, not least because the original text is succinct — the last major London production ran at two hours. Even Manville has admitted the running time is a slog. Personally, I liked it. But then, I’m hardcore.

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