FIRST NIGHTS

August heat cannot weaken nor flivvers stale
Our first-night expectance when the new season opens. 
Come on, boys and girls, the gang’s all here;
The Death Watch is ready in orchestra chairs
Still shrouded in summer’s cool slip pajamas,
And the undertakers of stage reputations
Are gathered to chatter about author and players,
And give them and their work disrespectful interment
By gleefully agreeing in that sage Broadway saying: 
“Oh, what an awful oil can that piece turned out to be!”
It’s hard when the Chanters of Death-House Blues
Have to turn to each other and reluctantly murmur: 
“I’m afraid it’s a hit—­the poor fish is lucky.” 
First-nighters are the theatre’s forty-niners,
Making the early rush to new dramatic gold fields,
And usually finding them barren. 
Often must it madden the playwright to offer his ideals
To an audience whose personnel would for the most part
Regard an ideal as a symptom of sickness;
To show sweetness and beauty and color
To those whose knowledge of tints is confined
To the rouge and the lip stick on dressers;
To pioneer in playwrighting, to delve deep into mind,
When all that the first-nighters ask is plain entertainment. 
How much of the great, wholesome public, hard-working and normal,
To whom the final appeal must be made
Frequents our first nights on Broadway? 
Costumers, friends of the author, and critics,
Scene painters, all of the tradesmen concerned,
Kinsfolk of mummers even to the third generation,
Wine agents, hot-house ladies, unemployed players,
Hearty laughers or ready weepers “planted.” 
Most of them there prepare for a funeral;
Their diversion is nodding to friends and acquaintances,
And he or she who nods the most times
Is thereby the greatest first-nighter. 
Some managers open to hand-picked audiences,
Others strive to escape the regulars;
But the majority seek for the standardized premier faces
That really mean so little in the life of the play. 
Listen to the comments during intermission: 
“It doesn’t get over!” “It’s a flop!”
“What atmosphere!” “An absolute steal!”
“Such originality!” “Not a bit life-like!”
“That author has a wonderful memory!”
“He copped that lyric from Irving Berlin!”
“He’s as funny as a crutch or a cry for help!”
“They grabbed that number in London!”
“She’s one of his tigers!”
“From a Lucile model, my dear, but home-made!”
“I can’t hand him anything on this one!”
“Some heavy-sugar papa backed the production!”
“Isn’t my boy wonderful!”
“Yes, but my girl is running away with the piece!”
“If you like this, you’re not well!”
“What could be sweeter!”
“What large feet she has!” “His Adam’s apple annoys me!”
“She must get her clothes on Avenue A!”
“They say she was born there!”