"Yep, I'm still rehearsing with 'The Mangled Doughnut,' and the author of the book told me yesterday, in the strictest confidence, that it will be the best first-night performance Hartford ever saw.

A few words from a contemporary criticism may serve to indicate the effect it produced on a first-night audience We are in the thick of the action at once, or at least in the thick of the interest, so that the exposition, instead of being, so to speak, a mere platform from which the train is presently to start, becomes an inseparable part of the movement.

The former appeals to irrational prejudice; the latter ignores what we shall presently find to be a fundamental principle of the playwright's artnamely, that, with certain doubtful exceptions in the case of historical themes, he must never assume previous knowledge either of plot or character on the part of his public, but must always have in his mind's eye a first-night audience, which knows nothing but what he chooses to tell it.

The first and most obvious is that to one audience, at any rate, every play must be absolutely new, and that it is this first-night audience which in great measure determines its success or failure.

Many plays have survived a first-night failure, and still more have gone off in a rapid decline after a first-night success.

Many plays have survived a first-night failure, and still more have gone off in a rapid decline after a first-night success.

To sum up this branch of the argument: however oft-repeated and much-discussed a play may be, the playwright must assume that in every audience there will be an appreciable number of persons who know practically nothing about it, and whose enjoyment will depend, like that of the first-night audience, on the skill with which he develops his story.

To proceed on any other assumption would not only be to ignore the all-powerful first-night audience, but to plunge into a veritable morass of inconsistencies, dubieties and slovenlinesses.

But if we jump to the conclusion that the skilful marshalling and development of the story is an unimportant detail, which matters little when once the first-night ordeal is past, we shall go very far astray.

Had Sheridan fallen into Mrs. Oliphant's mistake, the little shock of surprise which the first-night audience would have felt when the screen was thrown down would have been no compensation at all for the comparative tameness and pointlessness of the preceding passages.

Nevertheless, we must come back to the point that there is always the ordeal of the first night to be faced, and that the plays are comparatively few which have lived-down a bad first-night.

It is true that specifically first-night merit is a trivial matter compared with what may be called thousandth-performance merit; but it is equally true that there is no inconsistency between the two orders of merit, and that a play will never be less esteemed on its thousandth performance for having achieved a conspicuous first-night success.

It is true that specifically first-night merit is a trivial matter compared with what may be called thousandth-performance merit; but it is equally true that there is no inconsistency between the two orders of merit, and that a play will never be less esteemed on its thousandth performance for having achieved a conspicuous first-night success.

The practical lesson which seems to emerge from these considerations is that a wise theatrical policy would seek to diminish the all-importance of the first-night, and to give a play a greater chance of recovery than it has under present conditions, from the depressing effect of an inauspicious production.

At the same time, we are bound to recognize that, from the very nature of the case, our present inquiry must be far more concerned with first-night than with thousandth-performance merit.

[Footnote 3: This phrase, which occurs in Mr. Haddon Chambers's romantic melodrama, Captain Swift, was greeted with a burst of laughter by the first-night audience; but little did we then think that Mr. Chambers was enriching the English language.

Such a play might make a great first-night success; but the more the author relied upon the mystery for his effect, the more fatally would that effect be discounted at each successive repetition.

At a first-night supper-party, he said "All of my friends without exception were of the opinion that the psychological interest of the second act would be greatly increased by the disclosure of the actual relationship existing between Lady Windermere and Mrs. Erlynnean opinion, I may add, that had previously been strongly held and urged by Mr. Alexander....

She saw Jarvis before the curtain making a first-night's speech.

She and Jarvis would write the play together, together they would go through all the exciting stages of rehearsal and trying out, together they would make their bow before the curtain and their first-night's speech.

The first-night excitement prevailed back there.

She was trembling as though facing a first-night audience in a part she wasn't up on.

I will not trouble the reader with my thoughts about the first-night audience, strange assembly as it is,those I reserve for my Memoirs,nor the humiliating story of how I got lost during the entr'acte in a lot of red plush passages, and saw the third act from the gallery.

I looked round on my first-night audience with a kind of wonder, discoveredas all new Dramatic Critics dothat it rested with me to reform the Drama, and, after a supper choked with emotion, went off to the office to write a column, piebald with "new paragraphs" (as all my stuff isit fills out so) and purple with indignation.

A wonderful first-night audience.