Shakespeare Closing

By 1970, a remarkable change had come over theater audiences in New York. For the first time in the experience of regular playgoers, audiences became extraordinarily demonstrative. I recall precisely the first time I encountered this new behavior. It was at a performance of the revival of No, No, Nanette with Ruby Keeler. The wild reaction may have been a campy tribute to Ruby or a surprised appreciation at the durability of a musical from 1925. Whatever the stimulus, large sections of the audience received the finale with cries of “brava.” They stood up to applaud and in a kind of ecstasy poured a torrent of approval upon the astonished actors.

After this, whenever I went to see a play, I saw—and heard—similar enthusiasm. Cries of bravo—which hitherto had been the hallmark of the opera audience—became common. Standing ovations, at one time a rarity reserved only for the brightest star, became routine. A social change had taken place. The conventional, muted, supposedly discerning meeting between the end of a play and its audience had turned into an exuberant celebration of playgoing. Yet, for some reason, this tremendous shift in behavior aroused little critical attention. It and the larger subject of which it is a part—that is, stage closure—were (and remain) virtually unexplored.