Will the theatre ever be quite the same again?

“This was our last night. We only had one curtain call, Bree. And I thought they were going to give us a standing ovation, but no-o-o-. Do you know why half the audience stood up? … to get a head start on the traffic.”

I was half-listening to someone on the radio this morning talking about how important – he might even have said “essential” – it was to get theatres up and running again in London. He understood, of course, that social distancing would have to be maintained, along with other preventative measures, if the theatres in question were not to become incubators for Covid-19.

As he droned on, I found myself wondering what a first night would be like under the West End’s new dispensation, with the health & safety inspectorate standing in for the old Lord Chamberlain as the arbiter of what may and may not be displayed on stage.

Bums on seats are what count in theatreland. That’s what they tell us, when what they mean is, “darlings, we were wonderful”. But what happens if, as with the airlines, only one bum is permitted for every three seats? Will prices have to rise dramatically, so that only those who work in hedge funds can afford the tickets – a bit like now, in fact? Or will the existing rows of red velvetine seats be replaced, like in those posh cinemas, with full-on armchairs, complete with little tables for drinks and snacks and – why not? – internet access?

When I lived in London, and the same in New York, I rarely went to see a play more than a couple of times a year. Even so, there were times when I wished during a performance that I had brought something to read – anything that would keep me awake. But that is by the way.

The point is, for months, maybe years, after the all-clear, audiences will be at a premium – made up of principally of diehards sporting more fancy face-coverings than a Venetian masked ball. There will be as much drama off-stage as on.

The actors, also wearing masks, will circle each other warily. Each exit will be met with a hand-sanitiser. Plots will be adapted. Poirot, in the library scene, will confirm what had become blindingly obvious, that there was only ever one suspect. Each man in crowd scenes will in his time play many parts. There will be only one spear-carrier. Romeo will never get within touching distance of Juliet. Six characters in Search of an Author will be reduced to two. Le Misérable will be the hottest ticket in town, vying with Cat.

During the interval, the usual Gadarene rush to the toilets will have to be staggered. In the gents, where there are traditionally three stalls, only one will be legally sanctioned, meaning one chap doing the business, another washing his hands for 20 seconds (no air-washing) and the next on-deck, as they say in baseball, standing six feet away, next to the door.

God knows what it will be like in the ladies. Women will probably have to book in advance.

And don’t even talk about crush bars. It will be ten in, ten out, like in Tesco. Champagne will be sucked through straws, with each customer occupying his or her allotted spot. CCTV will monitor the proceedings. If someone starts coughing, paramedics in full PPE will step in to remove the offender and spray the vacated stool with disinfectant.

At the end of every performance, tannoys will remind the audience to wash their hands while exhorting them to leave the auditorium one at a time and to dispose of their masks in the receptacles provided.

All right, all right. I’m exaggerating. It probably won’t be as bad as that. Ways round will be found to keep the show on the road. But I still fear for the future. Dying on stage is one thing, dying for a pee or dying at home two weeks after Othello is something else. Audiences will stay away if they don’t think of theatres as safe spaces. Some will lose the habit entirely. It’s all very well to say that live drama has been a feature of metropolitan life since ancient Greece. But it isn’t as if we don’t have alternatives. We live in the age of Netflix and boxed sets. The new proscenium arch is a 64-inch flat-screen where the curtain goes up at the flick of a switch.

The director Peter Brook said once that theatre was noise and the theatre of noise was the theatre of applause. But what happens if the applause is reduced to the sound of one hand clapping?