With my plays, when the lights go down, at least the audience isn't thinking, 'Oh, God, two more hours of this.'
There's nothing in the world more silent than the telephone the morning after everybody pans your play. It won't ring from room service; your mother won't be calling you. If the phone has not rung by 8 in the morning, you're dead.
This play John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln holds the season's record, thus far, with a run of four evening performances and one matinee. By an odd coincidence, it ran just five performances too many.
I often find myself quoting from Victor Hugo after one of my theatrical ventures. 'Now that my play is a failure,' he once said, 'I find I love it all the more.' I first quoted that after 'Square Rounds' at the Olivier in 1992.
There's no worse feeling in the world than realizing the play you've directed doesn't work.
One of my early money mistakes was getting fired from the first acting job I ever had. I was cast in a play as the lead, and I got fired three nights after the open.
There is something shameful about the death of a play. It does not die with pity, but contempt.
The audience is not the least important actor in the play and if it will not do its allotted share the play falls to pieces.
