Old Stagers: The Interval

The interval: Ryan Hocking decides to take a break Everybody has a favourite moment in a play: some go mad for melodramatic downfalls, some feel their hearts set a-flutter at romantic declarations, some can’t get enough of comic pratfalls. However, for most of us (if we’re honest, at any rate), our absolute favourite moment of any play is accompanied by bright house lights, a comfortingly familiar voice-over, and a chance to spend far too much money on a tiny, tiny tub of ice cream. Yes, it’s the interval. It doesn’t matter how good a play is. If it goes on for long enough, everyone’s dying for an interval (and not just the audience). It gives the actors a chance to re-group, congratulate each other heartily on a ‘Wonderful first half, dahling,’ and to have their greasepaint reapplied. It gives the technical director a chance to try and fix something that isn’t broken, resulting in an unintentionally hilarious start to the next act. It gives the director a chance to scream, shout, and coach the actors frantically, much like the manager of a losing football team.More than anything else, it gives the audience a chance to stretch their legs. Acting is difficult, it’s true, but do we ever ask our beloved thespians to hold a tableau patiently for the entire duration of a play? No, because they’d be chronically arthritic by the time they’d finished one Shakespeare tragedy. Yet the audience has to. It’s true that there aren’t really many places to go in a theatre when you’re not actually watching the play, but the importance of the snack-stall cannot be overstated. Let’s face it, the interval is a little drama all on its own. Ice cream that requires a second mortgage, chocolate bars small enough to lose in your pocket, white wine more acidic than your mother-in-law: what is the snack bar but the third wing, storage place of the most important props? The audience members stop off at the snack bar for a quick break before becoming a cast in a very different kind of theatre: the messy drama of life. During the interval we get to watch the audience become characters interacting, their own complex plots unfolding before our very eyes. The interval is full of quirky little soundbites, couples fighting, people flirting, and – at Oxford at least – thesps gossiping. Ah the interval. A release from the tension of the play, a stage on which audience members play out the drama of their lives. The interval is also an opportunity – to show off about being ever-soknowedgeable about theatre, to chat about which actor is the hottest and which thesp pulled yesterday night. Let’s face it, this is the reason why we come to the theatre. By Ryan Hocking